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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Disaster in my kitchen would be letting my 10 yr. old bake! She loves to do the baking, but not the clean up:(
I was making homemade pizzas which calls for a 500 degree preheated oven. I don’t even know how it happened but instead of sliding the pizza onto the pizza stone it ended up on the door of the oven. I was worried about the dogs trying to eat the pizza off the door so without thinking I closed the oven door. Buying a new oven would have been easier than cleaning up this mess.
I was trying to chop potatoes in the food processor and instead made raw potato mush. Then I proceeded to drop said raw potato mush all over our tile and it blended in so well that I was getting bits of potatoes stuck to my feet all day after I thought I’d cleaned it up!
I put about a quarter cup of olive oil in a sauce pan to start making tomato sauce, while I was waiting for it to heat up I ran to the bathroom, when I came out I noticed that the pot had caught on fire and the smoke alarm was going off. I quickly pulled the pot off of the stove and poured salt in it to stop the grease fire. I can’t believe that happened. lol I was scrubbing that pot for hours.
I was visiting a friend and he and his roomies don’t use their over very often… or clean it. I made them dinner and while I was heating up a few slices of Texas Toast the oven caught on fire. Huge flames. Turns out they have never cleaned it and there was a layer of grease on the bottom of it. The didn’t have a fire extinguisher either… luckily, we got it out.
My lastest kitchen disasters have all included the gas stove… Iv burned receipes, kitchen towels… Ect. I’m new to the gas burners my fiancé is afraid to leave me alone!
Oh – and another disaster (I have many..) was when I bought a chicken (not cut up..but like an actual chicken body/legs/insides) and attempted to wash it. I had never had to do that before and was so grossed out that as I was trying to wash it in the sink, I turned around and threw up on the floor. haha Needless to say, I never bought a chicken again. So gross.
Congrats on the Fitness Reader’s Choice! What a huge accomplishment!
I’m a kitchen spaz (over-roasting aka burning vegetables is the norm over here, and I always forget to spray my pan for the protein pancake), but the most recent was when I started to make myself a kale salad, and left the kitchen for a moment. When I got back, my roommate’s kitten was on the table, feasting! I think the most disastrous part was chasing this cat around, trying to get a piece out of his mouth!
I was recently cooking up some sweet potato dahl (one of my faves because it is delicious and lasts for days!) while waiting for my landlord to stop by so we could renew our lease. When he arrived I turned the burner down to low so I could let him in and keep my summer warm, only apparently the low setting on the stove isn’t low enough because it started to burn to the bottom of the pot, almost ruining my dinner and causing my landlord to ask if I was trying to burn down his house.
Congratulations! The most recent kitchen “disaster” happened to me when I was trying to make carob granola. I melting butter, coconut oil, and sugar together and stirring in carob powder, turned off the heat and set it aside while I mixed up the grains and nuts, and next thing I knew my butter/coconut oil/sugar/carob mixture was all coagulated, and I couldn’t distribute it evenly throughout my granola mixture. I continued on and ended up with a baked grain & nut mixture with clumps of butter, coconut oil, sugar, and carob goodness. Wouldn’t say its great, but it works!
I love Dreena Burton’s Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, and I can’t wait to check this one out as well!
Last summer I decided to make a late-night batch of s’mores brownies at my aunt and uncle’s house. My boyfriend and I made the graham cracker and chocolate layers successfully, and then had to broil the marshmallows on top. I warned him, but my boyfriend put the brownies too close to the broiler and it completely CAUGHT ON FIRE! The fire alarms went off, my uncle’s dogs went crazy, and we woke up the whole house!
p.s. Brownies were salvaged. And delicious.
I recently was making a batch of green monsters to freeze and take to work. I forgot to put the lid on the blender and then had green smoothie all over my walls. I am still finding little specks every now and again in the kitchen….
Congrats!!! i’m a subscirber, can’t wait to see you in my mailbox:)
One night I came home wanting some pizza, so preheated the oven, threw that puppy in there…and decided that taking a quick nap would be a great idea. Until I woke up about 2 hours later to a VERY burnt pizza and my roommates laughing at my absent-minded move!
First of all…Congrats!!!!
Secondly…luckily I have not had any cooking mishaps recently but my roomate has had a few blunders in the past month (creating a new rule were I must be present when she decides to cook, for all our safety). My roomate decided to boil some veggies on the stove and used a PLASTIC bowl. As you would suspect this did not work out well since the bowl melted and then caught fire. Only a WEEK later she decided to cook some chicken nuggets in the oven and after cooking them had to leave the “baking sheet” in the oven since it would not come out. When I got home to help her figure out why I discovered it was because she had used a cutting board and it had melted to the oven rack. We are all still alive but alot of our plastic wear has been damaged in my roomates cooking attempts.
I was making pumpkin chicken enchiladas….you make the sauce in the blender and for some reason in the middle of making it the blender just went on while the lid was not on!! I had pumpkin enchilada sauce ALL over my kitchen…I felt like I was cleaning it up for days because every time I went in my kitchen I’d find another little spot somewhere. I now only plug in my blender after the lid is on!!
We have a glass-top stove, which is great because it can often double as more counter space. I was chopping some veggies on my favorite cutting board (it folded in half, making it convenient for storage and chopping multiple things without having to wash in between chopping) on top of the stove and heating up some olive oil in a frying pan. Well, I accidently turned on the front heat element, which my cutting board was on top of, instead of the back heat element, where the pan was. I started to smell something funny and quickly lifted off the cutting board only for it to be melty plastic on the underside. We had to open every window in the house to get the smell out, and I still to this day cannot find another cutting board like the one I melted.
Congrats on the award, by the way! Love your blog<3
Well, this isn’t recent but… when I was 12 I was babysitting and the little boy decided he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. I thought I was so grownup and buttered two slices of bread, put american cheese in between… and stuck the whole thing in the toaster oven. A few minutes later, the toaster oven was shooting sparks from butter and cheese dripping onto the burners, smoke was filling the kitchen, the smoke alarm was beeping and the little boy I was watching started screaming that we had broken the law and the police were coming. Needless to say, I’ve been grilled cheese-traumatized ever since!
I used to work the night shift, and our team would take turns making dinner to bring in for everyone. On my night, I tried to make an enchilada casserole in a pyrex baking dish. I left it on the stove to cool but forgot I’d left the burner on. I went to my room to get ready for work and could hear (from three floors up) the pyrex shatter and knew immediately exactly what had happened. I came down to find enchiladas and shards of glass sprayed around my entire kitchen. I spent the rest of the evening before work trying to clean up the disaster I’d made, and my team ended up with takeout from Chili’s.
While making some nutritional yeast sauce for mac and cheese recently, I set the fabric pot holder too close to the burner and it caught it on fire! I smelled a really gross burning smell, looked over and saw a little flame leaping across the pot holder. Luckily, as soon as I pulled away the pot holder the flame died down. But it smelled terrible!
I accidentally set a plastic lid on a hot burner. Had to scrape melted plastic off my flat top stove.
I have set off the smoke alarm making a salad also. I made a raw broccoli soup the other day and I read the ingredients as half a cup of olive oil (which was for the other ingredient) instead of an 1/8 of a cup. WORST SOUP EVER! I actually felt like a grease ball the entire night. UGH!
Not as bad as the boyfriend though, I have witnessed him burn water. (after the water evaporates, yes it can burn.)
Super excited for this give away that almond chickpea curry looks delish.
Congrats! I tried to make sweet potato chips for the first time the other day. My first batch were burnt to a crisp. The second batch were soggy. 🙁 I am going to make another attempt this weekend.
My most recent disaster (because there have been many) was when I forgot that the buzzer on our oven doesn’t go off– it is very bizarre and is touch screen, so if you even lean over it to reach the microwave or the cabinet above, some settings change on the oven. Well, apparently I turned off the timer buzzer, so I left cookies in there for almost an hour and a half. Oops.
My recent kitchen disaster happened while prepping for cupcake wars for a local radio station! I was cutting the recipe for my vanilla cupcakes in half and accidentally managed to double the fat without knowing it. They came out short and disgusting. It took me like 45 minutes to realize what I had done wrong 🙁
Thankfully the second batch came out much better!!
I turned on the stove and not the oven…needless to say, 45 minutes later, dinner was still not ready.
The book looks good, I will have to see if our library system has the first one. I have to check out books first before I am willing to give room to a hard copy of a book on my shelf. Space is limited and I want only books that I will use over and over again. Sad but true kitchen flop happened to me yesterday. I was toasting an English Muffin and I set the fire alarm off. We just bought a toaster, hadn’t had one for 3 years, and so my husband & the kids were making fun of my cooking skills for a little while. Until I made muffins and then they apologized and asked for a muffin. I would have given them a muffin without the apology though, they were good and eating them all by myself would have been bad.
Probably a pretty common mishap but I was toasting some almonds in the oven that was turned off but that still had some residual heat left to use up. I forgot to set a timer. I took the dog for a walk and when I came back I thought “It smells like smoke in here” and proceeded to sniff around, searching for the mystery smell. Didn’t even occur to me that it was the almonds, because I completely forgot they were there until about 5 hours later when I was in the kitchen and FINALLY it dawned on me!
My most recent kitchen disaster was a product of absent mindedness during law school finals studying…I put Quinoa on the stove to cook and COMPLETELY forgot about it until there was smoke wafting out of my kitchen. Fabulous……
On another note, I’m taking my summer break to try to incorporate vegetarian and vegan eating into my diet as I start a journey to lose the weight thats been holding me back, and this cook book would be a god-send!!
Congrats!
I haven’t had too many kitchen disasters; however I’m totally jinxed on simple bacon & eggs! That’s my boyfriend’s standby b-fast request, & it seems like every time I make them I burn one or the other! It’s become a running joke… I’m doomed! 😛
Chick Peas. I tried roasting them. I set the timer wrong and WOW, they burn quick and stunk up the house. The second time I tried it, burnt them again. FAIL. I have decided I am not meant to have crunchy, yummy chick peas.
Those chickpeas look AMAZING! I think I’m going to have to rely on cookbooks for a while after baby comes (in 4ish weeks!!!) since my pilot burns oatmeal and I’ll have baby brain <— serious lack of creativity.
My recent kitchen disaster was trying to make apple cinnamon protein pancakes. http://namomste.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-comeback.html I had this brilliant idea to make them for Patrick when he comes home this weekend (!!) and wanted to test it out first….good thing. Don't put the apple cinnamon mixture into the batter…it doesn't bind well. I went to flip the pancake and really just ended up with a pile of crumbled pancake pieces and apples. Still delish but not quite the presentation I was looking for. Next time I'll just use it as topping. 🙂
I had a lot of fails trying to make Easter brunch. To begin with, all of my eggs cracked while boiling. Despite that, I decided to dye them anyways. However, I forgot to dilute the dye. The eggs sat in straight up colored vinegar so the shells began to bubble and fall away. Then the coffee cake I was making exploded in the oven. Fun, fun, and fun. I wish I could say I was drinking wine while cooking, but sadly, I was just a major klutz that day!
The smoke detector in my apartment is WAY over-sensitive, so I’ve set it off so many times that I developed a system when taking stuff out of the oven: open back door to let lots of fresh air in, open oven to take out food and shove it closed as fast as possible. It doesn’t always work – sorry neighbors…
I’m almost afraid to put this in writing so I don’t jinx it, but I haven’t had a recent kitchen disaster! What an awesome giveaway. I would LOVE this book.
I was trying to cook alfredo sauce. My first time trying it myself. I tempered the eggs like it said to and it tasted great! I stuck it in the oven with some chicken and it came out as scrambled eggs! I am normally a good cook. lol So awful!
I would love a copy of this book to cook for our vegetarian family 🙂 Thanks!
I would love a copy of this book to cook for our vegetarian family 🙂 Our smoke alarm goes off all the time whe nI try and broil tofu. Have to stick to baking it! Thanks!
Disaster:
Trying to make home-made sugaring wax. 🙂
I forgot about it and I turned around and my sauce pot was overflowing with black, on-fire bubbles of charred sugar.
I actually stayed pretty calm and bought it outside, set it on the deck and then went back inside, filled a cup with water and then quickly walked back out and doused the flames.
Needless to say I had to buy my mom another pot 🙂
My biggest kitchen disaster occurred when I was putting the coffee away one morning. I have no idea what my brain was doing, but it was not communicating with the rest of my body. I had a brand new cannister of coffee and when I went to put it away, for some reason I didn’t fasten the lid securely and of course, I lost my grip and the entire thing flipped over. I had coffee grounds in the cabinet, on, under, around all my small appliances and the floor…ah, the floor. That was such a mess.
This says it all. Sorry for the link drop but the pictures are worth a million bucks…caramel sauce, glass jar, shards, sticky, all over cupboards and floors…for like…a year I was still cleaning out sticky goo from my drawer and nooks and crannies! It multiplied.
http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/03/it-just-shattered-kitchen-disasters.html
A few years ago I had a friend over for a cookie baking session. We were just putting the cookies in the oven when out of no where, there was a huge spark that appeared and then vanished. We just stared for a moment and thought it was sort of pretty. Then we glanced down, and noticed that the spark was actually my oven mitt catching fire. *facepalm*
My fiance and I just moved (in early April) into a new loft apartment with polished concrete floors. A couple weeks ago, he was trying to take something off a high shelf in the kitchen, and he hit a humongous container of dry mung beans, which fell to floor and broke open. Mung beans went EVERYWHERE – including under the stove, fridge, and other immobile “furniture”. They rolled all the way into the living room, office, and hallway. We’ve done the best we could to clean them up, but they’re still hiding in various (many inaccessible) places. We’re still going to be finding stray mung beans when we move out of here, years from now…
oh i love vegan cookbooks that don’t use faux meat products! all about the whole foods 🙂
i cooked up a batch of lentils last night and proceeded to burn the bottom of the pot…it has a nice smoky flavor now. really, i used more then the usual amount of water, i don’t get how it all disappeared so quickly!
burnt the crockpot molten lava cake that i was SO excited to eat! 🙁
I tried to make my own protein bars last week and I followed the recipe exactly, except that I used Chocolate protein powder instead of vanilla. Well the recipe turned out awful. It never got hard after I cooled it off and it tasted like mush. I ended up throwing the entire thing away. GROSS.
Last night, I completely failed at making zucchini banana bread…I compiled a couple of recipes together to create what I thought would be a delicious vegan loaf. Guess I shouldn’t have trusted myself when it comes to the science of baking! After 45 minutes, the middle was still raw – I kept going back to the timer and adding 10 minutes, another 10 minutes – still raw! I finally gave up, turned off the oven with the loaf inside and went to bed. I haven’t thrown it out yet because I hate wasting food…maybe it will still taste ok?!?
Recently, my husband and I were at my parent’s house and my sweet hubby was kind enough to make a beautiful Italian meal for all of us. He created a delicious Chicken Marsala and some tasty sides. It wasn’t until we were cleaning the kitchen that we realized the pan that made the Marsala sat too close the the wall while cooking and burnt a smiley face shape on to the backsplash! Luckily, my parents have a sense of humor and laughed it off! My husband was mortified!!
I think the most recent kitchen disaster was not placing the coffee pot completely underneath the coffee maker which produced a massive flood of water and coffee grounds to clean up. The most humorous one however is over 20 years ago… when my Mom asked me to “wash” the potatoes for dinner. She was bust doing a Jane Fonda workout in the living room and I used plenty of dish soap to get the dirt off. Imagine bubbles everywhere and a 7 year old failing miserably to rinse off her squeaky clean taters. Needless to say, we did not eat potatoes that night.