Welcome, dear reader, from Ellen at ellenskitchen.com.

Something new is cooking at Ellenskitchen.com, and I need your help. Ellenskitchen.com's remodeling campaign is up and running! Now is the time to make that first important gift that will help assure success. You are the key. If you contribute to this campaign, I will easily meet my funding goal. Tell your friends, share our Facebook page, tweet the good news. And thanks in advance for making this happen.

Eighteen years ago, I had the dream of providing a site which would help volunteer and family cooks build community through food and hospitality. We must have been on to something; over 1.8 million readers all over the world make 20 million hits here each year.

Thanks to a lot of good friends, this site, ellenskitchen.com, was developed in 1998 and has been supported and subsidized for its first 18 years by the Institute for the Development of the Harmonious Human Being, IDHHB, a 501(c)3 corporation in California. Claude Needham, support@xxaxx.com, designed and handled this site, and a small google adsense box covers the hosting costs. That's been the only stable income source for the site.

Now I need your help. In 1998, there was no WordPress, no recipe apps, no way to easily post new pages; no Face Book, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest; readers could not do targeted searches; every page had to be hand-coded and individually posted. It was real campfire cooking! Now, I've got hundreds of recipes still waiting, more how-to articles, and I want to add many new features (hint: many have requested the cookbook, downloadable worksheets, print materials, live videos and consultations.) I do want a monthly newsletter for regular readers. But I can't do it by myself.

To bring the site into the modern age and give ellenskitchen.com everything readers have asked for, like any other kitchen, after all this time, ellenskitchen.com needs updating and restocking. It's time for more photos and graphics, many more new recipes, easier searches, and added guides. I want YOU to be able to comment and post your favorite recipes and photos! We'll still keep all the current free material, and then expand to the gourmet good stuff for crowds and events that only ellenskitchen.com provides.

My target date for opening the new, remodeled ellenskitchen.com is the end of summer this year, 2016. To do this, I need to raise about 19400 to cover both the remodel and the first few months of independent practice. I expect success; if one in ten of this month's visitors commit to the price of a pound of coffee, we will surpass our funding goal BEFORE WE EVEN START and fill the pantry at ellenskitchen.com. By the end of summer, you will see everything you have always liked about the kitchen, and much more.

Please share the campaign with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, or send a testimonial to share with others to me at ekitchen@texas.net.

There are rewards for every level of donation, and the best reward- a bigger, brighter ellenskitchen.com- will appear at the end of the summer! Let's start another 18 years together.