I would like to award this week’s free cookbook, “The Only Bake Sale Cookbook You’ll Ever Need” by Laurie Goldrich Wolf and Pam Abrams, to blog reader Rebecca!

As usual, you all made it incredibly difficult to choose a winner. In case you missed it, here’s Rebecca’s poignant comment about her dad:

My best ‘peanut-related food experience’ would be Every Day With My Dad! My dad was a peanut addict! His favorite food was anything with peanuts or peanut butter. (I even got him to love Thai food because of the peanuts) He always had a can of Virginia Diner peanuts by his ‘chair’ and ended every day of his life with saltines and peanut butter. I always told my husband and kids that I would never worry about dad’s health as long as he was still eating peanut butter and saltines before bedtime. Dad died in July of 2005 after a four month battle with stomach cancer. He ate those saltines and peanut butter until just a week before his death! Dad was a Baptist preacher who said even though it wasn’t biblical, he knew that the streets of heaven were paved with peanuts, not gold.

Thanks, Rebecca! E-mail me your address at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com and I’ll put this book in the mail.

Here’s one last peanutty recipe from the cookbook before we move on to less nutty topics:

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5 p.m. today is the deadline to enter to win the latest free cookbook on the Fridge Magnet blog.
I’ll announce a winner tomorrow morning.
For more details about this week’s book and what you have to do to win it, click here.

It’s that time again, folks — time to give away a free cookbook to one lucky blog reader!
Since March is National Peanut Month and we live in one of the peanuttiest states in the country, if not THE MOST peanutty state in the country, I figured we might as well go with a peanut theme.
Peanuts can contribute in a fine way to just about every course in a meal. Pad thai is terrific with crushed peanuts, roasted peanuts are fab on a tossed salad and peanut butter…well, peanut butter is the king of all manners of cakes, pies and cookies. It can also be incorporated into sauces, marinades and soups.
Of course, some folks would say their favorite way of eating peanuts is roasted, salted and straight out of a can. Especially if that’s a Virginia’s Finest can.
The cookbook I’m going to give away today is called The Only Bake Sale Cookbook You’ll Ever Need by Laurie Goldrich Wolf and Pam Abrams.
Conveniently, it contains a recipe for a treat called Everything Peanut Squares. It’s got your peanut butter, your chopped peanuts and your peanut butter chips. It’s chock full o’ nuts!
You can find the recipe below. And if you’re interested in winning this cookbook, write a comment about the best peanut-related food experience you’ve ever had. The deadline is Wednesday.
Have a nutty weekend! But not too nutty…

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I’ve decided to award this week’s free cookbook to frequent blog reader Henry.
Henry offered up several fine ideas for jazzing up dishes with products that most cooks keep on hand on a regular basis.
For that, he gets a copy of “Mealtime Magic” by Joey Green.
Henry’s comment was:

Boullion.

You can jazz up gravy with a shot of Cream of Chicken soup. Of course, these are casserole standbys.

I especially like the suggestion that boullion cubes can be substituted for salt in various recipes. I can see myself adding boullion to all kinds of steamed veggies to add flavor without fat.

Henry, shoot me an e-mail at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com to claim your book. Don’t forget to include your address!

Corey, Katie, Sean, Wendy and others have all offered some pretty convincing arguments for winning this week’s free cookbook, “Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.” It’s going to be quite hard for me to decide.
From personal and family health to animal welfare, the arguments for switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet are compelling. If I may wander slightly from the topic of food, I’d suggest that anyone interested in animal welfare watch the new HBO documentary, “I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.” Newkirk is the founder of PETA, and whether you come away from the doc thinking she’s a saint or a loon, it is a fascinating and thought-provoking experience.
Watching the part about undercover slaughterhouse investigations made me even more glad that I bought my Thanksgiving turkey from a local farm this year. Besides that, the darn thing just tasted scrumptious.
Moving right along, since it seems that a few of you are dreaming and drooling over this cookbook, I’ll share an awesome recipe from the chapter on salads to tide you over until you either win it or purchase it yourself.

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It’s time to give away another free cookbook, boys and girls!

We’ve given away collections of recipes for bar food, delicious chocolate creations and more. Now, it’s time to give those vegetarian and vegan readers a little love.

A few weeks ago, I received THREE copies of “Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook” by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. THREE copies! They really wanted me to see this book.

Moskowitz and Romero are described as “America’s best-selling vegan chefs.” They are the authors of two other vegan cookbooks called “Vegan with a Vengeance” and “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.”

I love the title of that last one, don’t you? I am just thinking of some cheesy B-Movie where giant, pink-iced cupcakes come crashing through the skyscrapers of New York City. Okay, so I digress.

“Veganomicon” is packed with almost 300 pages of recipes for appetizers, brunch items, salads, salad dressings, side dishes, bean dishes, tofu dishes, soups and stews and more. Although I’m not a vegan myself (I spent a few teenage years as a vegetarian), I believe I could totally survive off the recipes in this book.

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I never heard from Donna Alley, the reader who sent in the Broccoli Casserole recipe last week. Therefore, the free cookbook “A Passion for Baking” by Marcy Goldman goes to our first runner-up, Carrie!
Carrie, if you will e-mail your mailing address to lindsey.nair@roanoke.com, I’ll stick the book in the mail.
Everyone else, I’m going to announce the next cookbook giveaway tomorrow, so check in.

Alright, all you Fridge Magnet readers. It’s time for me to call upon you again for help with an upcoming story.
If you read Extra today, you might have noticed that I’m compiling favorite Thanksgiving recipes for a story about family food traditions on Turkey Day.
So far, I’ve received only a small handful of e-mails from readers, but boy do they have some wonderful Thanksgiving recipes to share. My favorites so far are au gratin potatoes and a delicious, spicy Mexican cornbread-style dressing.
I KNOW that some of you guys have a signature Thanksgiving dish. So I’m hoping you might join in the fun and send it my way, along with 200 words or less about why that particular recipe means so much to you and your family.
I’ll tell you what– the first person who submits something via this blog wins a FREE COOKBOOK! Yes, I’m jumping out of my monthly schedule of cookbook giveaways already to shamelessly solicit personal stories for my Thanksgiving article!
This time around, the free book is “A Passion for Baking,” a beautiful hardcover book by Marcy Goldman.
A random flip through this book turned up recipes for Toffee Banana Cream Pie, Candy Bar Shortbread, Creme Brulee Cheesecake and Strawberries and Cream Cookies. Now, how can you resist THAT?

It’s time to give away this month’s free cookbook, folks! So many of you wrote in for a chance to win “Great Bar Food at Home” by Kate Heyhoe. I appreciate all of the wonderful responses to my question, “What is the best bar food you ever ate, and why?”
It was difficult to choose a winner because there were so many mouthwatering responses: bacon-wrapped dates, popcorn, raw bar fare such as cherrystone clams and stone crab legs, spinach-artichoke dip and seafood potato skins. YUM!
But the book goes to blog reader RICH, who wrote in with this response:

“My favorite barfood is any that deviates from the chicken (tender or wing)/ cheesestick/ riblet variety. On business in Denver once, I had an amazing rumaki marinated in a great soy/bourbon mixture. I liked that so much that I returned the following night and tried the Ovos de Cordona (quail eggs) and some roasted chicken hearts. Just as good as the rumaki.
I enjoyed these and chose them because I KNEW I’d rarely get the chance to dine on them at a bar ever again.”

Rich wins not because he was the first to respond, although I do appreciate that. I liked his answer because it showed he has a sense of adventure about food and a desire to try bar snacks that don’t fall into the typical categories. That willingness to experiment, I think, makes him a good match for Heyhoe’s book of eclectic bar foods.
Rich, e-mail me your address at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com and I’ll put this book in the mail for you.
Everyone else, do not despair! I have plenty more free cookbooks where that one came from (in fact, I just got one in the mail called “I’m Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas” by Marcel Desaulniers) and the same person is not allowed to win twice in one year, so I’m keeping track.
Y’all keep reading!
Before I mail out Rich’s book, I will share one recipe from the book. Maybe we can all whip this up this weekend while we’re relaxing the work stress away.

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