Super-Secret Recipe Testers Needed!

It's Thursday again, which usually means a new and delicious recipe from the kitchen of yours truly...

But I'm running a little behind these days.

The amazing new "miracle drug" that I've been taking (okay, maybe it's not technically classified as a miracle drug, but the effects have been miraculous for me, so I choose to think of it that way) has had an interesting side-effect on me. Because I'm no longer in constant pain, I've been able to sleep when I'm tired. No more super-late nights followed by way-too-early mornings for me! This is wonderful!! Except, I'm discovering that I can't do as much in 15 hours of wakefulness as I used to accomplish in 20-22 hours each day. Until I get into a new rhythm, I'll have to slow down a bit.

This is not to say that I haven't been working. I started a brand-new, shiny writing project (another YA Contemporary novel), and I'm REALLY excited about the story. I can't wait to be able to share it with you!! It's still in the early stages (just started writing the first draft late last week), so I don't want to say too much yet, but I can tell you that the main character dreams of being a famous chef. Which means LOTS of fun experiments in the Bartles kitchen, as I imagine the recipes that my main character would whip up for the various scenes of this new novel. (Yay!!) Unfortunately, because the recipes are intended to become a part of this shiny, new manuscript, I can't post them online for you (Sorry!), and I don't have enough hours in my day to come up with new recipes for the blog AND new recipes for the book every week.

Don't worry! I'll still be posting recipes full of yummy goodness. Just not quite as often. For the next few months, I'll be posting recipes on the first and third Thursdays of each month (and book reviews on the second and fourth Tuesdays). I'm hoping to be back on a more regular schedule by the end of the summer, so the plan right now is to re-evaluate in September, at which time I may return to my posting-three-times-a-week schedule.

In the meantime, I realized that my recipe index is starting to get out-of-date. So I'll be spending the next week or so updating the recipe posts with printable versions of the recipes and reorganizing my recipe index page to make it easier for you to find the recipes you're searching for. (I'm in the process of creating printable recipe pages for each of the recipes I've posted so far, and I hope to have all of those up by Monday. Please be patient with me!)

And I will need a few volunteers to test out the super-secret recipes I'm developing for my manuscript in the Bartles test kitchen, so if you're interested in helping me out, leave me a comment and let me know! Please include the following information in your comment:
  * Your cooking skill level (I'll likely need some more experienced chefs as well as a few novices)
  * What kind of recipes you're most interested in testing (desserts? entrees? side dishes? snacks?)
  * Any special dietary needs that would limit the recipes you could test (allergies?  vegan? vegetarian? gluten-free?)
  * Make sure I know how to contact you! (I probably won't be able to send every recipe to every person who offers to help, but I can't send you any recipes at all if I don't have a way to contact you privately. If you don't want to post your email address on the comments, feel free to send me an email via my handy "contact me" form on my About Me page.)