Bake Sale Success & a Bountiful Vegan Cookie Giveaway!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

As I mentioned last week, we held a two day bake sale in San Francisco to benefit Animal Place & East Bay Animal Advocates as a part of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale. Well, I'm happy to say it was a smashing success! Thanks to my co-organizer Laura from Vegansaurus, plus our many volunteers, we raised $3000 for the charities! Yes, $3000!
Our awesome bakers & volunteers included The Sisters Vegan, Too Vegan To Function (maker of the Pride donuts), Vegan Homemade, Strange and Violent Creations, Kristen Blackmore, Valencia Street Vegan (bake sale table photo), Vegan Lush, Erika Lutz, plus local businesses Pepple's Donuts, Bike Basket Pies, Sugar Beat Sweets, Brassica Supperclub, Pure Life Chef, Pie Truck, Angel Cakes, À Côté Restaurant, VegNews, & Daisy Wares. PHEW! Hope I didn't miss anyone. Of course, we have to thank Ike's Place who let us have our event out front on Saturday, which was perfect! I'm really proud to have worked on this event & I'm sure next year will be even more amazing!

Now that I have your sweet tooth at the ready, I'm going to tell you about a little company called Bountiful Vegan & their Intention Cookie. I was lucky enough to receive their Variety Pack in the mail a bit ago, and it contained four GIANT cookies in interesting flavors. Of course, I had to try them all, so I could tell you about them!

I started with the Harmony which is described as a Lemon Snickerdoodle. This crunchy cookie has a great lemony taste & is flecked with cinnamon & sugar. I made the mistake of sharing a bite with Strummer & the begging never stopped! Next up, the Prosperity is a soft & crumbly chocolate cookie with pecan & chocolate chips. It was not too rich, which made it far too easy to snack on! The Well Being is a Pineapple Coconut affair that's light & fruity, yet chewy with a coconutty flavor likely from the shreds of coconut within it. Finally, the appropriately named Love is slightly soft Orange Chocolate Chip cookie, that still has a somewhat firm bite to go with it's sweet orange flavor & chocolate chips. I think this may have been my favorite & it was hard not to devour it all!

Each cookie contains a message on the inside of the label which you are supposed to repeat, in hopes of making it come true. See where the name Intention comes in? While I wouldn't normally participate in something like this, one of the messages caught my eye, "Money comes easily to me..". I may or may not have repeated this one to myself! ha. All of the cookies are a nice addition to the pre-packaged vegan cookie world & will hopefully be popping up at a store near you! In the meantime, you can order them online.

Guess what? I have a Variety Pack to giveaway! Yes, one lucky commenter will get an assortment of these GIANT cookies all for themselves.. or I suppose you could share with a friend. To enter, leave a comment & let me know, if you were an Intention Cookie, what would your name be? The winner will be selected at random & announced next Tuesday, July 7th. For ANOTHER chance to win a Variety Pack, sign up for the Bountiful Vegan mailing list, as they will also be picking a random winner in the near future. Good Luck!

Farm Sanctuary FOR the Turkeys (with video) & a Sweets Swap!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

Recently, friends & I attend the 9th annual FOR the Turkeys Celebration at Farm Sanctuary in Orland. It's always an amazing time being surrounded by like-minded people, but the best part is always the animals! It was a bright beautiful day, despite previous day being less than stellar. I had been looking forward to feeding turkeys ever since my last visit to the farm for the Hoe Down & I was not disappointed.

In addition to shelter time, we had a Thanksgiving inspired meal with hundreds of other animal lovers in the People Barn. Tofurkey & gravy, cranberry sauce, apple kale salad, & sweet potatoes, were just some of the dishes available, plus a choice of Apple or Pumpkin pie. I chose the apple & was very happy with my sweet selection!

The speakers included Gene Baur of Farm Sanctuary, Emily Deschanel of Bones, & Josh Hooten of Herbivore Clothing Company & Store in Portland, OR. I found myself especially inspired by Josh's talk on activism & it was the push I needed to stop resting on the laurels of Prop 2 passing & get back to action for the animals!


Lately, I've been having fun taking video at events, so I threw together a little segment on the day. This was shot with my little Canon Powershot & edited in Windows Movie Maker, so please bear with my amateur status. Enjoy!


This weekend we had the 2nd annual PPK Cookie Swap, although this time it included a few other sweets. I made a crazy layered dessert that was most recently called a "Peanut Butter Mousse, Custard, Whipped Cream, Chick-O-Stick, Brownie Trifle", so I'll roll with that. Yes, it was as insane & rich as it sounds! I also made an option for our gluten free attendees, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip, with both white & dark chips. They were very cakey & fluffy, not something I had expected for my 1st foray in to gluten free baking!

There were lots of treats to choose from like Crunchy Oat Cookies & Snickerdoodles from the Sisters Vegan, Fudge, Peanut Butter Cups, White Chocolate Macadamia cookies, Rum Balls, Caramel Popcorn Balls, Truffles, Butterscotch Oatmeal cookies sandwiched with Rum ice cream, Rice Krispie treats- oof! I have to stop, my tummy hurts all over again thinking about it! Needless to say, I consumed FAR too much & now find myself on a sugar detox. That being said, I'll always look forward to next year!

Do unto others..

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

While hiding indoors from this awful weather we're having in San Francisco, I thought I'd do a little update about some recent events going on in my world.

Rocket Dog Rescue is an amazing organization in San Francisco who has saved over 1,900 dogs in its existence! Sadly, Pali Boucher, the founder of Rocket Dog, lost her home and three beloved foster dogs, & her parrot in a house fire not too long ago. While I was unable to attend a recent benefit being thrown for her, I whipped up some cupcakes to be sold at the event. Mini Chocolate cupcakes were topped with either Peanut Butter buttercream or Mint icing with crushed chocolate cookie bits & the large cupcakes were dressed with Peanut Butter buttercream & a Scharffen Berger chocolate snowflake piece on top. I received the most lovely email after the event letting me know the treats were well received! Rocket Dog is an amazing organization & I'm glad I could help in a small way.

Last week Amy, Danielle, & I went to Santa Clara University & tabled for Californians for Humane Farms. While we didn't anticipate so many students would be from out of state, we gathered a good amount of signatures from a friendly crowd. We were lucky enough to have donations from two companies to entice students over to our table! Let's Do Organic was kind enough to supply vegan gummy bears in both regular & sour flavors & Vegan Sweeties donated individually wrapped Chocolate Chip & Chocolate Chocolate Chip cookies! The cookies were perfect for students to grab & they went quickly! Of course, gummy bears are a crowd pleaser as well. Laurie from Vegan Sweeties also sent some Blueberry Jammies for the girls & I to test; they were FABULOUS! I named them the "donut cookie", as I felt like I was eating cakey donuts with a little zing of blueberry jam. Vegan Sweeties is mainly mail-order, so if you need cookies for an event, check them out, I've heard the brownie cookies are awesome!

By the way, if you're in California, it's not to late to sign up to reduce the suffering of 20 million animals on farms in this state. Even if you collect a few signatures from friends & family, it will be an amazing help! Every signature counts! Californians for Humane Farms needs 650,000 signatures to see this important bill on the ballot & we can't do that without your help!

Finally, we had another successful installation of the Vegan Brunch Cartel this past weekend. I am lucky enough to be a tester for the new vegan brunch book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, so I made her Cauliflower & Red Bell Pepper Quiche for the event. This was my first attempt at a pie crust, it was well worth it; the quiche was a success! If this recipe is any indication to what's in store for the book, it's going to be another amazing publication for your kitchen shelf!

Cookie Mania & an important cause!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

This post is lacking recipes & I'm lacking motivation to wade through New York photos & food notes, but one thing it's definitely not lacking is COOKIES!

I've never considered myself a cookie person. Sure, cookies are tasty & as a child I consumed them in mass quantities, but these days if I'm going to be naughty, I tend to go all out & reach for decadent cakes. I've been recipe testing for Kelly & Garrick who have an upcoming cookie cookbook & with all the cookies hanging out around the house, the tide may be changing!

I love how quickly a batch of cookies can be thrown together, not to mention, they're portable, easy to share, & people love them! Ryan has been taking various desserts to work & the cookies never last long. I think there's a nostalgic feeling people get from biting into a homemade cookie; hooray, you're a kid again! Cookies are versatile as well, a decorated sugar cookie is a canvas for so many options, it's insane!

Some of the cookies I've made so far are Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bakes, Soft & Chewy Oatmeal Cookies with Golden Raisins or Chocolate Chips, Amazingly Soft Frosted Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, & Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip! These have all been tester recipes, but I've been checking out various cookbooks for other options, especially with the holidays coming up. Let's face it; the holidays are meant for cookies!

So, what's my favorite cookie? Right now it's SNICKERDOODLES! I thought I'd be all about chocolate, but the cinnamon sugary soft & chewy 'doodle has a hold on me. The recipe from Kelly & Garrick's book is phenomenal & will be a staple in my house hold for years to come!

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On a serious note, I'm currently volunteering for Californians for Humane Farms. Better conditions are needed for the farm animals that provide to our nation, they should be able to lie down, turn around freely, stand, & fully extend their limbs with ease in their enclosures, which is not currently the case.
The Humane Society, Farm Sanctuary, & many SPCA chapters are working together to move this initiative to the ballot for next year. We have to gather 650,000 signatures from California registered voters! If you're registered to vote in California, I urge you to sign the petition, consider circulating a petition in your area, post about this on your blog or myspace, & do whatever you can to help these animals. Please visit www.HumaneCalifornia.org to learn more about this exciting ballot initiative for farm animals!