Sophie-Safe Winners!

Congratulations to:

Comment #52 – Beth
Beth wants this book because, “My son is allergic to 7 of the top 8 allergens, so I would love to have this cookbook and try out some new recipes for him!”

Comment #8 – Megan
Megan says, “I would love to win this book! I’ve had it in my amazon wish list for the longest time! Great giveaway!”

You have each won a copy of Sophie-Safe Cooking! Stay tuned, the next book giveaway starts tomorrow!

For now, other Blog Giveaways:

Peanut Butter Truffles and Cheap PB Cup Molds

This past week I was honored to do a guest post on Maggie’s blog, Say Yes to Salad, in honor of her much-anticipated marriage. I chose to write about the peanut butter truffles we made by hand (about 300 of them!) for the favor at a good friend’s wedding.

This post is related to that post, but there’s a little more to it. First, I wanted to add that recipe to my personal online blog collection (it is also in my book, Go Dairy Free, for those of you who have it). The recipe is below, Enjoy! Second, I wanted to share a new fun and “I don’t care what my husband says” cheap baking / un-baking item.

You see, I have wanted some little candy molds for a while, and was hoping to find some silicone ones because they are so darn easy. So when I spotted a dozen of these gems at Cost Plus World Market for just $2.49, I tossed them without hesitation into our basket …

candy molds

They are mini-muffin / cupcake cups. An application which I may use them for in the future, but they also make perfect candy molds, particularly for turning those peanut butter truffles into peanut butter cups …

PB Truffle Cups

As mentioned in Maggie’s post, my husband and I have been together for over 14 years now, and we grow closer each day. In fact, for almost all of those years, we have not only lived together, we also work together! Yes, we are rarely apart. He is actually just up the stairs typing away on his computer now. People often wonder how we do it. It’s easy … we still act like kids. We call each other names, joke around, play argue … keeping it light lets us vent while having fun. So I have a point with this.

When I put those little muffin cups into our basket, the following conversation ensued:

Husband – What are those?!!

Alisa – Muffin cups that I can use as candy molds. They’re only $2.49.

Husband – $2.49 for those? That’s ridiculous … way too much. Husband proceeds to remove molds from basket and put them back on the shelf. Snickering of course.

Alisa – But I need them!

We continue on through the store, and I sneak the molds back in the basket when he isn’t looking. We get up to the counter to checkout, and husband spots molds in the basket, removes them and hands them to the clerk …

Husband – We don’t need these, they are too expensive. You can put them back on the shelf.

Alisa – Agh … but! I want them.

Husband – laughs and purchases molds of course. I mean come on, they’re only $2.49!

A week later I made the peanut butter truffles in the candy molds, and of course, when he saw them in the fridge, my husband said, “I’m going to eat these since I had to pay dearly for the molds to make them!” Alisa calls husband “affectionate” name and both leave the room laughing. Husband happy with his reward …

PB Truffle Cups

 Yes, these types of conversations occur pretty much daily in our house.

 

Peanut Butter “Truffles”

This recipe is from my book, Go Dairy Free: The Guide and Cookbook

Casually elegant, these glorified peanut butter cups earned me rave reviews at a close friend’s wedding. For party favors, we wrapped a few little treats up in tulle and placed one on each guest’s plate. All night long, people I had never met approached me with recipe requests for “those incredible truffles.” While I would love to gloat on my innovation and labor, the recipe is embarrassingly easy …

Ingredients

  • 2 Cups Powdered / Confectioner’s Sugar
  • 3/4 Cup Smooth All Natural Peanut Butter
  • 1/4 Cup Dairy-Free Margarine or Shortening, Softened
  • 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
  • 1/4 Teaspoon Salt
  • 6 Ounces Semi-Sweet or Dark Chocolate Chips
  • 1/2 Teaspoon Shortening

Method

Combine the sugar, peanut butter, margarine or shortening, vanilla, and salt in a medium-sized mixing bowl, and blend until smooth.

Pinch off pieces of the peanut butter mixture and roll them into balls that are 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter. Since you won’t be baking them, the thickness of the filling is really up to you.

Place the peanut butter balls in a single layer on baking sheets lined with wax paper or non-stick baking mats (I flatten them slightly to keep them from rolling around), and freeze until they are firm, about 15 to 20 minutes.

While those are chilling, Place the chocolate and 1/2 teaspoon of shortening in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on HIGH in 30 second intervals (just 2 to 3 should suffice), stirring vigorously between intervals, until the chocolate has just melted and is smooth. Be careful not to overheat the chocolate, as it can scorch easily.

Remove the peanut butter balls from the freezer, dunk them in the melted chocolate to coat, and return them to the baking sheets to dry.

Place the truffles in the refrigerator or freezer to chill for 1 hour, or until the chocolate coating is firm. The truffles should keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Yields approximately 2 Dozen “Truffles”.

Summer Reading Series Giveaway: Food Allergy-Friendly Coookbook

One Autographed Cookbook, Two Winners. I mean, one book for each of you of course, the winners don’t need to share! Moving on …

This week’s giveaway is Sophie-Safe Cooking by my fellow author friend, Emily Hendrix. This is a fun cookbook with very easy, kid-friendly recipes. And when I say kid-friendly, I mean it … the portions sizes are even little-finger friendly. I must admit, I felt a lot less guilty downing three of the scrumptious pumpkin muffins I made from this book since they were half-pint in size. Of course, you can always double the serving sizes for heartier palates.

sophie safe cooking

The entire book is free of the top eight allergens – milk, wheat, eggs, soy, nuts, peanuts, fish, and shellfish. In other words, the recipes are family favorites that Emily made “Safe” for her food allergic daughter Sophie. It is a great, comfort food collection.

Take note that Emily does use oat flour quite a bit in her recipes (which you can easily make from regular oats or certified gluten-free oats). So the recipes are suitable for many gluten-free consumers, but not those who still can’t tolerate gluten-free oats. Personally, I love that she uses oat flour, because I love oats!

Okay, lets roll …

Enter to win this cookbook NOW:

1st Entry – Comment and answer the following: Why do you want to win this cookbook?

2nd Entry – For another chance to win, share this giveaway via facebook, twitter, or your blog, and leave a second comment here letting me know that you did.

For twitter and/or facebook, you can use the following “Enter to win a food allergy-friendly cookbook @OneFrugalFoodie – http://tinyurl.com/sophie-safe-cooking

3rd Entry – Sign up to receive One Frugal Foodie posts and/or Go Dairy Free posts via email (see upper right corner of this blog for One Frugal Foodie, click here to get Go Dairy Free updates), and let me know that you did in another comment.

Entries will close on Monday, August 9th!

The Summer Book Series Giveaways will go on every week in July & August, so stay tuned!

Five Winners and My Guest Post

Okay, I have five winners from three giveaways to announce today! If you didn’t win, have no fear, I will be back tomorrow with another giveaway, and following that with some recipes!

Also, I have a guest post up today at Say Yes to Salad. Please go check it out! It is in honor of Maggie’s upcoming wedding, and there just might be an actual picture of me in that post, albeit a few years old! Yes, in case you can’t tell by the void of personal pictures on my blogs, I am extremely camera shy.

So here we go with the winners:

The Winner of This Book …

American Vegan Kitchen

and This Book …

Vegan Fire & Spice

is Comment #3, which was actually a “tweet” from rpattzlawyer @ The Eggless Tort. Her first comment was: “Comfort food to me? Tacos. Guacomole. Lol. What a coincidence! I just got these two books from the library and read them last night! They are both fabulous, and I would LOVE to own them.”

The Three Winners of This Book …

Divvies Cookbook

are …

Comment #185 , Kris L., who commented, “I would love to win for my 8 year old son – allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts, seeds, soy, seafood, wheat. I need help – I’m a single mom trying to find variety in his diet. Thanks!”
 
Comment #144, Alison R. with her email sign-up! She also commented, “I would like to own this cookbook because I recently found out that dairy is the root of all my migraines. Unfortunately, my diet is saturated with dairy. For the sake of my head-splitting migraines, please help me by letting me win this cookbook. I’m new to your blog, and have to say that this inspires me to try new things.”

Comment #63, Sarah @ What Smells so Good, who wrote, “Wow, that would help me out a ton! Considering I have milk/egg/nut allergies, I’d love to bake from this!”

And the Winner of This Book …

Sweet Utopia - Vegan Desserts

and This Book …

My Sweet Vegan

is Comment #44, Jenny @ I Married an Omnivore, “My favorite dessert is definitely cheesecake! My favorite vegan cheesecake recipe (so far!) is this one: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=13702.0. Thanks for the great giveaway, which I’ve tweeted about too!”

Congratulations to all winners, stay tuned, and for a recipe, go check out my guest post at Maggie’s blog!!

10 Random Facts About Me …

Don’t forget to enter the three cookbook giveaways going on through tomorrow night!

I always hesitate on doing these when I’ve been tagged, thinking “does anyone really want to know?” But, in all honesty, I love reading them, so I thought I should give back. Thanks to Sarena who tagged me for this darling meme. Actually, I’ve been tagged for a few others in these past few months, but I’ve been bad about keeping track. Please except my apologies if you tagged me and consider this my bloggy contribution …

The Rules: Tell 10 little known facts about yourself and then pass it on to 3-5 other bloggers!

My Facts:

  1. I love to puzzle. I am a very left-brained person, so doing visual jigsaw puzzles helps to relax me and defocus by forcing myself to use the other side of my brain. I’ve actually found it helps a ton to switch modes like that. I’m very into 1000 piece puzzles – not too hard, but challenging enough. My husband buys me a new one every couple of weeks at Target. I really need to find a puzzle exchange!
  2. I’ve never, ever dyed my hair. I always wonder though, because every time I ask someone what color their natural color is, they say “it’s about like yours.” It makes me wonder if I have like the worst hair color ever! But I know most are fibbing, because I’ve never met that many people with my hair color (darker blonde). Once in a while people ask me if I do dye it because I get very blonde highlights after time in the sun. Oh another weird hair fact, my hair has been the exact same color my whole life. From birth until now, not even a wee bit of darkening.
  3. My husband and I spent one month in Chile for our honeymoon and three months in Argentina for a wee sabbatical later on. Even though we spent more time in Argentina, it isn’t really some place we want to go back to. But we both absolutely loved Chile. I think Columbia is next on the South America list.
  4. I haven’t used an alarm clock in well over ten years. Okay, once in a very blue moon I need to use one to make sure I catch a flight or something (perhaps once or twice a year?), but otherwise, we wake up naturally. I always hear people say they couldn’t do that with work, but we actually shut off the alarm clock when we were working corporate jobs in the Bay Area. We retrained our internal alarms during a week’s vacation, and boy did it make all the difference in the world! I stopped having afternoon slumps, and I swear, we were never late for work!
  5. My long term dream is to have a boutique hotel in the Caribbean. My husband and I always seek out boutique hotels wherever we travel. Of course, Katie would help me lay out a garden to grow food for the hotel, all of the meals would be dairy-free, and Meghan would probably hook us up with some great yoga and health classes for guests.
  6. I am really lost on what to have for breakfast lately. Oats feel too heavy, cereal too fluffy, toast and hearty muffins sit a bit heavy, and smoothies just haven’t sounded good. I’m really just craving my brown rice cakes with nut butter frosting if anything, but I’m plum out of the rice cakes I love, and they aren’t on sale. Yes, there are differences in rice cakes. Any ideas for other good breakfasts sans grains?
  7. My husband and I each grew up in the northwest, but have fallen in love with the desert. We both feel so good in the wide open space, looking at the beautiful landscapes, and enjoying the warmer weather.
  8. On that note, I’ve always felt weird about telling people I live in Nevada and Las Vegas (right now we are actually in Lake Tahoe on the NV side, but Vegas was our home for quite a while, and a place we will probably go back to). I don’t know why, but it makes me feel like people might judge me, assume I am a crook or something. Truthfully, people who are from Vegas are some of the nicest, friendliest, most down-home people I have ever met in a large city, and I really liked living there. Everything from the awesome terrain for hiking and biking year round to the great restaurants and entertainment. More contrast then I have ever seen. Guess I will just have to get over myself!
  9. I hate coffee, but drink pots and pots of hot tea (mostly herbal) almost every day … even in the summer … in Las Vegas. Seriously.
  10. I really dislike cooked stone fruit or fruit with meat / savory dishes. My husband is the same way. Seriously, it is torture trying to use up all of these apricots and peaches the CSA is sending since the only way we like them is raw in hand (but they are ripening waaaaay too fast) or in smoothies (freezer is absolutely full now with frozen fruit). I made a crumble, and smothered it in vanilla “ice cream,” which made it okay for both of us, but really, we still didn’t like the fruit itself.

Okay, not completely sure who has and hasn’t done it, but I’m going to tag: