Results tagged “bookworm” from Mostly Eating

It's Menu for Hope time again!  Menu for Hope is an annual food blogging fundraising event that takes the form of a gigantic raffle of fabulous foodie prizes.  You can read more about this year's Menu for Hope and see the full prize list over at the site of the events creator, Pim.  This year’s regional Europe host is Sara of Ms. Adventures In Italy.

This year I'm pleased to be able to join in the fun, offering a prize of books for vegetable lovers.  This set of three books on cooking with fresh, seasonal produce is perfect for somebody with a regular veg box delivery, CSA membership or just anyone keen to fill their diet with veggies in the New Year!  These books are three tried and tested personal favourites, the books we turn to in our house for both regular weekday dinners and cooking for friends.  With these three on your shelves you should be well equipped to rustle up something amazing up from any vegetable you might encounter. 

Prize details (for prize code EU22)
The Veg lovers book collection prize consists of the following three books, worth £60 in total:

Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbok
A gorgeous cookbook and also a thing of beauty in its own right with its beautiful photography and multiple rainbow book ribbons (read more about the book on amazon).

The Abel and Cole Cookbook: Easy, Seasonal, Organic
Just the most relaxed book on cooking with seasonal produce from Keith Abel, founder of one of the UKs top veg box schemes.  One for those of you who prefer to work in splashes and mugfulls, not grams or ounces.  (read more about the book on amazon)

Riverford Farm Cook Book: Tales from the Fields, Recipes from the Kitchen
This book is new to me but already a firm favourite. Full of fuss-free, easy recipes from Riverford Farm, another top box scheme provider (read more about the book on amazon).

Delivery of the three books is included in the prize (see below for further details regarding which countries the prize can be shipped to).

The prize code for this prize is EU22.

How to bid
1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at http://chezpim.com
2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope5 and make a donation.
3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation.  You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code.  For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win.  Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Delivery information
I've linked to amazon so that you can read reviews of the books in question, however the lucky winner will receive the books from The Book Depository to allow me to offer the prize to a wider range of countries. Their full shipping info is available online but essentially the prize can be delivered to the following countries:

UNITED KINGDOM, CANADA, USA, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, CYPRUS, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, GREECE, ICELAND, IRELAND, ITALY, LUXEMBOURG, MALTA, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, PORTUGAL, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, VATICAN CITY, LIECHTENSTEIN, AUSTRALIA, HONG KONG(CHINA), ISRAEL, JAPAN, NEW ZEALAND, PUERTORICO SOUTH KOREA, SINGAPORE, BAHAMAS, BARBADOS, ANTIGUA & BARBUDA, TRINIDAD & TOBAGO.

I’m planning ahead a little here I know, but I reckon this warm sweet potato salad will really come into its own in dreary January and February. There is no way it can fail to bring a bit of cheer to the table with its sweet flavours and vibrant shades of purple, pinks and orange. Happily my plan should work; sweet potatoes, beetroot and red onion are all seasonally available now in the northern hemisphere and should be around for a quite a while yet.

This recipe has its roots in the moreish potato salad recipe in Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer book, made from baked potato, spring onion, olive oil and sumac. This autumnal version brings in sweet potatoes and beetroot and most importantly keeps the potato skins. Potato skins I love in all their chewy leathery-ness, and as your mother no doubt told you when you were growing up they are very good for you too (there you go, not every bit of advice in nutrition changes with the month!). Last but not least, for what is essentially an oven roasted vegetable dish this one requires surprisingly little oil.

Sweet potato has a lighter texture than a regular potato and has the advantage of being low GI to keep you fuller for longer. Orange and purple beetroots add an earthy note, more sweetness and a good helping of folate. The smattering of crushed sumac berries add a delicious tartness as well as more flecks of luminous pink, as if the beetroot and potato were not colourful enough already! Don’t worry too much if you don’t have sumac – the raw onion does a pretty good job on its own in providing a bit of contrast. If you are using a fresh orange for the juice (rather than a carton) you could chuck in a bit of finely grated orange zest in place of the sumac.

Cooking Outside the Box: The Abel and Cole Seasonal, Organic Cookbook is the first book by Keith Abel of the Abel and Cole organic home delivery company. Abel and Cole offers weekly nationwide deliveries and seems to be one of (if not the) biggest box schemes in the UK (as an entirely unscientific poll, I know that at least two of my ten closest neighbours get a weekly delivery from their egg-yolk yellow vans).

I’m really enthusiastic about this book and hope that Keith is already pen to paper writing his next one! Cooking outside the box is a rare thing; a book about seasonal, planet-friendly cooking that doesn’t assume that the reader is either a vegetarian or already a confident cooker and buyer of only the best ethically sourced produce.

The friendly tone of the book strikes a happy balance between providing loads of guidance for those that need it, and fostering a bit of culinary experimentation for those who want to make the recipes their own (or who are simply operating under the constraints of their latest box delivery!). Measurements are in handfuls, dollops and mugfuls and virtually none of the recipes have more than about three steps to them. There is even a helpful list of which vegetables you can easily substitute for which others (one of those things which is just obvious to some people and a black art to others), and guidance on temperature settings for electric and gas ovens as well as agas and over-enthusiastic fan ovens like mine.