My new book So Easy: Luscious Healthy Meals for Every Day of the Week came out this week and I am thrilled about the rave reviews it has been receiving.

It was selected by the New York Times as one of the season’s most interesting cookbooks.  It has been featured on Barnes and Noble “Tagged!” and chosen as one of Amazon’s Hot New Releases in their Fall Into Cooking lineup.

I am in the midst of a 19 city national book tour, and I would love to meet you in person so check my upcoming events to see if I will be in your area.

This past Wednesday I had the tremendous honor of helping our First Lady Michelle Obama with her “healthy kids fair” on the front lawn of the White House! I served her, Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack, and dozens of children from the community a colorful array of fresh fruits and vegetables and challenged the kids to eat the rainbow in produce every day.  Besides other delicious healthy snacks there were fun activities like double dutch, hula hooping and a bouncy house. As you have probably seen by now, our First Lady can really hula hoop it up!

It awe-inspiring for me to prep food in the White House kitchen with chefs Cris Comerford and Sam Kass, and to formally meet and be photographed with Michelle Obama in the room next to where Roosevelt had his fireside chats. My husband Thom and daughter Isabella got to come along for the full experience too.

Mrs. Obama organized this day of fun and good food to drive home her commitment to improving the nutrition and fitness habits of our children and encourage schools to take the Healthier US Schools Challenge a program designed inspire schools to provide fruits, vegetables and whole grains along with nutrition and physical education. We have a long way to go, there are lots of things about the system that are broken, but getting schools involved at this grass roots level certainly is a big first step in the right direction. It is so heartening to me to have a leader in the White House who believes in the long term benefits of a healthy lifestyle and who so clearly lives that way herself. I hope to be able to do more to help her in this cause.

Where else but the Wine and Food Festival Burger Bash can you taste a whopping 15 different kinds of burgers made by celebrity chefs and mingle with your favorite Food Network friends? Well that is where I was last weekend, and boy was it a blast!

I had a great time hanging out with Melissa d’Arabian, Duff and his team, and AaronMcCargo, Jr. Bobby Flay couldn’t take time out for a photo because he was busy serving what turned out to be my favorite burgers—topped with crunchy potato chips and some watercress—along with bourbon spiked icy cold milk shakes. Well worth the indulgence.

I was doing some serving there myself, of crispy, golden French Fries. Yes, I was passing out that potato-licious classic burger accompaniment, but of course mine were healthy too.

I was serving these fries to show off an innovative new healthy cooking appliance that I am helping launch, called Actifry. It makes a whole batch of incredible fries with just a tablespoon of oil. It also makes stir-fries, risotto, roasted vegetables, desserts and even granola. I contributed many recipes to the cookbook that comes with the appliance. The Actifry, by T-Fal has been selling well in Europe for years and I am excited to be part of bringing it to the US. Check it out at www.t-falusa.com

I recently had the pleasure of working with the smart, talented and beautiful Deborah Norville (anchor of Inside Edition) on a project we are both quite proud of. It is an on-line talk show designed to help people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) live better and to raise awareness about the chronic condition.

RA is not the creaky-bones kind of arthritis that comes with old age. It is an autoimmune disease that leads to inflammation which ultimately can cause debilitating joint destruction. It tends to be diagnosed in people in their prime of life, ages 30-50. Overall it affects more than a million Americans, 70% of them women.

Deborah knows about RA first hand as her mother suffered from it and ultimately died from complications from of the condition at a relatively young age. In the talk show, she shares her story, and goes on to interview various experts about how you can live better with RA. There is a top physician, relationship coach, exercise specialist, career coach, and yours truly, showing you how you can eat to reduce inflammation and stay well. It is a real whole-life approach designed for those with RA and their loved ones. And it is totally free.

Just go to www.NewWayRA.com to log on and see clips from the show. If you register you can watch the whole program on-line at your leisure or request a free DVD to be mailed to you.