Binder available at http://www.zazzle.com for $23.50. My Super-Secret No-Fail Kid-Pleaser Recipe, Free!

Yesterday, after posting an ad for the double stroller on Craigslist (somehow forgetting to mention that it weighs 46 pounds empty), and before posting an ad for the baby backpack we used twice, I checked my Twitter account.

I was sending what would be my fourth official Tweet to date (not including blog updates, which happens by magic). I was saying how, after Friday’s carrot Valentine adventure, I had vowed never, ever, ever to pick carrots in large numbers, haul them home, wash them carefully so their top parts stay cute and perky, store them carefully so their bottom parts don’t get flaccid, and then at the last moment, affix to them cut-out hearts on which I’d written a come-hither note for vegephobic preschoolers. But despite my vow, I did it again on Tuesday. Home-grown carrots are the Montessori Way. And besides, this time, it was only fifteen carrot-cards instead of thirty.

Not six hours after I’d Tweeted about how I’d never do it again, Mbot whispered in my ear, “Sank you for making carrot Valentines.” So of course I had to officially reneg on my vow. For that, I would do it all over again. Fortunately, carrot season only lasts ten weeks.

But there I was on Twitter and some outfit named RookieMoms had just Tweeted and, finding the name intriguing and justifying my procrastination as blog research, I clicked. And that’s how I found out about RookieMoms (hilarious, helpful, go there, as soon as you finish reading this), and the new cookbook called  Parents Need to Eat, Too, by Debbie Koenig, with recipes that can be made in stages during naptime and then eaten with one hand. A beautiful thing, a practical book aimed at the one-handed creatures women become directly after childbirth.

So today, inspired by Heather and Whitney (the girl geniuses behind RookieMoms), and Debbie Koenig, I am self-publishing my own cookbook. Right here. In this very post. It consists of my Secret, No-Fail, Kid-Pleaser Recipe. That’s right: just one recipe, but it is a good one. It may not help with the under-two set, but it’s magic for the picky two-and-up demographic. And it’s fast and easy.

Here it is:

Put it on a stick.

Gbot demonstrates his technique.

Anything. Frozen cherries. Apples. Pears. Cherry tomatoes. Pieces of steak. Melon chunks. Squares of spinach and mushroom omelet. Broccoli. Yesterday’s defrosted banana wheat pancakes. Chicken with peanut sauce. This last one has already been done and served at weddings across the nation, but they use sharp, pointy sticks, and these are the kind of sticks I use:

Anything not sharp and pointy. Anything that is not a fork. Forks are boring.

Popsicle sticks bought at the craft store. Tongue depressors (preferably previously unused). Bendy straws. Non-bendy straws. Straight pretzels. (That way, they can eat the stick, too.)

Sticks: They’re not just for Popsicles anymore.

What’s your easiest no-fail recipe?

Can be eaten with one or two hands.