Let Them Eat Vegan! {giveaway} – ENDED 5/8/12
Goooooooood morning <3 Fun news 🙂 The blog was chosen as a reader’s choice winner for best personal training blog over at Fitness Magazine. Thank you SO much to those of you who took the time to vote – I’m honored to have been included in such wonderful company.
Last week’s little photo shoot was for an upcoming issue of Fitness Magazine- exciting stuff!
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Lots of food prep went down in our kitchen last night: the usual stuff for the week (chopped veggies, salsa, grains, a baby meal)
and a seriously amazing dinner.
(Sorry for the weird color. My camera died so I had to resort to the iPhone)
As you guys know, Dreena Burton is one of my all-time favorite cookbook authors. My copy of “Eat, Drink and Be Vegan” has tamari stains and chocolate smudges all over it- it’s been well-loved. Her Supercharge Me cookies are a dessert favorite and my hardcore carnivore husband loves her recipes, too. Even though they’re vegan, they never feel like they’re missing anything, because they’re satisfying and filled with bold flavors.
I also love that a majority of the recipes aren’t dependent on faux meat and soy: mostly whole foods with fresh fruits and veggies as the star of the show.
When Dreena offered to send me a copy of her new cookbook, “Let Them Eat Vegan!” I was so excited to try out some of her new recipes. While I’m still getting back in the swing of making dinners that aren’t prepped by myself and then grilled by the Pilot, I’ve only tried a few of the new recipes. I’ve made the kale slaw a couple of times, and it’s incredible.
When I realized we had all of the ingredients on-hand for her Almond Curry Chickpea recipe, it was an easy choice for dinner.
Creamy spiced almond butter sauce,
chickpeas and zucchini,
baked and served over brown rice.
It was absolutely perfect, and just as before, Mr. Pilot didn’t seem to mind the lack of animal protein at all.
Dreena kindly offered to giveaway a cookbook to a lucky reader, so if you’d like a copy of your own, all ya have to do is leave a comment with a recent kitchen disaster.
I’ll go first:
I set the smoke alarm off while making a salad beast. I was grilling chicken on the George Foreman to put atop the salad and before I knew it, the alarms started beeping. Livi was sound asleep and managed to stay sleeping upstairs while I opened doors and frantically fanned a pillow over the alarm. The Pilot just laughed.
I’ll pick a winner tonight at midnight EST and post it in tomorrow’s AM post.
Edited: This giveaway has ended as of 11:52 AM EST, 5/8/12. Please stay tuned for more giveaways in the future! Did you win? Find out here.
Have a great day and I’ll see ya tonight!
xoxo
Gina
Yesterday’s #smoothieaday:
PB & J
-1.5 C almond milk
-1/2 banana
-1 C frozen mixed berries
-1 scoop Sun Warrior
-1 T peanut butter
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I am so clumsy in the kitchen! My latest kitchen disaster was when I made the most delicious tempeh eggplant stir fry, I went to put the leftovers in tupperware for lunch the next day and ended up dropping the tupperware mid pour, stir fry going everywhere. Sad day!
Last night, while making my smoothie, I forgot to push the cover down fully on my blender–I didn’t realize it until I hit “pulse”….and found half of my smoothie on my kitchen wall 😉
It was still yummy, though! 😉
So excited for this give away! I’ve been dying for more vegetarian recipes lately…..
About a week ago I was trying out a recipe for a vegan cheese sauce, and got a little too heavy handed with the substitutions. I didn’t have nearly enough ingrediants to make it, but tried to fake my way through. FAIL. Worst thing I’ve ever made. Ever. It was totally inedible and the whole giant batch had to be thrown out.
I make huge messes in the kitchen! My most recent disaster was when I made an amazing brussels sprout dish for dinner with chickpeas and forgot to put the (abundant) leftovers away. They sat out on the counter all night and I only found them the next morning 🙁
Almond curry chickpea recipe looks delicious!! You’ve gotten me in the mood for something creamy!
I spilled the entire canister of flour in the floor. Not only was I then out of flour, I broke my Le Crueset canister! Agh!
Was cooking sausage, and left the butcher paper too close to the stove top… The paper caught on fire, big mess, lots of flames.. but didn’t ruin dinner.
I would LOVE that cookbook! I have actually been experimenting with the vegan lifestyle the past month or so!
Ok so kitchen disaster… well a couple months ago I was making my hubbie a smoothie. I had just finished scooping mine out and didn’t take the metal spoon out. Let’s just say it didn’t blend well and we had to buy a new blender 🙁
My son had a kitchen disaster. He wanted to let us sleep in, so he decided he was going to make himself breakfast. I had made pancakes the day before so he was going to reheat them. He put them on a plastic plate and stuck it in the……toaster oven. Needless to say the plate didn’t come out all that well. 🙂 It was funny.
Last night I was making burrito-ish wraps for a causal dinner party with friends. As I got down to the final two wraps I realized I didn’t have enough filling for them, and had to unroll the others and “steal” a little filling from others. Not a huge deal, but definitely a pain!
i smoked us out one night trying to make hassleback potatoes! the oil fell to the bottom of the oven, and created so much smoke…lesson learned – bought a rimmed baking sheet the next day!!!!! oops!
Oh I have a couple to choose from! (Last week was kind of a bad week, kitchen wise!)
I definitely set the smoke alarm off making banana pancakes in an attempt to surprise my sleeping hubby with breakfast, but that wasn’t as bad as dinner last Mon. night.
I bought these lamb sausages at the farmer’s market b/c the spice mix sounded amazing- cinnamon, garlic, chile, and cloves. I put them in the crockpot with some of my homemade chicken stock, lentils, barley, onion, garlic and kale- expecting a delicious sausage-y treat for dinner.
Nope.
The sausage turned purple and the whole mess tasted bitter and metallic. I think maybe the cloves made it taste funny, but I’m really not sure. The hubby walked in to find my dumping the entire contents of my crockpot into the trash, and wisely suggested that we go get Italian food for dinner.
I have tried to make some dense and chewy chocolate bars, and had some raspberry in the fridge, I thought it would be cool to add it, and it wasn’t since the raspberry is watery when mixed in, the burs truned very soggy and imposible to eat!!
I turned on the coffee pot while I went to go take a shower…. I came downstairs to find coffee all over the cabinets & the walls. I came downstairs to my 16 year old sister telling me that the coffee was being shot across the room bc the lid wasn’t on the pot all the way.
A bad disaster in my kitchen was when i was making a chicken pot pie and as i was stirring in the chicken broth (that was boiling hot) i poured it all over my arm instead. 2nd degree burn. ouch 🙁
This cookbook looks great!! We eat strictly vegetarian, but I’d love to do a little bit more vegan!
With my pregnancy nose, I swear everything smells rotten. Over the weekend, I ripped every last thing out of the refrigerator because I swore something was rotting in there. I ripped everything out of the fridge, only to find absolutely nothing that was causing a smell. I had my husband double check and even made my poor mother who was visiting for the weekend stick her head in, but still nothing. And then I couldn’t even begin to get all the food back in the fridge. Not good.
I really want this book! My husband is a diabetic who recently gave up meat to improve his numbers, so I’m transitioning back to dairy-free now that I have him mostly on board. I already love ED&BV!
Speaking of my husband, the biggest kitchen disaster we’ve had recently was when I asked him to cook some lentils. Oh man. I thought it was implied that you didn’t leave them uncovered at a full boil, but apparently not! The smell was awful, and that poor pot never recovered. Ha!
My current breakfast of choice is two boiled eggs and brown rice toast with raspberry preserves. I usually start the eggs, jump in the shower, and enjoy when I get out. The other week I sure was surprised in the shower when the alarm started going off and I could smell smoke. I live in a building Sony was instantly blaming the other tenants. Much to my disbelief, when I rushed out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me and conditioner still in my hair, I discovered it was I who set the alarm off. Seems I forgot to put water in the pot when I set the eggs to cook!
I can’t think of a recent disaster on the top of my head, so I’m going to share an old classic. It was the morning of a party celebrating my sister’s recent marriage, and for some reason, I got stuck in the kitchen cooking (the reason may have been that I was avoiding all of the jobs that involved cleaning). My family is part greek, so I was making lots of phyllo appetizers as well as baklava along with a bunch of salads. I had about 4 or 5 things going at once when I finished assembling the baklava and set it on top of the stove until there was room in the oven. About 10 minutes later I heard a noise behind me that sounded like a bomb going off. It turns out that placing pyrex baking dishes on top of a (forgotten) lit gas burner results in an explosion. Needless to say, we did not have any baklava that day!
Oh man this book looks awesome! My most recent kitchen disaster involved brewing kombucha. As you know the kombucha tea has to be someplace dark and warm so I had it high on the cabinets beyond reach (and so I was not tempted to check on it too often). When I DID go to check it I knocked over the mason jar it was in and it seemed vingerary sweet tea all through my cabinets and dishes. Needless to say I had to wash every single one, the cabinet, and start my brew over again!
I baked a cake for a friends birthday the other day. However, right after putting it in the oven, I got sidetracked with a phone call and then ended up leaving the house to run a few errands because I forgot I was baking..2 hours later, I ended up with a cake as hard as a brick and even though it was a vanilla cake, it looked like chocolate from it burning. Oops.
My kitchen disasters usually involve sharp objects. I was chopping cilantro last week and got my thumb in there as well.
My husband was unaware that you shouldn’t store things in the broiler drawer under the stove. One night, we decided to have pizza for dinner and I set the oven to preheat. About five minutes later I smelled this horrible, burning plastic smell. As it turns out, the plastic handle to his favorite (and expensive) pan was melting. I managed to get it outside quickly enough to save it but thanks to the stink, we both decided eating out that evening was a better idea!
Over the weekend I was making a chocolate cake with a nutbutter/powdered sugar icing, and I went to grab the bag of powdered sugar (about 3/4 full) and hit it off the counter. BUT I caught it just as it was about to spill everywhere and THOUGHT that I had avoided a disaster….little did I realize that in the process of me catching the bag I pushed it up against the drawers and a handle punctured the side. So it still spilled everywhere…mostly on my feet!
Sometimes my cat-like reflexes work against me…
Oooh I’ve been eyeing up this book for a while now! My most recent kitchen disaster was leaving the house with chicken baking in the oven, and totally forgetting about it. I remembered when I was out on a coffee date with a friend, quickly texted my roommate, who had removed it from the oven when she smelled something from her room upstairs. She saved it so I could take a look at my lovely ‘baked chicken’ – it was almost black!
Congratulations on the Fitness reader’s choice award!!! That’s so awesome 🙂 You definitely deserve it! And that’s really exciting that you’re actually going to be in an upcoming issue – how cool!!
This wasn’t exactly a disaster, but definitely not a good thing – I had heated something up in a skillet for dinner, I think a veggie burger, and then took my plate into the family room to eat while watching TV, and when I went back into the kitchen quite awhile later, I saw the flame of the burner still going underneath the empty skillet! Woops.
I forgot to put the top of the blender on when I was making a smoothie the other day. OPPS!
I made my first Thanksgiving last year and it turned out to be a total disaster. The turkey never fully cooked so I sliced all the meat and put it back in the oven. It was soooo dry. At least the sides were amazeballs!
The worst kitchen disaster I ever had was the time I chopped off the tip of my thumb while cutting onions. That was more than 3 years ago and I still have a gross scar to remind me to pay attention while using sharp knives. Being accident prone, though, means kitchen disasters are pretty much the norm around here.
CONGRATS on the W! 😉
I had just taken dinner out of the oven (baked chicken, black beans, brown rice, diced tomatoes), set it on the stove top to cool for a bit. Not a minute later, one of the ceiling light bulbs burst, sending glass light bulb pieces all over my beautiful dinner:(
I set the smoke alarm off so often, it’s just the norm now. I left some broccoli roasting in the oven and went outside to play with my kids. I forgot about it and came back to brown broccoli crisps!
I recently started using coconut flour, and thought it would be a great idea to toss shrimp in the flour, then pan fry in olive oil…..it was so gross. The coconut flour never hardened and was soggy….I tried to eat a few so I wouldn’t waste but had to toss it. Never again will I fry with that.
Lentils cooked in the pressure cooker results in a very unappetizing grey-brown mushy soup. It was definitely a disaster as the lentil sludge clung like cement to the walls of the pressure cooker, the lid, under the seal and out the top of the vent and down the sides. Horrible! Now I know.
Congratulations on the award! You deserve it!
I spent a couple of hours trying to fix refried beans…only to realize that I’d mixed up my beans and used red instead of pinto. Disaster!
I guess I don’t have as much of a kitchen disaster as a stupidity move. Apparently after you’re done cooking breakfast, you’re supposed to leave the stove on all day. :/ Thank goodness we have an electric stove!!
My recent kitchen disaster was trying to make a from scratch carrot cake for my bf for his birthday using an old springform pan that dripped in the oven. I spent like $35 on ingredients for the cake, it started dripping and smoking and setting of the smoke alarm. I was having a mini meltdown as my dad was so kind and scraped out the bottom of the oven and put the spring form over a cookie sheet. Crisis averted and the cake was amazing! 😀
I accidently doubled a cookie recipie. My family and I were eating cookies for a week (sounds like a good thing but when your trying to cut down on sweets not so much)
Oh and congrats on your upcoming fitness mag feature! That is SO exciting!!
Oatmeal “explodes” in my microwave on a weekly basis. What can I say? I get easily distracted. 😉
POWDERED SUGAR + MIXER LEFT ON HIGH THEN PLUGGED IN WHILE ALREADY IN THE POWDERED SUGAR= DISASTER!!! {AKA, a 9 months pregnant wife finially using the “pregnant card” on her super sweet hubby who cleaned it up… 🙂 }
Im known for making Yorkshire puddings. They really are not hard to make, but if you miss one step, it can end up a disaster. For example, you must not open the oven door for any reason before 15 minutes is up, otherwise they shrivel up and become sad puddings. I figured a couple of weeks ago that I knew the recipe well enough to make it without glancing at the cookbook. Unfortunately I set the oven 50 degrees too low….so when I went to open the door 15 minutes later, they had not finished cooking yet. Of course by that time they shriveled up and became sad (but still yummy) puddings 🙁
Her cookbook is my favorite! My latest kitchen disaster – I was trying to make energy balls/bites are over processed the walnuts, they turned into complete oil!
I managed to burn a Parmesan Honey Pork Roast that I was cooking in the crockpot on two different occasions…despite the fact that both times there was enough liquid in the pot still! The first time I just cut off the burnt meat, whipped up some more sauce and fed it to my husband (he said it was his favorite pork recipe yet). So the second time, I tried it again, was extra careful to follow the recipe and still burnt it, only this time it was beyond edible and went in the garbage. Maybe it’s time I stopped cooking meat and went vegan!
I constantly have disasters in my current kitchen. I learned to cook on a gas range, but right now I’m living with family, and the range is electric. The other day I was making a pot of quinoa, and the instructions are very simple: bring to a boil, and then cover and let simmer for 25 minutes. Easy, right? So, I cranked up the heat until it was good and boiling, plopped on the lid, turned the heat to low and let it do its thing. EXCEPT — this range is wonky, and even though I turned down the knob, for some reason it didn’t register. So the burner stayed on high the entire time. When I went back to check on it, everything was black and smoky and cooked to the bottom of the pan. FAIL.
Anyway, I’m a (mostly) vegan who can’t eat soy or gluten, so I’m always in the market for inventive whole-foods recipes. Love Dreena and can’t wait to check out the new book!
I had first started juicing and completely forgot to put the cup under the faucet to catch the juice and did not realize it until I was about 75% finished with juicing my veggies! I ended up in a puddle of green juice!
Recent kitchen disaster: I dropped my oatmeal pot on the floor (luckily it was empty) BUT it left a big dent in the side 🙁
Well – when my boyfriend & I first started living together I was very into trying to cook for him. One morning I decided to make breakfast. I put a few slices of bacon on a plate, threw it in the microwave and pressed ‘on’. About 30 seconds later we heard a huge ‘POP’ and we opened up the microwave to see that the ceramic plate the bacon was on had exploded in the microwave.. like into pieces! Apparently the oil from the bacon was so hot that it exploded the plate. Oopsy! 😉
PS I made a smoothie today! 1 banana, 1/2 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1 strawberry banana greek yogurt, ice, and a little bit of almond milk. Yum!
Mine has to do with smoke alarm as well. A few weeks I invited my parents over for dinner to celebrate my mom’s birthday and as usual (since having two kids) I was running late with stuff. I had put the chicken in the oven to roast at 400 like I always do and it started sizzling and create a ton of smoke. Of course my step-father doesn’t miss a beat and just helps me open the house up and stop the smoke alarm since my husband was still in the shower. I was mortified that I am a grown woman and I still my parents to help me stop the smoke alarm and that it was going off. The funny thing was the chicken didn’t burn and it was cooked perfectly.
In a pinch I tried to make raw brownies last week for a dinner party, breaking the number one rule for dinner parties and making something I had never tried before. Long story short the “brownies” completely crumbled when I tried to serve them and my husband had to rescue dessert by serving the last two little scoops of ice cream we had in the freezer to our guests. We of course fumbled through eating the disaster brownies. Lesson learned!