It is birthday week here on The Naptime Chef!

I am a huge fan of birthday celebrations. It is not that I am interested in shouting my age from the roof top, I just like festivities centered around celebrating a special person in your life. Essentially any kind of birthday party should be a fun celebration no matter if you are a kid or adult!

So, this week I am challenging you to plan a birthday celebration for a family member or friend. It can be something small – like bringing cookies to them, or sending them a sweet special note – or something large, like baking a huge cake and planning a blowout party. If you don’t have any birthdays to celebrate this week plan something for a friend in the future and share what you are going to do. Whatever it is, we want to hear how you do it!

How about winning some awesome OXO Mixing Bowls?

To keep this challenge fun I encourage you post pictures of your birthday gesture or tell us of your plans on Twitter (tag @TheNaptimeChef) or by tagging The Naptime Chef Facebook fanpage. If you do this, you’ll get extra enterie to win my Better-Than-Oprah Favorite Things Birthday Giveaway! {official rules below} and will also benefit from your ideas. I also hope you’ll join my group Pinterest Board Titled “Project #2: Birthday Celebrations” and pin up some of your favorite birthday things!

My Favorite Stylish Wax Tote from JMcLaughlin is up for grabs!

If you want to become one of my official blogging sponsors write a post about your favorite birthday recipe and link to this post on your blog. I’ll include a list of sponsors in my daily posts as well as in my weekly newsletter. Last but not least, check out the official rules below and tune back in here every day this week. Yes, I’ll be posting EVERY DAY and you don’t want to miss a single thing. Happy Birthday!

Rules for Birthday Week Favorite Things Giveaway:

1. Leave a comment sharing a tidbit about your favorite birthday celebration.

2. Subscribe to The Naptime Chef newsletter (upper right hand corner) – I’ll check!

3. Become a fan of The Naptime Chef on Facebook

4. Extra Entry: Share the link to this post with your friends on Facebook and link to @TheNaptimeChef Facebook fanpage

5. Extra Entry: Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and link to hashtag @TheNaptimeChef

6. Extra Entry: Follow me on Stumbleupon and stumble this entry by clicking the green thumbs up

7. 6 Extra Entries: Write a blog post between now and next Thursday September 22nd about how you celebrate birthdays in your family and include a recipe for a favorite birthday cake or birthday dish and tell your readers about this post with a link back to it. You will be listed in the post next Friday September 23rd as an official sponsor.

8. Contest will run from September 15th at 7:00am through Saturday, September 24th at 7:00am. Winner will be announced on Sunday September 25th at 7:00am. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours a new winner will be drawn. Winner be selected by random.org.

9. Giveaway items can only be mailed within the continental US.

*Giveaway items generously donated by Andrews McMeel, OXO Good Grips and JMcLaughlin.

Come join me for Dr. Praeger’s Healthy Lunchbox Day!

1. Totino’s Pizza Stuffers: A New Favorite School Snack

2. Lobster Club Salad

3. 16 Skinny Fall Soups

4. 16 Skinny Fall Meals

5. 20 Dishes for Friends in Need

6. The 7 Worst Back to School Cakes

Today I am celebrating my birthday Oprah-style. I have collected a whole bunch of my favorite things – both cooking related and otherwise – and am giving them to YOU! That’s right, it is fun to receive presents, but it is more fun to give, I think, which is why this year my birthday is all about sharing some of my absolute favorite items with everyone here.

This giveaway not only marks the “official” launch of the blog redesign, it is also a preview of next weeks Birthday Challenge – the first of many food challenge weeks coming up this year. Next week The Naptime Chef is going to be all about birthday cakes, birthday decorations, birthday party food and just about everything birthday-related under the sun. This challenge is designed to get all of you chiming in the conversation! I am even including awesome birthday tips and recipes from some of the best food bloggers in the biz. You will definitely want to stayed tuned for those.

In the spirit of birthday love this giveaway is going to run all next week along with the daily posts, and the winner will be announced here next Sunday, September 25th. There are multiple ways to win the giveaway, but you’ll have to work for it. I am calling it a birthday challenge for a reason! Come back on Monday for the Birthday Challenge kick-off!

Favorite Things Giveaway!

1. Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros: I’ve long waxed poetic about my admiration for Tessa Kiros and this is still my favorite book of hers. It contains all kinds of gorgeous savory and sweet family recipes from her Italian kitchen, along with musings on family life and sentimental photographs. I can’t wait for you to read this beautiful book and fall in love with the joyful, colorful pages.

2. OXO Good Grips “Be a Good Cookie” Spatula: September is pediatric cancer awareness month and OXO Good Grips designed this limited edition spatula to support the awesome charity Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, which I’ve written about before. I have the regular OXO Good Grips cookie spatula and I absolutely love it. It is simply the best for lifting warm, delicate cookies off the baking sheet. Now OXO has gone and made it even better by having it support this awesome charity!

3. OXO Good Grips Rubber Bottomed Mixing Bowls: I absolutely adore these mixing bowls. The non-slip bottoms are key when mixing heavy batters and they are fantastic for cooking with kids. My daughter sometimes turns them over and uses them as seats, too!

4. Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies: They are my absolute favorite cookies in the whole world and I want to spread the love by sending the winner a bag of them. Baked by me, during naptime, of course!

5. Harney & Sons Paris Tea: Every morning I wake up with a mug of this fine black tea. I love its accents of fruit and caramel and often make iced tea with it in the summer. Please let me send you a tin so it can keep you warm all fall and winter.

6. JMcLaughlin Wax Tote (in Red): JMcLaughlin is my go-to spot for my everyday Mommy uniform. This awesome waxed everything tote is a brand new addition to their collection this fall and it is PERFECT for taking on the go. It will carry everything from wallets to make-up bags to kids toys and then some. I also love this stylish red color which is what I’ve chosen for you. It gives a great pop to any fall or winter outfit.

Rules for Birthday Week Favorite Things Giveaway:

1. Leave a comment sharing a tidbit about your favorite birthday celebration.

2. Subscribe to The Naptime Chef newsletter (upper right hand corner) – I’ll check!

3. Become a fan of The Naptime Chef on Facebook

4. Extra Entry: Share the link to this post with your friends on Facebook and link to @TheNaptimeChef Facebook fanpage

5. Extra Entry: Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and link to hashtag @TheNaptimeChef

6. Extra Entry: Follow me on Stumbleupon and stumble this entry by clicking the green thumbs up

7. 6 Extra Entries: Write a blog post between now and next Thursday September 22nd about how you celebrate birthdays in your family and include a recipe for a favorite birthday cake or birthday dish and tell your readers about this post with a link back to it. You will be listed in the post next Friday September 23rd as an official sponsor.

8. Contest will run from September 15th at 7:00am through Saturday, September 24th at 7:00am. Winner will be announced on Sunday September 25th at 7:00am. If the winner does not respond within 48 hours a new winner will be drawn. Winner be selected by random.org.

9. Giveaway items can only be mailed within the continental US.

*Giveaway items generously donated by Andrews McMeel, OXO Good Grips and JMcLaughlin.

What’s Going on Today: Regular school day, laundry, school activities sign-up!

School Day Goals: Make Puttanesca sauce, prepare for big birthday announcement tomorrow!

Tonight’s Menu: Puttanesca-esque baked cod over couscous, wine, no dessert in preparation for birthday cake tomorrow!

Eureka, we are back in our school routine! My daughter is back to attending pre-school on a regular schedule and I am back to cooking while she is at school. Most days she comes home and has some quiet time (and often falls asleep) after school, so naptime is still hanging around a bit, though the length of her school day is more than enough time for me to happily cook and work as I want. In fact, I’ve been working a lot on my “official” website launch and the commencement of a huge birthday-themed project will begin tomorrow! In light of setting this up, I decided to turn to a faster dinner recipe this week which is where this delicious, simple baked cod came in.

What’s Going on Today: Back to school! Woo-hoo!

School Day Project: Rhubarb-Orange Snack Bread, prepare Back-to-School Eggplant Parmesan for dinner.

Tonight’s Menu: Eggplant Parmesan, Green Salad, celebration cupcake!

I don’t mean to imply I am not going to miss my daughter when she is at school, but I am glad school is starting today. It is time. Time for her to get back in a daily routine, me to get settled back into everyday life and my husband to have us home again instead of running off on week-long excursions. One of the things our fall routine requires is a continuous parade of school snacks. Like most schools, my daughter is not allowed to bring peanut butter, but she can bring pretty much anything else that is healthy and easy to eat in her allotted snack time.

1. Hurricane Cookies
2. All About Sweeteners
3. Checkerboard Blondies
4. Trivial Pursuit Pie
5. Magnolia Bakery’s Fashion’s Night Out

Come over and check out the awesome time I had judging the Blogger Blueberry Recipe contest for the Blueberry Council!

Last spring I planted this terrific container garden for our deck and we’ve been enjoying the bounty of herbs all summer long. There is no end to the flavor possibilities with delicious fresh herbs on hand and I, for one, have been adding them to just about all of my dishes. Now that fall is coming it is time for me to start freezing the remaining herbs so I can use them all winter. A lot of people I talk with are surprised that I bother to do this since fresh herbs can be procured at the store year-round. This is true, of course, but I prefer to preserve the herbs I’ve been growing all season because it saves a lot of money and my homegrown herbs simply taste better.

I thought today I’d share how I am freezing herbs for winter in case you are inspired to do the same with yours. I often make this a project when my daughter is at school. It takes about an hour, including drying time, for me to get everything rinsed, dried and in their freezer bags for the whole winter. It is well worth my time, I think, because it ensures wonderfully flavored food all winter long! I try to freeze as much as I can at one time and often do at least two freezing sessions before discarding the bare plants before the first frost. I should note that I am wintering over my rosemary and lemon verbena plants because they are hearty enough to thrive indoors, but I’ve included how they can be frozen below for your reference.

A new webisode! I am not going to write much about this pizza since I talk about it so much in the video. I learned this method for making homemade pizza while at King Arthur Flour. The bakers their suggested I preheat my oven for an hour with the pizza stone in it (!) and then use their pizza flour blend to make an easy pizza crust. Their ideas seemed to smart and manageable that I immediately tried it when I got home and am so glad I did. It worked beautifully! So, without further ado. Our homemade pizza night on a rainy Sunday afternoon.