Love is in the air and we are making whoopie

Whoopie pies that is .....get your mind out of the gutter!  Happy Valentine's Day Everyone! 
 
Valentine’s Day is all about love and so is this website, so we figured it was a perfect time to make our plea to you for help. 
  
Cook for Love does not want to have to charge an annual fee to use the site. We do not want to sell you anything. We are not paid to use or endorse any products. We are not paid at all – in fact this site costs us money to run. We do it out of love for our children and out of a desire to make the low protein diet more enjoyable for everyone with PKU. 
  
In order to continue doing what we are doing, we need your help. We are asking our members for a $10 donation. 
 
If we do not get paid, where does this money go?  Well apparently running and maintaining a website costs money.  Who knew?  We thought we would have the expense of launching the site but that would be it.  Unfortunately we were wrong.  There are fees just to maintain the site as it is, let alone trying to fix little things like our ridiculously convoluted "forgot your password" system. 
 
Thanks to the generousity of our members, we have the funds to pay a nutritionist to analyze our existing recipes, but need to raise more for new recipes going on the site. Hunter Rametta, a licensed, registered dietician who also has PKU, will begin recipe analysis in the next few weeks.  Hunter is passionate about educating and sharing ideas on how to make the PKU diet healthy and delicious.  She has a great blog that has recipes, ideas and nutritional facts called PHElosophy that you should check out. 
 
We received sponsorship from BioMarin and Abbott which will pay for two videos series (6 to 8 videos).  If you want to see more videos this year, we need to raise the funds to do so. 
 
We also would like to make some changes to the site.  Lots of people have asked for a community forum, which we are looking into doing. 
 
In an ideal world we will raise enough money for all of these projects.  If we do not, well then choices will have to be made and projects prioritized.
 
While this site was our dream, it is our gift to the PKU community. It is yours now, so let us know how we are doing and what you would like to see in the future.  Make sure you take our Follow-Up Survey and let us know what you think of Cook for Love and what else you want to see from us. Your 2 cents –no wait $10 – will guide our upcoming projects.
 
Remember, we are a registered 501 (c) (3) and your donation is tax deductible.
 
Now on to the fun stuff.  The food. 
 
We have a few new favorite recipes to share with you and we hope that you enjoy them as much as we do.  I seriously think I put on 10 lbs. not during the holidays but over the past month.  There has been so much baking going on in our kitchen. 
 
The Whoopie Pies are my new all time favorite dessert and they are actually easy to make! 
 
We got an awful lot of requests for ravioli and pierogi over the past few months.  We are not sure if you were all conspiring against us or there is one very clever member who has numerous accounts under different names that REALLY wanted ravioli.  Our past attempts at low protein pasta always left a little to be desired: dough too fragile to crank in a pasta machine so it was always that bit too thick; stuffed pasta that was too white and translucent;  taste that was not that flavorful and a bit gummy with the stuffing oozing out when cooked.  Thanks to a push from you guys, Rosie and I took another shot at it and boy are we glad we did.  This ravioli is out of this world delicious and is Molly's new favorite meal.  Liam is devouring pierogis faster than we can make them (which is not that fast yet) -- we should have known to double the batch once there were potatoes involved.   
 
The Jeez Its and Biscotti were both developed at the request of two adults with PKU.  As parents, we tend to focus on our kids, but we are realizing that eventually they grow up and do not want to eat veggie nuggets all of the time!  For all of the adults on the site, let us know what you want to see more of and what is missing from the site.  We really want to help, just let us know how.
 
Thanks everyone and we hope your Valentine's Day is filled with love and a little whoopie (pie) ;o)
 
Brenda & Rosie