October 2011 – VeganMoFo

Cinnaholic Giveaway!

October 31, 2011 isachandra Comments 191 comments

We have a winner! Becca who said:

“OMG! I’ve really been missing Cinnaholic since I moved 3,000 miles away.

The s’mores roll is calling my name.”

Thanks for playing, everyone!

The time has come, MoFo’ers. It’s the last giveaway of The Vegan Month Of Food, a bittersweet goodbye. Let’s go our separate ways and walk into the sunset with 80s alternative music playing. Wait, we can’t both walk into the sunset, or that would mean we’re not going our separate ways. I’ll walk into the sunset, and you can just watch until I’m out of sight. And to make it somewhat more bearable, why don’t you eat….a cinnamon roll! Or half a dozen cinnamon rolls since it might be a long goodbye.

Cinnaholic is an entirely vegan bakery located in Berkeley California. I was able to sample a few rolls earlier this month and they were a spiral of ooey, gooey, sweet and spicy…just about everything you’d want on a crisp fall morning. You pick your own frosting flavor and a topping, or you can go with one of their specialty rolls, like Apple Pie or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

This offer is for 6 of their original flavored cinnamon buns. But to enter the giveaway, visit the Cinnaholic website and tell us which flavor you would order if you visited the bakery! A winner will be chosen tonight, probably sometime after midnight EST. You must have a US or Canada address and leave a valid email to win. Good luck, everyone, and have a safe and happy Halloween!

Iron Chef #4 Roundup: Carrots and Oats

October 30, 2011 Katie Comments 3 comments

Here in the states, pretty much everyone is dealing with being cold/snowed on/wet, so this cozy roundup is a perfect read for your Sunday evening! Not only do we have lots of warm, inviting foods, but the carrots make for some bright dishes to help fight the gloomy feelings you might be having.

As if you need another reason to bake cinnamon rolls, Danni came up with these Sweet Surprise Cinnamon Rolls…the surprise being that they’re full of carrots and oats!

Cara made a burger and carrot fries, both the burger and the buns both contain carrots and oats as well!

If you want something quick, light, and drinkable, go over to My Munchable Musings and try this Carrot Oat Shake.

Latkes are another food that I think you can never have too many variations on, so I was happy to see Farrah made Curry Carrot Oat Latkes!

Savannah made a 3 Layer Carrot Coconut Crumble, which not only looks delicious but sneaks another vegetable in!

Zoa used the Magical Loaf Studio as a jumping-off point to create Carrot-Oatmeal Balls.

Kristen made cute little Carrot & Chickpea Sliders with pesto mayo.

The recipe name really speaks for itself: Choc-Carrot-Chai Spice Pudding Pie With Oat-Carrot Cookie Crust by Munchin’ Mochi!

JL is bummed because of the snow on her porch, luckily she has this Oat, Amaranth & Carrot Porridge to keep her warm, made in a rice cooker for a ‘set it and forget it’ meal.

Mandy made these beautiful Carrot Curry Puffs, and I agree that everything is better wrapped in puff pasty.

Missy was absent for pretty much all of MoFo due to computer problems, but she makes up for it with this Carrot Crisp.

I try not to play obvious favorites, but this recipe for Carrot Furikake Granola Clusters is interesting and pretty! A savory granola, that has with Japanese flavors by Tiffany.

Rachel made homemade Carrot Cake Larabars, using raisins instead of dates which makes them even more affordable to make.

Over at The Crabby Crafter, not only do we get a recipe for Carrot Cake Waffles, but a lesson on how to tweak the recipe to make baby food!

Ali made Spiced Carrot-Pumpkin 3-Grain-ola that utilizes popped amaranth, something I had never heard of (insert ‘The More You Know’ rainbow here)!

Annie decided to really go all Iron Chef and make three dishes: Meatless Loaf, Mixed Grain Mushroom Pilaf with Glazed Vegetables and Oatmeal Carrot Cake Ice Cream Sandwiches. Impressive!

Kelly lives up to her book/blog name with Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cream Pies. Daaaaaaaaaaang.

Jackie also made waffles, but these are gluten-free and topped with a pretty red grape compote!

Gigi made a short video, a song, and Tropical Voopee Pies!

And finally, Kelly did double duty with savory Quick Oat & Veggie Pancakes for her and Cinnamon Cranberry Carrot Oatmeal for her dog, after Kaylee had some teeth pulled. What a lucky dog! For getting oatmeal, not for having teeth pulled and surgery.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated, and for those of you asking about challenges continuing throughout the year…you might see us again soon. Wink.

Bob’s Red Mill Sunday Giveaway

October 30, 2011 lazysmurf Comments 145 comments

The Giveaway has ended, congratulations to the winners Becca (Waffles!!), Alec (Seitan Rubens! Great for Sunday night dinner during the game), Rachel (pancakes pancakes pancakes!!!), and Nobody (my favorite it a walnut lentil loaf with some roasted potatoes. YUM! )

Doughnuts, Pie, Biscuits and Gravy, Banana Bread, Cinnamon Rolls
Almost everything good starts with flour. People always say vegan diets must be so difficult. For me, ethics and environmental concerns aside, I can’t imagine anything more limited than being on the paleo plan. I’ll enjoy my poppyseed bagel, thanks, and don’t forget the Thanksgiving stuffing or Chicago style deep dish pizza!

When I first started making homemade seitan I couldn’t get it right until someone told me to check out Bob’s Red Mill brand Vital Wheat Gluten. It truly made the difference, now I am completely free of any sausage making fear.

Bob’s Red Mill also has some of the best gluten free flours on the market. I know their all-purpose blend is the most popular one out there. Buying all those different flours can be expensive though, so I am sure you are all going to be stoked that Bob’s is giving away four 25 dollar giftcards! And they love you all so much that they are even going to pay for international shipping so today’s giveaway is open to anyone with an address!

To win just tell me what your favorite Sunday dish is. It can be anything from a long simmered seitan roast to a pumpkin pie, just make sure it includes some sort of grain or flour. Let me know in the comments by 11pm CST tonight and I will pick the winners then. Make sure you leave an email address that you check!

MoFo Swan Song: Sunday Round-Up

October 30, 2011 Gabrielle Comments 2 comments

On my last MoFo round-up, I just have to say that it has been an immense pleasure being involved this year. Not only did I blog regularly during MoFo for my first year, I also had the honour of writing some round-ups and giveaways with the superstar MoFo PPK team. This experience combined with my time at Vida Vegan Con just makes me want to smooch you all in the least creepy way possible. Okay, cheezefest over. Here’s today’s round-up!

Starting things off with a spooky bang: Ghoulish Shepherd’s Pie from Snarky Vegan. I am a lazypants these days and had a boring old Amy’s frozen shepherd’s pie last night, but my day would have been infinitely better if I’d been served this one.

I like planning my food-tourism far in advance, and on my list when I finally make my way out to visit my sister in Boston and reunite with New York City, I plan on tracking down The Cinnamon Snail vegan food truck. Apparently these award-winning vanilla bourbon crème brûlée donuts (!) are frequently available when the Snail is in NYC.

I’m always sad about the fact that more people think they don’t love tempeh. Aside from the initial un-sexiness of “fermented bean curd,” what’s not to love? Check out this excellent tempeh primer and resultant balls of fermenty goodness from The Vegan Weight Watcher. Bonus: the tempeh wingz from MoFo’s own Katie are also recommended, and I can vouch for their deliciousness.

I’m obsessed with Colorado and I don’t know why! Okay, it’s probably the mountains, but it’s also the vegan-friendliness, exemplified by this vegan buffalo chicken roll from Sun Deli in Boulder. Once I embarked on an entire trip to visit a university in Boulder even though I was 99% sure I wasn’t going to go to grad school there. I wish I’d had Vegan Coloradical as my tour guide.

You’ve no doubt already experienced jealousy and resentment over those of us lucky enough to be testing for Terry Hope Romero‘s upcoming world food cookbook. I haven’t found near enough time to delve into testing, but I did spend a good few minutes salivating over this Tofu Bo Bun tester from Living Free. Veganized Vietnamese food is amazing!

Vegan Chai (sorry, vegan chai) hates capital letters AND tomatoes, but we’ll forgive her when she serves up this amazing TLT (sorry, tlt).

As she is also part of the MoFo team (and a special friend of mine), I couldn’t end my round-ups without gushing about Amey‘s MoFo theme: a spice a day! Today’s dried rose petals resulted in this gorgeous rose petal & almond tea, in a Tin-Tin mug!

For dessert, and leaning into tomorrow’s holiday (and the final day of MoFo 2011), feast your eyes on these lovely ghost sugar cookies.

Happy Halloween!

Saturday Round Up: In Honor of Randomofo

October 30, 2011 ameyfm Comments 5 comments

I really hope you already know about RandoMoFo.com. If not, you do now! It’s the coolest site, where you can just keep hitting the “next random blog” button up top and see the next MoFo blog. It’s such fun and a great way to discover new blogs. I sat down on the sofa and had some good QT (quality time) with RandoMoFo, and picked out some posts that piqued my interest – so, prepare for a Random Round Up!

This week my apple tree finally kicked into full production, so I have my eyes out for any appley recipes… and imagine my delight when I saw this amazing Butternut Squash-Apple Jam!! Doesn’t that sound crazy good? And that whole blog think. care. act. is totally amazing – she’s doing a super great theme of food from different areas of Germany for MoFo. I can’t wait to go back and read all her other mofo posts!

I also discovered Brown Vegan which features lots of recipes – like biscuits and apple slaw – but also this really cute interview feature called “Other Brown Vegans.”

This week was the great Hindu holiday of Diwali, and I managed to find a few references out there to Diwali festivities. I loved the look of this cabbage dal from Happy Go Lucky Vegan.

Another awesome blog I discovered with the help of RandoMoFo was Smooch Panda’s Sweet Creations – where she’s been featuring Japanese sweets all month for MoFo!!!! Check out her great tutorial on how to make mini mochi balls… then she has a whole other post with tips on yummy things to stuff inside your mini mochi balls.

I can’t figure out how to capture the picture, but I promise you that you need to go look at the photo and recipe for Roasted Sweet Potato, Black Bean & Kale Salad over at Swell Vegan. It looks so good, and is already bookmarked on my computer.

This picture is sort of hilarious, but I’m not one to laugh at homemade concord grape jello. Hello!! Jealous!! I love concord grapes SO much, they remind me of my awesome grandparents who always grew concord grapes. Just look at that beautiful color. From Vegan Whore.

Last but not least, my fun little nephew is coming over to spend the night tonight. We’re going out for pizza, then we’ll come home and carve pumpkins and roast pumpkin seeds. I can’t wait! So, with pizza on the mind, a couple pizza links really popped out at me. First of all, there is a whole tumblr blog dedicated to vegan pizza, with the excellent name Fuck Yeah Vegan Pizza! ha ha! Check it out when you are in need of pizza porn. Then I also found Zombie Cats Eating Plants‘ excellent compendium of previous pizza posts and recipes… this bruschetta pizza with homemade cashew cheese especially caught my eye. Mmm, pizza! Have a great night… just two more days of mofo madness!

Go Max Go Giveaway

October 29, 2011 Katie Comments 127 comments

Winners! You will be emailed soon.

Thom, “I [cuss]ing love the Go Max! TWILIGHT bar. I would [cuss] a [cuss] for one right now, no lie!” (editing is theirs)
Dalila, “I just realized I haven’t had a candy bar since I went vegan! It’s been over two months, no wonder I’m craving some chocolatey and peanut buttery goodness. I have a feeling Cleo’s is right up my alley!”
Mandiee, “My favorite pre-vegan candy bar was crunch. I still loved puffed rice and chocolate to this day!”
choirqueer, “I think the Mahalo was the one I tried, and it was so good! I would love to try them all.”

I have been a chocolate girl my whole life – sometimes in grade school, I would turn down fruity candy from the teacher because I wasn’t that into it. And as much as I love a nice dark chocolate, sometimes I really just want a candy bar, full of nuts and caramel. But not only are standard candy bars not vegan, but they’re just not very good! So it’s a good thing Go Max Go came along to fill that nougat shaped hole in our hearts, right? Their original line had a version of four very popular candy bars, and they’ve recently added a crisped rice bar and peanut butter cups.

Not only is it great to have vegan candy bars to munch on, but you can put them in desserts to easily elevate them to delicious new heights. Have you ever seen Celine’s Jokerz cheesecake?

~~The fine folks over at Go Max Go are offering to send four lucky winners one of each flavor of their bars – that’s six bars per winner, two fistfuls of chocolatey goodness!~~

All you have to do is leave a comment here, telling us what your favorite kind of candy bar is (if you’ve never had a Go Max Go bar, you can tell us your favorite pre-vegan candy bar. US only, four winners will be chosen at random tomorrow morning around 10 am CST.

Friday Round up – I spy with my little eye

October 28, 2011 Jeni Treehugger Comments 7 comments

Gosh, it doesn’t seem possible that this is my last MoFo 2011 round up, where did the time go? Oh yeah, checking out all the awesome MoFo’ers that’s where!
This year has been so much fun, as all MoFo’s are. I’ve loved discoverng new bloggers, reacquainting myself with old bloggers and sharing a cup of chai with regular blogging buddies.
Here’s some of my favourite MoFo’ing that I spied today.

First up is this lovely little tidbit of wisdom from Janet over at The Taste Space

vegan food does not need to be a recreation of something dairy or meat-laden. It can just be. Wonderful, in all its glory. Nameless.

I really like that.
She also made these AWESOME Besan Chillas. Mmmm YUM!
I like those too.

Let’s talk about BALLS!
Lisa’s balls to be precise.
Her balls are what grabbed my attention first, but this little quote made me chuckle too;

“There is nothing more Australian than spending time in someone else’s country”~ Anonymous

I LOVE this quote so much because it’s so true, whenever I have travelled there is always, guaranteed, either a group of Australians or a lone Australian, they’s some hardcore travellers so they are.
And some of my best friends are Australian who I never would have met had they not loved travelling so much so I’m glad they do.
Anyway back to Lisa’s balls.

raw mango, date, and sunflower tropical energy balls — Raw mango, date, and sunflower tropical energy balls

This basic agave-sweetened spice cake, with a layer of pears on the bottom, top, and sides over at Bite me (I’m vegan) might be basic but it looks blinking AMAZING and I’m loving the spice combo.

Moira really impressed me with her bread baking over at An Auckland Vegan. Not only is this so gorgeous looking I can almost smell it, but it only took 5 mins to prepare (plus rise time and bake time, but even so!).

Vegan Angela’s been at it again, Raw Pumpkin Cheesecake anyone??
Awesome picture tutorial as well.

And finally let’s say hello to this cheeseburger from The Compassionate Cook.

Hasta pronto guapos

xxxx

Iron Chef Challenge #4

October 28, 2011 Katie Comments 31 comments

It’s the last Iron Chef Challenge of MoFo, are you guys pumped? If not, go listen to Eye of the Tiger and then come back to make sure you’re in the right frame of mind. We’re going for a combo again!

A quick review of our few simple rules/guidelines:

1. Whatever you come up with has to be new, nothing from a cookbook or a blog, not something you posted last week that happens to involve the secret ingredient. It’s fine to use a recipe for a jump-off point, but make it your own!
2. Entries are due at 3 pm CST on Sunday (but it takes me awhile to read all of the entries so if you’re a little late it’s no big).
3. Have fun and be creative!

And the secret ingredients are…

CARROTS AND OATS!

Carrots paired with oats still isn’t too difficult, but hopefully I will not be doing an Iron Chef Carrot Muffin Round-up on Sunday! Both ingredients are so easy to make either sweet or savory, so you can really do almost anything. Put on your thinking caps and bring it!

Allez Végétalien Cuisine!

Follow Your Heart Giveaway!

October 28, 2011 Mo Comments 166 comments

Congratulations to Andrew Magee and ~~Nick~~ Michelle Hathorus! Both of you will be getting an email soon. Thanks for participating everybody!

My first introduction to the Follow Your Heart brand happened a few months after I became vegan. I have very fond memories of searching the deepest corners of the internet, looking for vegan cheese recipes. When I happened upon Vegan Gourmet, the first meltable vegan cheese I had ever seen, I was beyond stoked. Back then, I could only get it through online order…which I did often.

Now the vegan market is flooded with cheese. This is all good and well, but I still say Follow Your Heart has the best flavor. Nobody is touching my loverly monterey jack, yo!

Besides vegan cheese, Follow Your Heart is also behind the magic that is Vegenaise (pronounced any way you’d like). They’re also making dressings, sauces, marinades, and veggie meats! Oh yeah!

Today, the wonderful people at Follow Your Heart are offering up the “Vegan Made Easy” kit to TWO lucky winners! This kit includes: Soy-Free Vegenaise, Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella, Vegan Gourmet Cream Cheese, High Omega Vegan Ranch, and a Follow Your Heart Spatula!

~~To enter this contest please tell us what you’d do with all these awesome products! Contest ends tonight at 10PM Pacific time. Open to US only.~~

~~Good luck!!!~~

You say it’s your birthday…

October 28, 2011 Katie Comments 19 comments

…it is f’reals my birthday too, yeah! When round-up days were being passed out, I only took today because I knew exactly what my subject would be, the only thing that matters. I have been bookmarking pretty pictures of cakes all month long, and here are some of the best!

Kelly has been posting fabulous looking baked things all month long, but as soon as I saw this unicorn cake, I knew this was going in my round-up! Kittycakes was a close second.

Not only did Bianca have one of the most awesome vegan bakers in the country make her TWO birthday cakes this year, but one was a surprise gay cake!

Vegan cupcakes are still taking over the world, hopefully these double chocolate mint cupcakes will realize that the world is in my stomach, and get in there toot sweet.

Maybe it’s because i’m such an adult, but peanut butter and jelly ANYTHING will send me flying towards the food in question at a million miles per hour…which is why there is now a dent in my computer screen.

Would you like to join me in seething jealousy that Lindsay lives in a place where she can get a beautiful slice of raspberry cake with her lunch?

For something different from the standard wheat-cake/buttercream combo, this couscous cake with pomegranates is so pretty!

I really want to emphasize that Kristen did not buy this shoe cake from a bakery, she MADE it. And as far as I can tell, she is not a cake decorator by trade.

And finally, because once again I am a grown-up, I really really wish someone would adopt me and make me Hello Kitty cakes for my birthday every single year.

Happy birthday to some of our MoFoers this month: Bianca, Sarah, Savannah, Carrie, and Kelly! If you were an October baby, feel free to add yourself to the list via the comments!

VeganMoFo

The Vegan Month of Food: 2017

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Month: October 2011