A few months ago, I received an email from Amazon.com with the subject line reading "Your Amazon.com order has shipped". While it was way too early for me to start my holiday shopping, it apparently was not too early for someone else in the family. I immediately read the email to find that a book titled "What's Cooking? A Cookbook for Kids" inspired by the movie Ratatouille was scheduled for delivery via overnight shipping. Thoroughly confused, I forward the email to my husband at work asking him "Did you order this? If so, did you need it so quickly to warrant a $3.99 overnight shipping fee?" He confirms that he had not, in fact, ordered it and then it dawns on me. It turns out my four-year old son, had been surfing the Ratatouille movie website ( www.ratatouillemovie.com) the day before and while I navigated him to the "Coloring Pages", the folks at Disney/Pixar must have snuck a link in there for the cookbook. I have yet to find where my son stumbled upon the book, but even though he can barely read and doesn't own a credit card, he managed to order the book through my Amazon account and even expedite the order by clicking the "overnight shipping" button. I do need to credit Amazon.com for their ability to make things so convenient. If you open an account with them, they'll store your credit card number on their site and if you happen to find something you really want, there's a feature that allows for "One Click" ordering where you basically click the "Buy now with 1-click" button, your credit card is charged, and your package arrives immediately via UPS. Unfortunately, this is not such a convenient feature when you have a four-year old using your computer on a daily basis.

Thankfully, the folks at Amazon were extremely helpful in assessing our order and were able to email a return label immediately with the promise of refunding us the full cost of the book along with the overnight shipping fee. But the book arrived and we had to open it because Amazon requires that you open the package to stick the return invoice inside before sending it back. I had every intention of sending the book back, but my husband, who happens to be a good cook, was less adamant about sending it back and after opening it and looking through it, it seemed hardly worth driving to the post office to return a $10 cookbook (though I was still a little peeved about the $3.99 shipping fee). In the end, we kept it. After all, it's one of those milestones worth putting in my kid's baby book - "Kid's First Internet Purchase".

So I've found that when life sends you cookbooks, you cook. Admittedly, the book is cute. There are recipes for crepes, omelets, ratatouille (of course), and several rat-themed desserts which my son found especially intriguing. We ended up making "Chocolate Rats", which are desserts in the shape of... you guessed it. The bodies are made of chocolate covered dried apricots held together by wooden skewers; the ears are made of halved peanuts; the eyes are mini M&Ms; and the tails are shaped by softened Starburst candies; oh, and the whiskers are made of shoestring licorice, but who has time to find shoestring licorice? I'm not sure who made the chocolate rats pictured in the cookbook, or who airbrushed the pictures to make them appear free of blemishes, but the rats I made with my kids looked more like a chocolate lab rat experiment gone horribly wrong compared to the ones pictured in the book. Our chocolate rats were far from making the cover of Bon Appetit and I can't even say they were very tasty as I'm not a huge fan of dried apricots, but it was still a fun activity.

Our copy of "What's Cooking? A Cookbook for Kids" now sits proudly on a bookshelf amongst our other cookbooks and my husband's Fine Cooking and Cook's Illustrated magazines. Our extended family has started putting in orders for other internet purchases to include things like a new flat screen TV for Grandma and a Lamborghini for Uncle Miggie. I've turned my "One-click" ordering off, but it hasn't slowed my son down one bit on the computer. He's learned how to Google things and even though he can only read a handful of words, he typed "Puff the Magic Dragon" in the Google search box by copying it off the title of the book he owns, and then managed to find and watch a 24 minute video of "Puff the Magic Dragon"produced in1978. So long as he doesn't learn to type "porn", "sex", "homemade bombs", "guns", or "insider trading" I think we'll be okay.... for now.