Zevia Giveaway! ***This Contest Has Now Ended***

The people at Zevia have offered to do a giveaway for one reader to get a coupon for a free 6-pack of soda! While I am not much of a fan of the Mountain Zevia, I do like many of their other flavors. The Dr. Zevia and Ginger Root Beer are my favorites of the ones that I have tried.

This giveaway is open to residents of the United States only and will run until Saturday, December 10, 2011. I will then come back and update this post with the winner. I will also privately contact the winner, so please make sure your comment includes some way to contact you (preferably through email).

Here are a few facts that Zevia passed along to me:

• Our website is located at www.zevia.com
  
• Our Facebook page is located at http://www.facebook.com/ZEVIA, and you can follow us on Twitter @Zevia. We are very active with our social media, always doing contests, giveaways, and just chatting with our fans!
  
• When sampling Zevia keep it cold! We always say cool is not cold enough!  We recommend that you drink it out of the can. It gets warm and flat in a cup!

There are three ways you can enter this contest. Please leave a separate comment for each entry.

1. Comment on this post with your favorite Zevia flavor, or the one you would most like to try.
2. Post about this giveway on Twitter (remember to leave a comment saying you did so!)
3. Post about this giveaway on Facebook (remember to leave a comment saying you did so!)

You can enter in any or all ways listed above. 


Keep in mind that I cannot enter you in this giveaway unless you include a way to contact you in your comment. Twitter, email or blog is fine...just make sure that there is a way you will be able to find out if you win!

 ***This Contest Has Now Ended***


The winner is "Dee Dee Jones" Please email me at justaudrey [at] live [dot] com to claim your prize. Thank you everyone for entering!

Food Reviews!

Vegenaise - I got some coupons from Follow Your Heart, one for vegenaise and one for their vegan cheese. The vegenaise was definitely my favorite product of the two. I've tried at least one other vegan mayo and I was not a fan. I never was huge on mayonnaise in general (even when I was an omnivore, something about it just grossed me out), but this stuff doesn't bother me as much. I'm still not about to go slathering it on bread or eating it plain, but I find that it complements a variety of recipes. So far with the jar I got I have made  a chocolate mayonnaise cake, blueberry cobbler, Chesapeake tempeh cakes, waldorf salad (from Peas and Thank You), tempeh salad, and tzatziki sauce (from Peas and Thank You). While I preferred some of these recipes over others (and I did alter some of them a bit), I think the blueberry cobbler wins the award for most creative use of vegan mayo. I've also seen a recipe for cinnamon buns using vegenaise; I might have to try that next. I know it sounds gross, but if you think of using it in place of Earth Balance or sour cream it takes on new possibilities.

 

Sjaak's Candy Bars - Sjaak's sent me a sampler back of their Eli's Earth Organic (and vegan!) Candy Bars. I really wanted to like these, but they just weren't my favorite. The bars were really hard, all except the one that had a lot of peanut butter in it (I don't remember which one it was) and that one almost had TOO much peanut butter. The chocolate didn't have a great flavor and was a bit waxy. I found the bars very sweet without a lot of authentic flavor (and the peanuts tasted stale). I hate knocking a product like this--maybe I just got a bad batch?--because I really wanted to like them. But I do try to give my honest opinion. These weren't awful, though, and I didn't have to suffer to much to eat them! : ) I just couldn't help thinking that they could be so much better. But maybe they just didn't appeal to me.

 

Mountain Zevia - Zevia (naturally sweetened soda) recently sent me a pack of Mountain Zevia to review. This is not a flavor I would've chosen, as I never liked regular Mountain Dew. Consequently, I wasn't too crazy about this. The color (like Mountain Dew) just unnerves me and I found it had a weird aftertaste. Plus, it's way too sweet for my taste--almost syrupy. I will drink it, but it's definitely not my favorite. That said, if you like Mountain Dew, you might like this.

Navitas Natural - Navitas send me some of their new Organic Raw Power Snacks, in Cacao Goji and Citrus Chia. I think I like the cacao flavor a little better than the citrus. Both are quite good, though. They are pretty filling and not too sweet. I found they made for a good snack. The flavor isn't amazing at first, but there is something subtly delicious about them that kept me coming back for more. They also sent me a Cacao Lip Balm. Unfortunately, this has beeswax in it! I will probably use it up because it would be wasteful to throw out, but it's definitely not something I would buy or support. On another note, Navitas wins my admiration for their attractive marketing and packaging. (For some reason I always notice stuff like that!)

I hope you enjoyed these reviews! 

Disclaimer: All products mentioned in this post were sent to me free of charge for the purpose of reviewing on this blog. I received no monetary compensation for these reviews.

Links and Ideas for a Vegan Thanksgiving

Thankful for vegans {Source}

Why not make this Thanksgiving turkey-free? It sure would give the turkey something to be thankful for! Here are some great ideas to plan a vegan feast:

• Healthy Girl's Kitchen shares recipes for a delicious Thanksgiving meal
• Holiday dinner ideas from Oh She Glows
• The New York Times Wellness Blog  celebrates a meat-free Thanksgiving
• Fat Free Vegan highlights Nava Atlas' new book, Vegan Holiday Kitchen
• 4 tips for the perfect vegan Thanksgiving

And here is some food for thought:

• Excerpts about Thanksgiving from Eating Animals (which I  reviewed here)
• The truth about Thanksgiving turkeys
• Nutritionist Ginny Messina's article about kindness and Thanksgiving

A New Site for Betsy-Tacy Fans!

You may remember that earlier this month I hinted at a project that I was hoping to complete and unveil soon. Well, now that the Maud Hart Lovelace Reading Challenge is drawing to a close, I think it's the perfect time to share this news with you--just in case you haven't quite gotten enough of the world of Deep Valley.

I've been mulling this idea over in my brain for awhile but I put it off because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to stick with it/I wouldn't be any good at researching, etc. But I finally just plunged in and did it!

So, without further ado, here is the link for The Betsy Tacy Encyclopedia.

I can't promise that I will keep up posting forever, or even that my posts will all be great, but I do hope it will be a fun site for Betsy-Tacy fans. The site is still very new, so please excuse any kinks (and let me know if you have any ideas of how to improve the site). If/when I get more followers, I would love to make it more interactive with guest posts, questions, quizzes, and polls. Please let me know if you have any ideas or would like to guest post something. I would love to hear any and all suggestions!