VeganMoFo

Winners!

Lisa Marie: The vegan food gift I’d most like to receive is a trip back to NYC for dinner at Candle 79. Does that count? I really miss that place. 🙁

I’d really like The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet. I’ve had it on my wishlist for a while.

Veronica: There’s a few things I’d like but I really need a tofu press! Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster appetites would be best for me, I have a 13 year old who plays baseball & football and he definitely has a monster appetite!

Adeline: A pumpkin pie. I just can’t get it right for some odd reason.

Vegan Food Gifts or Hearty Vegan. [you’ll be getting Vegan Gifts]

Check your email shortly!

If I had to describe Joni’s recipe style to someone who was unfamiliar with her, i’d probably say “Girl doesn’t mess around.” My impression of Joni is that she isn’t interested in putting out a book that isn’t designed to knock some socks off. There is no recreating the tofu scramble, or jumping on the latest health trend to cash in. Her love of comfort food combined with Celine Steen’s creative use of ingredients created one of the best vegan cookbooks of all time, Hearty Vegan Meals For Monster Appetites. Unapologetically decadent, it is the book to pull out when you really need to wow someone.

Long before she hooked up with Celine, Joni had self-published her own book and was working on a veggie burger book for years. Good things come to those who wait, I know when I got my copy I thought, “How can anyone come up with 100 veggie burger recipes and not just repeat themselves?” If you have the book, you know that Joni took things that you would never think of making into a patty and did it.

Her new book (number six!), Vegan Gifts just came out. I can’t tell you much about it since I don’t have it, but I can tell you that Kurt Halsey (tween fan girl squee) illustrated it, and if you look at Joni’s flickr account, you can see pictures of many of the recipes. Mixes, cookies, snacks, and canned goods galore! I know every year I struggle to think of new food gifts to give people (also I always end up eating half of those buckeye ball myself), so I personally can’t wait to get my hands on it. I wrote a guide to vegan cookbooks on my blog a few months ago, and one of the points I mentioned for buying a new book is, does it fill a hole in my collection? The answer here is a big YES. And with Celine taking the photos, you know it’s just as nice as the books she’s done with Joni.

But if you don’t want to take my word for it, why don’t we just give you a book for funsies?

Joni has offered up a copy each of three of her books today, Hearty Vegan Meals, The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet, and Vegan Gifts. Please say which book you would like so you don’t win one you already have (if you’d be happy with any, feel free to say so as well). Simply comment here, telling us what vegan food gift you’d most like to receive for [winter holiday that you celebrate/refuse to participate in]. Three winners will be picked tomorrow morning at 11 am CST, US only (we have UK and Aussie only giveaways coming, don’t worry!).

Our main winner is CQ: My family and I don’t really…”gather”. But one time I was meeting up with my parents and my grandma (whom I hadn’t seen in a long time) for lunch in NYC, and despite my having explained to my parents a zillion times what I would and would not eat, and gave them a list of possible restaurants where we could eat, they chose a restaurant that wasn’t on my list and sure enough, it was a Chinese restaurant where everything (including the sauces) had meat in it. We had to leave and go find somewhere else to eat. It was…yeah, pretty awkward.

Also, my Field Roast contact said I could pick a couple of more winners to receive a coupon, so we have two runners up!

Kirsten: I’m a newbie, but the latest experience that kind of qualifies was my sister saying on the phone, “so are you now going to be a vegan?” Kind of reminded me of the time my mom asked, “so are you going to come home for Christmas and be gay everyday?” Yes people, every day, all day!

Marti: [rant with some cuss words]…(OK, THAT rant isn’t going to win me any Field Roast, but I decided not to put up with ANY family not-vegan drama many years ago and that’s pretty much the end of the story…) But look, it did!

Check your emails shortly!

Ah, fall. The changing leaves, the cooler weather, and…the holidays! Depending on how you spend your fall/winter holidays and with who, they can either be great or a miserable experience. I cook our Thanksgiving dinner, but on Christmas we truck it to grandma’s house, and of course there’s no food for me there. So if I don’t feel like making something and bringing it with, i’m out of luck.

That’s where things like the Field Roast Celebration Roast (which I did take with me a few years ago) and Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute come in handy. Sometimes there’s no leftovers from Christmas Eve, sometimes you have the flu, sometimes you are just lazy, okay? And a mini-roast or a fancy pastry-wrapped roast are a lot nicer than the granola bar you have stashed in your purse.

The kind folks at Field Roast have a special package today for one very lucky winner, two free product coupons (one for each product mentioned) and a t-shirt! Simply comment here and tell me your most awkward vegan family gathering experience. A winner will be chosen tomorrow at 11 AM, CST. US only!

The winner of Vegan Holiday Kitchen is commenter #87—Cara! Congratulations! Be sure to check your email so we can get your contact information and send the book off to you.

 

I was thrilled to receive a copy of Nava Atlas’ gorgeous new book VEGAN Holiday Kitchen to review, and even more excited to be able to give another copy away to one lucky reader of the MoFo blog. The photos in this review are courtesy of fellow MoFo organizer Amey, who posted a review on her own blog, Vegan Eats and Treats. I chose an un-photogenic beige soup, and am too embarrassed to show the internet my attempt at braiding challah dough, so Amey graciously agreed to let me use her alluring photos!

The book is stunning—hardcover, full-color, with plenty of photography done by Susan Voisin of FatFree Vegan Kitchen, and boasting more than 200 recipes. This is the kind of book you take straight to the couch with a cup of tea, a warm blanket, some bookmarks (or if you’re a slob like me, your dog-earing fingers), and a pen and paper for grocery lists. One thing I immediately noticed and loved about VHK is that there is no lengthy intro taking up a huge chunk of the book where recipes could be! Instead of spending ninety pages explaining what agave nectar and nutritional yeast are and touting their health benefits, Nava simply includes pertinent ingredient information as sidebars next to the recipe that contains it. The book focuses on major (and mostly Western world/US) holidays; Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, Easter, Independence Day; and there is section at the end for potluck, brunch, and party appetizer dishes. I had an extremely difficult time deciding what to make first, and eventually settled on the Creamy Wild Mushroom Soup from the Thanksgiving menu, along with the Vegan Challah from the Rosh Hashanah menu.

A wild mushroom devotee, this particular recipe both attracted and worried me due to the intriguing addition of silken tofu and white beans blended into the soup after it has simmered, to add the creaminess. The recipe also called for the mushrooms to be simmered in water separate from the soup’s base rather than being sautéed , which is something I’ve never done in my many years of cooking mushrooms, and I wasn’t sure if it would do justice to the beautiful locally foraged shiitakes and oyster mushrooms I was using for the recipe. Fortunately, I opted to trust Nava’s every direction, and ended up with silky, earthy, and slightly tangy (due to some white wine, which pairs gorgeously with mushrooms) soup. My boyfriend isn’t a fan of mushroom soups and I’d even bought him a frozen Amy’s pizza in case he hated it, but after he got over his initial textural issues, we polished up the eight servings in an obscenely short amount of time.

Having never had non-vegan challah before but being certain I love the vegan version after making it several times, I was drawn to Nava’s recipe, which uses pureed squash as both an egg replacer and to make the breads a subtle shade of orange. Breads are not my specialty, but I had had kind of crappy go of life last week and punching and kneading dough on Sunday afternoon suited me just fine. The dough rose enthusiastically, and there was surprisingly little hands-on time required, just a couple of long rising times during which I caught up on terrible television shows and made the soup. The two loaves came out soft yet dense, with a subtle sweetness and a crispy crust. Will make again, and often.

Other recipes I have dog-eared: Baked Thanksgiving Risotto; Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie; Lemony Spinach and Chickpea Soup; Marinated Mushrooms, Asparagus and Artichokes; New World Wassail; and pretty much everything Amey made, especially the Three Sisters Stew.

To win your very own copy of VEGAN Holiday Kitchen, simply leave a comment telling me what your favorite holiday dish is, to either make or have someone else make it for you. This particular giveaway is open to people with addresses in the US and Canada, and I will pick a winner at random on Thursday, December 1st at 10am PST.

I’ll start! My favorite (finicky) holiday dish is a pull-out-all-the-stops seitan roulade. I haven’t done one yet this year, but am planning it for some time at the end of December when I’m visiting family in freezing cold Alberta, where kneading and simmering seitan is the only way to keep warm.

And the winner is….Erica!

WHAT: Now, if you live outside of the United Kingdom, please feel free to gaze and contemplate polyunsaturated essential fatty acids on your own, but if you reside within the United Kingdom, simply leave a comment with a link to your favorite recipe that uses hemp – doesn’t have to be your own, just something you’ve tried – and you’re in the running to win a GOOD Hemp Hamper (£50.00), which includes their fancy hemp oils, hemp milk, hemp seeds and you guessed it – hemp protein powder.

HOW TO WIN: Leave a comment with a link to your favorite recipe that includes hemp, and I’ll pick my favorite tomorrow morning over my morning hemp milk latte!

Let me know in the comments by 9am PST Tuesday and I will pick the UK winner then (who will in turn, send me Cheezly, right?!)

SERIOUSLY: Please make sure you leave an email address that you check! We ask that you respond within 24 hours. Hemp is serious.

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Find out more about GOOD hemp products on their facebook.

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.

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!!!