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 used to cook for my dogs. Once I decided to put liver in the crockpot with the rest, instead of chicken. The house stunk so bad. My daughter still remembers. I’m sure she’ll never try liver. Not that I’d ever serve it.
After your talk of watermelon the other day, I tried a smoothie of watermelon, fresh ginger and Tajin (the chili powder, lime and salt seasoning), thinking it was a potential disaster, but it was actually quite good!
i let my neighbor use my oven to bake things and she left me in charge while she went to make something else and i forgot about the bread, muffins, and cupcakes she stuffed in there and i burnt them all to a crisp. my kitchen smelled horrible for a week.
In my most recent kitchen disaster I made a delicious dinner and decided to save some leftovers for the next day. I put the plastic container down and started to scoop it in before realising I had put the container on the hot burner and it melted everywhere. Not only did my delicious leftovers end up melted in plastic but my whole house smelt like burnt rubber!
I was making dinner because we had company coming over. I was making the spaghetti sauce and I mixed up the salt with the sugar. NOT. A. GOOD. THING.! I had to throw all of it in a colander and rinse all of the vegetables off– because there was no time to go to the store. Then start all over again with the sauce. Luckily the dinner tasted wonderful but for a few minutes there was nothing but sheer panic!
I was making cupcakes at midnight once and while dancing around the kitchen, I wasn’t paying attention to what ingredients I was pouring into the mixer. Later realized I had added double the oil and salt. They came out of the oven looking like little hockey pucks.
You know how some peanut butter jars have a foil seal on them once you take off the lid? While trying to melt some natural PB for a stir-fry sauce, I may have fried our microwave because I failed to get the ENTIRE foil seal off from around the edges. To add insult to injury: it burnt the peanut butter too (and it was the all natural, organic, $10 a jar kind of peanut butter…yikes).
I was making stout chocolate cupcakes for Paddy’s Day and decided to just double the recipe since I’d be sending some to two parties. Obviously I think my home KitchenAid mixer is an industrial size because I filled it, and when I started mixing, stout batter went flying all over our tiny apartment kitchen and in my hair. I was hollering for Eric to help me clean the mess before our cats and dog got to it. He did help, after a looooooooooong laugh at my chocolate splattered face. lol.
So funny because this just happened to me last night! I actually have been trying out alot of vegan recipes (even though im not actually a vegan) and im loving the cool substitutions and new things to try, well i decided to make a box brownie mix but had no eggs…hello “flax egg” time, right….wrong!! haha by the end of cooking it looked kind of like an oily mess…i guess if you make brownies from scratch you can use a “flax egg” but im wondering if the box mix doesnt work so well with it.
I tried to bake an angel cake from scratch and it never rose. I proceeded to try two more times but the same problem. I think it was the flour. For now I am sticking with a box mix.
And here I thought I was the only one who used a pillow to fan the smoke alarm!
I was making a brownie recipe for a family party, and the recipe had a LOT of steps– using a double boiler to melt unsweetened chocolate and butter, allowing it to cool, adding another pound of chocolate chips, gently stirring in eggs, etc. etc. By the end, the kitchen and I were covered in chocolate, and I was pretty pleased with myself as I put the pan into the oven. Then I noticed the 2 cups of sugar sitting out on the counter that I HADN’T put in the brownies. Whoops!
Last week I was rushing around getting ready for work, ready to prep breakfast, and when I reached for my oats I somehow lost grasp of them and the whole container basically exploded on my kitchen floor. I couldn’t grab my dustbuster fast enough before my little furball Violet rushed over and started “sweeping” it up herself. I have no idea why plain oats were so intriguing to her. Needless to say, it wasn’t the ideal way to start off a morning!
A few weeks ago I tried making a vegan banana bread recipe. When my timer went off the toothpick (seemed to) came out clean and the bread was pulling away from the pan a bit so I called it done. It wasn’t until it cooled and I cut it open that I realized just how uncooked the center was. It was warm banana/applesauce mush inside a perfectly golden crust. It was definitely a strange consistancy but it tasted delicious so I still ate it. Perhaps 4 bananas is a couple too many!? 🙂
I swear every time I bake it is a disaster unless its a no bake haha. I rarely bake because of it. The last thing I made was runningtothekitchen’s paleo banana bread. . it looked absolutely disgusting. My oven is ancient by the way so thats hard to figure out as well.
Id love to win this because my husband frowns every time I even say vegan!
I was baking cookies and I needed to add a teaspoon of salt. I poured the salt into the spoon over the bowl, and the cap on the salt popped off, spilling a crapload of salt into the batter.
Needless to say, the cookies were not very good.
Hi Gina!
I haven’t had too many kitchen distaters lately, except this morning I hoped to wake up to wonderfully dehydrated macaroons and it was a mess!!! Monday mornings are not typically my best moments… I was in a bad mood, tired, cranky, etc. The macaroons smelled so good but they were too wet and did not form :-(.
Not really a distater (although cleaning the dehydrator trays were) but it was so incredibly sad.
I hope you are working on your cookbook soon!! I could use your macaroon recipe over here! 🙂
I was baking a chocolate cake that I had baked a thousand times before, only this time it was at my new boyfriend’s place! I was so nervous that I only used half the amount of baking powder without realizing, and when the sunken cake came out of the oven I started crying! He was so sweet about it and accompanied me back to the market for more ingredients and he ended up loving the (second) cake!
I had a house full of little people over for my daughter’s 1 yr old birthday celebration, and I forgot about the pizza in the oven and burnt it and set off the smoke alarm. The kids went bananas! 🙂
My most recent kitchen disaster was when I was getting my protein powder out for my morning smoothie and I knocked another contain or protein powder off the shelf and the lid flew off of it and it went every where! Needless to say that was an interesting morning!
It’s good to hear that others have issues in the kitchen as well 😉
I made lasagna without boiling the noodles first…wooops….
I recently made homemade baguettes for the first time. As part of the instructions, I was supposed to keep a baking sheet or dish on the low rack of the oven 30 minutes prior to baking, and then pour a cup of hot water into the baking sheet. Well, I used a ceramic baking dish so when I poured “hot” water into the 450 degree pan, it cracked. Oops!
I loaded the vitamix to the brim with yummy stuff for the ultimate smoothie and forgot to put the top on before I started it….I’m still cleaning my ceiling after…. 3 weeks!
Congrats on the win! My latest kitchen disaster was letting food fall into the burners while I was cooking, forgetting to remove said food when I was done, then using the burner later that day. It resulted in a lot of smoke but somehow it didn’t set off any alarms… maybe its time to get my smoke detectors checked!
I was making a baked french toast casserole that bubbled over & started a small oven fire. When I put the oven on the self-cleaning setting the fire ignited again. This is why I don’t cook much with butter!
I’m the family birthday-cake baker and I swear every time I make a cake something has to go wrong- from overflowing pans to cakes that only rise half an inch. They always turn out delicious though! My life back up plan is to open a bakery called Annie’s Disaster Cakes!
I didn’t have a muffin/cupcake tin (mine was so scratched up that I chucked it when we moved and hadn’t replaced it) so I decided to use like 10 paper liners all stacked together to make cupcakes. I thought it would be strong enough to hold the batter in… um, no. What a mess. The entire pan was covered in cupcake! It was like a pan full of baked batter.
In hindsight, not the brightest thing I’ve ever done in the kitchen 🙂
I am always making a mess in the kitchen! Last week, I was making baby food in the bullet and didn’t have everything screwed on tight…let’s just say that I never want to see pureed bananas ever again 🙂
I tried a new cookie recipe last week – oatmeal brown sugar bites – and they were a disaster! I’m still not even sure quite what went wrong, but they were completely flat, mushed together all over the cookie sheet. We had to toss the whole mess!
Last week I had a busy morning ahead so I got up and started getting my green smoothie prepped. I had almond milk, chia seeds, Sun Warrior, a banana and spinach in the vitamix. I was going to go blend it outside because my younger two kids were still sleeping. I turned and somehow tripped and the blender went flying. Everything went all over my kitchen floor. I was so heartbroken at the loss of the smoothie and because I now had a huge mess to clean up! My 5 yr. old came in the kitchen and said, “mom, why is there spinach everywhere?”
Smoke alarm is usually my diaster… but I saw in Pinterest that you can put a shower cap over it to prevent it from going off!
I just made the almond chickpea curry last night too! I found it on VegKitchen and tried it in the crockpot since we were out all day- it worked great! I would love to get my hands on a copy of her book so I can try other recipes too. Recently, I tried making a vegetarian lentil meatloaf. What a disaster!!! The list could go on, and on, and on. Not a recipe I will be trying again any time soon. At least for every kitchen disaster, there seems to be 5-6 great recipes or things that go right. All worth it 🙂
I was walking with a brand new jar of almond butter *sob* when I tripped over a dog dish, in the middle of the kitchen floor, dropped the jar and it cracked. I hadn’t even opened it yet. *sob* I kept opening the garbage can lid wondering if I could just take a little scoop out and be lucky enough not to get any glass.
I had a huge multitasking misstep. A few days ago I put the vitamix container on the base and then plugged it in. It immediately went into turbo mode, which would have been okay had the lid been on the container. My morning smoothie went e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.
I was making a new recipie for asian slaw and it called for red wine vinegar but I accidently bought pomegrante infused vinegar instead. But it still tasted yummy.
I was attempting to make vegan chocolate chip cookies that needed to be baked on parchment paper. I assumed parchment and wax paper were the same, so I just popped them right into the oven. A few minutes later, a smoky smell wafted into the living room. I ran to the kitchen, and the cookies were a boiling, bubbling mess on the burning wax paper. After fanning the fire alarm, I consoled myself by eating the crunchy, candylike cookies anyway.
Thanks for the giveaway, friend! ED&BV is one of my favorite cookbooks, and I’d love to try out this new one! Once I was making a cake- Magnolia’s coconut layer cake, so good- and just as I was taking it out of the oven, I leaned into the pan and scorched my stomach through THREE layers of clothing! I still have the scar.
My worst kitchen disaster actually had nothing to do with cooking…but boy was it a disaster. I was warming up a little pot of wax on my parent’s glass top stove so that I could wax my eyebrows. I wasn’t even paying attention and set it on high heat and then walked away. Of course I ended up forgetting about it and only remembered when i could hear and smell burning was coming from the kitchen. In a moment of panic I grabbed the handle of the pot, burning my hand, and causing me to drop the pot of wax on the top of the stove and then all over the floor. 4 hours later: My Lesson….wax dries quickly and is INCREDIBLY difficult to get off of anything!
I always make Chicken and Dumplings using Bisquick Baking mix. After making the dumplings, I realized they were oddly sweet, turns out I used Bisquick’s new Maple Flavored mix for pancakes!
Burnt popcorn. A common…but Oh so smelly…kitchen disaster.
Congrats Gina! I love you blog so I’m happy to to hear you getting this recognition!
Most of my cooking disasters involve setting off my VERY sensitive smoke detector. I swear the steam from a boiling pot of water can set it off!
I continuously do the same kitchen fail.
I am always accidentally picking up bags of open food upside down and spilling everything all over the floor. Rice, pasta, etc… every time my fiance hears an “oops” come from the kitchen he automatically walks in with a broom!
About two weeks ago I was making sauteed veggies to go with my dinner. They were just about done when i decided they needed some fresh herbs and a touch more olive oil. So I get the olive oil out of the cupboard, put some in the pan, and leave in on the counter while I grabbed some herbs out of the fridge. Turn around from getting the herbs (I have a very small kitchen) and what does my elbow knock over but the olive oil. Luckily, the bottle didn’t break or smash into the floor but olive oil spilled all over the counter and ran onto the floor. So I begin to clean the mess I made up, whilst in the middle of doing so I realize I still have vegetables cooking (a charred smell kindly reminded me)! I look up at the stove and alas they were burnt! So I had to start over, ’twas a hot kitchen mess indeed. All in all though, nothing too terrible or unfixable 🙂
When transferring quinoa from a bag to a container, those little guys went all over my ceramic floor. oops.
Oh kitchen disasters , they were a frequent event in my kitchen when I was first experimenting with food lol. The following tops them all.
I decided to make pita chips in the oven a few years ago it was my first attempt, and I didn’t know at the time that EVOO becomes flammable if left under high heat for a long period of time. I left them in the oven for a little long because the next thing I know is my bf screaming ” omg omg the oven is on fire” I open the oven and flames were SHOOTING OUT! I quickly shut the oven door, smoke began to fill my kitchen ,alarms were going off it was SCARY. Thankfully we had a giant fire extinguisher so my boyfriend grabbed it and quickly put the fire out…. needless to say my oven was COVERED in fire extinguisher residue,my chips were ruined, and I had a big mess to clean up, but even worse my nickname was changed to burning kitchen for a while hahaha. I am a bit better in the kitchen now thankfully 🙂
We were having company over for dinner and my beautiful roasted chicken was warming on the top of the stove. Right as the guests arrived I cut into the beautiful poultry and low and behold inside there were a ton of nasty red veins and blood. Disgusting. I sent the men to the store for a rotisserie chicken instead.
My most recent kitchen disaster was when i tried to make a freezer waffle and it fell through the toaster slats and caught on fire! Only I could mess up a toaster waffler 🙂
Haha. It’s like you were in my house yesterday. I was trying out Kashi’s new 7 grain pilaf which is required to be made on the stove top. I boiled my water and empty the contents in the pot, covered it and went on my way while saying “dont forget it”. I started folding close in my bedroom which led to cleaning my bathroom, which was followed by the firel alarm screaming in my apartment. The hubby and I have only lived there 2 monthes and have never heard the alarm so yes i had a mini heart attack.lol. When I cook I can’t go too far, i get easily distracted :p
I’m going to have to go with leaving a pan full of walnuts in the oven (@350*!!!) and then driving to a dinner party 45 minutes away. Thank goodness my mother lives close by and was able to save me from a house fire. When she pulled them from the oven, she texted me, “Done. Well Done.” Thanks for having a sense of humor, Mom!
I was making a whipped fruit pie concoction (I like to experiment) late at night for a party the next day. Well, I also like to sing & dance & I twirled the pie right into the garbage can! There was nothing I could do about it but laugh. Once I put an apple pie on the chair (because I had run out of kitchen space) while I was rolling out the top crust. My husband came in & sat right in the pie. I still laugh about that.
I’ve been making brownies with just applesauce and pumpkin puree and I either eat them raw or heat them up in the microwave. The other day I must have had some serious mommy brain- I thought I was cooking a new one and I was reheating one I had just cooked… Entire house—> full of smoke- and a charred little hockey puck of a brownie sizzling in the grass. Yuck! And that wasted dairy free snack!
This weekend for cinco de mayo I threw a big BBQ party & cooked everything. My friends are a mix of fitness competitors, personal trainers and health nuts in general so I figured I’d be clever and make homemade low carb tortillas. I found a recipe for carb free bread made out of eggs and milk only…should’ve realized what a disaster it would be just by reading the recipe. Well the end result was an off putting yellow blob of goo stuck to inside in a plastic zip lock Baggie. The smell was so horrendous that even my dog took a sniff and walked away. The best part of the story? I still made the attempt at serving the disaster and left them in the bag and threw the bag on the table … Yup I’m a fantastic hostess 😉