Menu for Hope III to Benefit UN World Food Programme

It's that time of year again, the time when all of us who spend our days thinking, reading, writing, blogging, photographing and just enjoying playing with our food come together to help those whose days are spent just worrying about getting enough food to eat.

Thanks to Chez Pim, the food blog world has made it easy and fun for you to help by creating a raffle with food-related prizes from around the world. The way it works is you get one electronic raffle ticket or chance for every $10 donation you make. You also get to pick the prize(s) you want to be try for. Last year, the food blogging community raised more than $17,000 to help earthquake victims. This year we are raising money for the United Nations World Food Programme.

Blog Appetit is donating three books I'm calling "The 'I Wanna Be a Food Writer' Package." It is prize code UW04 and contains Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob, The Recipe Writer's Handbook by Ostmann and Baker, and The New Food Lover's Companion by Herbst. These three books will help give you the skills, passion and even some facts to help you really get your food writing career cooking. It's a great package for food bloggers, too. It's available to participants in the U.S., Canada and England. I'll post more about this prize package later this week. If you'd like to bid on this prize, you'll need to use that UW04 code.

Not interested in my prize package? Check out some of the other prizes available to you ranging from once-in-a-lifetime meals and experiences to wonderful cookbooks, kitchen tools and more. The Chez Pim site has a list of all the prizes and regulations. For a list of just the U.S. West Coast based prizes, click on over to West Coast coordinator Sam's Becks&Posh site. Write down the code numbers for the prizes you are interested in, you'll need them when you make your donation.

Here is how you can participate in this worthwhile event: (Note: It is really much easier than this write up makes it seem!)

Got your prize numbers? Click on over to First Giving to make your donation and select your raffle tickets. Each $10 donation buying you the electronic version of a raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Specify which prize or prizes you'd like in the "personal message" section of the donation form when confirming your donation using the prize numbers. Let us know how many tickets per prize and you must use the prize code(s). For example, for a donation of $50, you could specify all five "chances" go to one prize, or a raffle ticket each on five different prizes or you could put three chances on one prize and two on another.

Two other notes for when you are making your donation at First Giving. First, be sure to check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we can contact you if you are a winner. Your address will not be shared with anyone. Second, if your company has a matching gift program, please check that option and fill in the information required.

Outside of a small administrative fee from First Giving, all the monies raised in this raffle will go to help the World Food Progamme, which last year aided 96.7 million people in 82 countries and is a leader in the fight to combat hunger throughout the world.

Raffle winners will be announced on January 15th. That's when you can check at Chez Pim to see the list of winners.