I just came home from the BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco — a trip which deserves its own post a little later this week, but if you can’t wait to read about my crazy adventure with Ree of The Pioneer Woman and Elise of Simply Recipes, you’ll just have to head over to Ree’s post on our swanky party that we hosted and Bay Area Bites for a recap on the conference.

Oh, now where was I?

(giggle)

I’m so giddy that I can’t sit still!

My book is shipping early via Amazon and Barnes & Noble online!

Which means….

IT’S REAL.

I mean, the cookbook is REAL. Like not just bits and bytes on my computer hard drive. Not just a jpg on my screen.

But a real book that sits on the shelves in a bookstore! That you can actually hold in your hands, flip through the pages and cook from.

Thank you.

Thank you, my friends, for your inspiration, your comments, love and cheerleadership.

Is that a word?

Thank you to the 200 recipe testers, whom I should just call my “board of advisors,” my blog-sistas Elise, Diane (who took this photo of me yesterday at the hotel) and Bee who all served unknowingly as part of the official Steamy Kitchen support group, right next to Jack Daniels!

Well, I had so many people to thank in the acknowledgments page of the book that the publisher had to put it in super teeny tiny font to fit it all in. So you might need a magnifying glass to read it all! And if I had it my way, I could have added another 2 pages of thank you’s.

And the first batch of press has been @!)%(!#$ excellent!

Library Journal just wrote “Hair (www.SteamyKitchen.com) is a home cook-turned-food blogger-turned-cookbook author. She shares recipes drawn from her mother’s kitchen, other food bloggers, and her own delightful archives. Her focus is mostly simple Asian dishes (from China, Vietnam, Japan, and Thailand), with several more complicated ones thrown into the mix. She veers from the current trend of Asian fusion cuisine by trying to uphold the integrity of each country’s unique flavors and ingredients. This focus is what makes her book distinctive. Hair also provides great kid-friendly dishes like eggrolls, Chinese broccoli and beef, and crispy chicken with citrus teriyaki sauce. Desserts are appealing and include the much loved bubble tea and an innovative grilled banana-and-chocolate treat. VERDICT For home cooks of all levels of experience seeking to expand their repertoire of Asian recipes, Hair has written an extremely accessible cookbook that blends great recipes with mouthwatering photographs she took. Highly recommended.”

Publisher’s Weekly: The Cooking Star You Haven’t Heard of Yet

ABC News Now – live interview with host Meg Oliver

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Steamy Kitchen Cookbook Tour

Starting in a few weeks, I’ll be on a whirl-wind cookbook tour – starting with New York City, then Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and wrap up back in New York again.

My full tour schedule – will you come see me? I’d love to hang with ya!

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One more thing…

And before I sign off, I need to pinch myself again and announce a new gig with Discovery Channel’s TLC…home of some of my favorite shows like What Not To Wear and Take Home Chef (oooh la la! that Curtis Stone is fire-hot! he can take me home any day! oh shit, that’s not really the point of that show, is it?)

TLC is launching a brand new TLC Cooking online and I’m happy that I’ll be a part of it, contributing twice a week to their site! The details of whatwhenwherewhyhow….well, for another day. It’s time to go curl up in bed with my book!