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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Ugh— yesterday started filling up the sink to do the dishes, and completely forgot about the running water. Luckily the inch or so of nice soapy water helped clean the floors (though I had to drag the giant shop vac out of the attic to clean up the flood!)
I made panko yogurt chicken last night (for the hubs and baby; I’m a veg) and unlike previous times, it was SUPER tough. Not dry, just tough. I have no idea why!
This book sounds awesome. Thanks for introducing me to a new vegan author!
I was making an intense layered coconut pineapple upside down cake once which had several different components that involved brown sugar. On the third and final component, I scooped up the brown sugar out of the container only to find a giant black beetle! I couldn’t stomach the idea of eating the rest of the pieces (who knew if the beetle had a family?!) so I had to toss the whole thing.
My morning smoothies have so many ingredients that they aren’t really “smoothies”–I’ve dubbed them “sludgies”–and sometimes the Vitamix needs a bit of help digesting everything, so I pull out the tamper stick and use it to push everything into the blades. One morning, obviously not awake, I shoved the stick down into the container, but I DIDN’T HAVE THE LID ON! The stick went into the blades, which promptly “ate” the lower half of the plastic stick and flung the remaining half across the room, just missing my head. There was smoothie/sludgie everywhere, including on the ceiling. Needless to say, I was awake (and kind of shaky and freaked out).
I have a lot of fails with popcorn. I always walk away and come back to it smoking.
I just decided to switch to a whole foods/plant based diet and this cook book would be so helpful!!
My recent kitchen disaster would have to be when I was steaming some veggies for our dinner and I was trying to do too many things at once, and forgot to put the water in the pan before I put it on the burner! Thank goodness I caught it in time and was able to salvage the pan before it was completely destroyed. haha. Won’t do that again, that’s for sure! 🙂
I have had a few disasters lately! Not of the burn variety, but of the “tried a new recipe and then it turns out no one likes it…at all” variety. Oh and then there was the time we discovered 2/3rds of our family is allergic to lentils. Goood times. 😉
All growing up, my parents liked to keep food in the oven to stay fresh (i.e. bread, cookies, chips, etc) Well, not being used to checking the oven for food when im pre-heating it (i’ve been out of their house for 8 years now), this past weekend I planned on cooking them a nice, healthy vegetable lasagna and completely forgot to check the inside of the oven. About 5 minutes into the pre-heating stage, and while I was still preparing the lasagna, I smelled something burning (like melting plastic). I QUICKLY remembered their unusual habit and opened the oven door to see everything melted to the wire racks and dripping to the bottom of the oven. I rushed to shut off the oven, take out the racks, and open all doors and windows to get rid of the smell. After all that, and having to wait for the oven to cool before I could clean the inside, we just decided to order in. So much for trying to cook them a healthy dinner for a pre-Mother’s day meal! : (
I was helping with dinner prep at my in-laws, using an immersion blender for the spaghetti sauce. The sauce turned out great but we found the immersion blender cord completely burned through afterwards. I clearly left the cord on/near the hot burner! Luckily it was only the cord that was damaged and not the kitchen from a fire!!
I never really cook, so I can’t think of any disasters. I guess maybe I need this cookbook to inspire me to get in the kitchen more!
I wanted to get every little last bit of coconut oil in a jar so I thought to put it in the microwave for like 30 secs even though there was no noticeable metal on it, it began to spark and zap and smelled really bad will never do that again.
I was roasting almonds for homemade chai almond butter…and forgot they were in the oven. Needless to say, they were burned, but I was stubborn and made the butter anyway. It’s still in my fridge, all dark and bitter. 🙂
I have had quite a few kitchen fails recently, as I’ve been playing around with gluten-free flours. The last one was a vegan, gf chocolate cake that looked okay and then completely sank when I took it out of the oven. Luckily, it was just a single serving cake, so NBD. On to the next! 🙂
I was making one of Emily’s (Daily Garnish) quick breads & decided to leave out the sugar. I also underbaked it and when I flipped it out to cool, the top half plopped out only. 🙁 Major fail on my part; hers looked so delicious!!
I was trying to toast nori sheets to make my own nori crisps and instead underestimated the power of my oven broil and lit the nori sheets on fire! My kitchen filled with so much smoke I couldnt see! Needless to say they were burnt to a ‘crisp’ alright!
I’ve had a few kitchen disasters lately: burnt popcorn in the microwave, a soba noodle salad with garlic that was WAY too potent, and yesterday a frosting disaster that resulted in gross butter lumps in the frosting. Yuck!
I’m due this month and have a bad case of pregnancy brain. The other day I was frying corn fritters for my Southern hubby. The plan was to remove cooked fritters from pan and place on a paper-towel lined plate to soak up extra oil. Except, that the paper towel got too close to the flame and caught on fire. Not such a problem except that my brilliant (and sleep-deprived) mind decided that fanning the fire with my hands while yelling “Go away” might work. It didn’t. Thankfully all scorch marks were easy to clean with a little elbow grease.
I used waxed paper instead of parchment paper and bake cookies and didn’t realize waxed paper isn’t supposed to be heated!
Congrats on the Award! I definitely voted for you!
As for a kitchen disaster, I am notorious for trying to do too many things at one time. One day I was cooking dinner and was finished using one big pot on the stove so I decided to go ahead and move it to the sink and fill it up with water and soap. I put the water pressure on low and turned around to pay attention to what was still on the stove. By the time I remembered to turn back around the soap and water had expanded all out of the sink, onto the counters and the floor. It was like a foam party in my kitchen! Not so fun to clean up though.
oh, that chickpea dish looks so delicious!! my ‘latest’ disaster (and I have many) is coming home from a long day and throwing a pasta dish together as a last resort/there is nothing else in the fridge/I don’t feel like cooking dinner. As I go to the sink to drain the pasta, the pot slips from my hands, causing the strainer to pop over on it’s side while all the pasta runs into the garbage disposal and I stand there swearing and trying not to burn myself. I think we ended up having eggs and toast, which is what I should have done in the first place.
Oi I used my Magic Bullet recently to make a chocolate batter, but part of the recipe called for hot water. the heat and and the fullness of the blender made it EXPLODE when I opened it. Chocolate batter everywhere – all over me, and our newly painted kitchen ceiling and walls. Geez. I still see spots of chocolate on the ceiling.
But….if that all helps me win this cookbook, it’ll have been worth it! 🙂
I refer to mine as the Kung Pao Chicken Incident. We love PF Chang’s so I decided to give the recipe a google and make it at home. In the area we live, certain ingredients are hard to find and I couldn’t find the exact peppers they called for. So I improvised. Little did I know how HOT the ones I purchased were. While everything was cooking, we started coughing from the intense heat. Then when we tried to eat it, it was just too spicy. But it tasted soooooo good. It was like a mean trick. Every bite I’d take I’d start to cough and need to drink milk. I cut down on the peppers the next time 🙂
I haven’t had one lately (knock on wood), but in college I put a homemade cookie in the microwave and accidentally set the timer to long and walked away. The smoke detector was sensitive and automatically called the fire station, so I had every window and door open, and stood on the coffee table waving smoke away trying to keep it from going off.
Due to a little communication error, my husband and I recently starting grilling some Field Roast dogs with the plastic wrapper still on… Thanks for the giveaway!
i burned sesame seeds while ‘toasting’ them in a pan on the stove!
I love Dreena Burton’s recipes! Will probably buy this book either way but here goes:
Recently, I was making a big batch of faux-alfredo sauce (vegan alfredo sauce made with cashews and nutritional yeast) for myself and my friend who was staying for the weekend. I made a plate of noodles with the sauce and let her know she could go make up a plate in the kitchen as well. The disaster came in because she thought that the blender needed to be unscrewed from the base of the appliance. The result was a cashew cream volcanic eruption! Oops! It was actually really funny and I ended up immediately making up another batch (it’s so easy!)
Congrats! That’s awesome 🙂 My latest kitchen disaster (there have been many) happened when I was heating up leftovers in the microwave (pathetic, I know) – I didn’t let the glass dish get close enough to room temperature before putting in the microwave for a few minutes. When I went to take my food out – the entire dish had cracked right down the middle leaving little glass shards all throughout the dish. I had to run out and grab Chipotle for a quick meal instead. Word to the wise – don’t ever do that!
Congrats!!! That’s so awesome!
I rarely have kitchen disasters, so when I do, they are truely awful!
Recently, I was making salmon burgers and thought a perfect side would be some sweet potatoe fries. So I threw some in the oven to cook. I followed the directions on heat and time, but when it said to keep an eye on them, I decided that meant to just cook on the low end of the time spectrum. …Not what they meant by keep an eye on them… When the timer went off, I opened the oven and smoke came billowing out. All the fries had turned from a yummy orange, to black charcoal. I was so sad because I was CRAVING sweet potatoe fries for weeks. I almost cried, but instead I just put them in the sink and waited till morning to deal with the mess.
Congrats, Gina! I have had a lot of misadventures in the kitchen, though nothing too big recently. Since you said recent, I am going with this…
I had just gone food shopping and was putting everything away. While putting something into the fridge, I bumped the newly purchased organic blueberries (which are very expensive right now) and knocked them off the shelf. I did everything I could to keep those puppies from hitting the floor and rolling all over the place, but to no avail. My husband would NEVER eat anything that touched the floor. I was scrambling to pick them all up before he saw what was happening. There I was, in the floor doing my best not to step on one, reasoning to myself that I had just scrubbed the floor the day before AND that it was a fresh food, something that could be washed so it was nbd that they had hit the floor. Shhhhhhhh~ never told him.
I took over the duties of doing all the holiday baking so my mother didn’t have to lift a finger. Needless to say, I should have stayed out of the kitchen that day. I was making a million things at once when my pumpkin seed beer brittle pot boiled over and completely covered my mother’s glass stovetop with the lovely sugar and beer mixture. When I went to get water to start to wipe up the mess that was baking/hardning on the stove, the counters and the floor, we come the realise that the pump in the well has broken and we have no water… We ended up having to break through the top layer of water on the swimming pool (it was frozen over) and let the chunk of ice melt to get water, and scrap the hardned mixture off with an ice scraper from our car. We did not have pumpkin seed beer brittle in the end and the baking day ended quite quickly.
I rinse my Blendtec by blending soapy water on a low setting. Last week I didn’t put the lid on tight enough or used too much water or too high a setting. Anyway, I turned it on and after a few seconds the lid flew off and soapy water exploded out, all over my counter, spice rack, and under the cabinet.
I love using chickpea flour in savory recipes, but a few weeks ago I used it in a pizza crust recipe. It turns out I didn’t cook it quite enough, and the center was mealy and just plain nasty. Word to the wise – chickpea flour is best overcooked – think crunchy. 🙂
Thank you for the giveaway!! It’s the middle of exam week over here so my boyfriend offered to finish up what I was cooking (Shrimp stirfry and tiramisu) except he totally mixed up the two recipes. How does that even happen?!?! Never will I ever accept help again.
Last week I was craving sweet potato fries, so I chopped up some delish sweet potatoes and seasoned them perfectly…and apparently I was feeling REALLY hungry because they didn’t all fit on my baking sheet. So I put most of them on a baking sheet and the overflow on a pizza pan. Well, I learned that things cook a lot faster on the pizza pan than they do on my air-insulated baking sheet when I opened the oven, smoke escaped everywhere and I pulled out a pizza pan full of charred fries! At least the ones of the baking sheet were perfectly done!!
i mistook cumin for cinnamon. note to self: cumin does not taste good in whipped banana oatmeal, no matter how much almond butter you add to mask the taste.
the first time i ever was staying home alone for almost a whole day (6th grade, maybe?), i decided that i wanted a muffin for breakfast. i defrosted it from the freezer and thought “i’d like this just a little toasty on the outside but soft on the inside. i’ll just peel off the bottom wrapper and put it in the toaster oven whole, instead of sliced in half.” smooth move…. (not). the top of the muffin was touching the coils on the “roof” of the toaster oven and caught on fire! i quickly unplugged it and then went so far as to pour WATER on the (unplugged) electrical appliance. i think i stuck to cereal for a solid few months after that debacle….
luckily i’ve gotten a lot more adventurous (and safer!) in the kitchen since then.
Hmmmm…most recently I was attempting to steam broccoli by just boiling them in about 1/2 inch of water. I forgot to turn the stove down after the water starting boiling, so about 5 minutes later I smelled this awful burning broccoli smell. The water had boiled away and the broccoli was just charring on the bottom – yuck!! There’s still burnt broccoli on the pan that I couldn’t scrape off.
every single time i use the broiler there is a kitchen disaster. i have cooking ADD and need something that doesn’t require my constant attention. just this morning i put a waffle under the broiler (the very last one) and went off to play with my son. of course, i started to smell something burning a few minutes later and remembered my waffle. it was pretty toasty but i’ve gotten good at scraping the charred parts off with a butter knife 😉
The other night after my 8 mile run (longest ever!!!) I was so excited to eat my delicious salmon for dinner! Until it caught on fire. It was unsalvageable. 🙁
I was putting our son to bed and had cookies in the oven, and another pan ready to go. When the timer went, my husband swapped pans and “reset the timer”. What he actually did was reset the oven temp to 500 degrees and the kitchen quickly filled with smoke.
My last disaster in the kitchen involved some waffle fries that I was reheating under the broiler after having *some* wine. I got distracted and may have started the oven on fire…whoops! Thankfully, the hubby was able to collect his wits/courage and put out the flames. (It took me screaming a couple times that it was a real fire to get him in the kitchen though). LOL No more drinking and broiling for this girl!
I love the Eat, Drink and be Vegan book! So great.
My recent disaster was some vegan banana chocolate chip muffins. I make them all the time, but for some reason I completely forgot to put the apple sauce and they turned out dry. It was a sad day in my household!!
Great giveaway 🙂
In college my friends and I were frying french fries (this was before my transition to healthy living LOL) and we stupidly walked away from the frying oil and we returned to find it shooting flames up to the ceiling. In a panic, I picked up the pan and threw it out an open window. The now “ball of fire” landed in a bush and though the bush was singed, a major crisis was averted! Hahahaha.
I had just taken something off the stove and turned it off. Then my boyfriend set down a large plastic tupperware on the burner thinking it was cool! Burning plastic is the worst smell!
I also have an awful habit of setting of smoke detectors…it’s typically when I use my wok and have to look away for just a moment…and when I turn around ‘bam’! There’s smoke rising. I may just have to invest in a new wok, eventually.
Yesterday I woke up at 4:15am to my husband cursing, only to find out he had twisted the new blender instead of pulling up – spilling his entire smoothie all over the floor & counter! Worst part – we were out of protein mix and he was running late for rounds at the hospital! Guess who forgot to tell him how to use the new blender … Oops!
Would love to try out some of the recipes!
I was making a Mexican chicken stew in the slow cooker, and mistakenly put the whole lime (or maybe it was 2?) in with the chicken, not just the lime juice. After hours in the slow cooker, all the bitter flavor from the rind had soaked into the stew, and it was so bitter it was totally inedible. I consider myself a pretty good cook most of the time, but this one was THE WORST. It’s the only thing I’ve ever had to send down the disposal because it was so inedible.
i rarely follow recipes to the letter and often just wing it with cookie times and temps, which usually works out for me but occasionally really bites me in the butt. recently, i was trying to make some sweet potato fries inspired by edible perspective recipes, but in a rush to get them cooking forgot? to add oil to the mixture and they very promptly burnt to a crisp. lesson learned.
I baked a batch of cookies one day, and as I was removing the cookie sheet out of the oven, one of my mitts caught on fire. I freaked out, but calmed down a bit after I blew it out. Now there’s a lovely hole. Good times haha
Mine would have to be while I as overseas. I got the right temperature in Celcius to bake funfetti cookies, but apparently the stove was partially broken meaning that it got hot a lot faster and at a higher temp., than it should have. After about 5 minutes I went back to check them out and there was smoke coming out of the oven! I had to open all the windows (which don’ have screens so I was hoping a bird wouldn’t fly in) to try and get the smell of smoke out as fast as possible! Needless to say, the next time I baked anything I just stood there and watched them…