Comfortably Yum E-cookbook Giveaway!

At my first Vida Vegan Con Galarama in Portland in 2011, I had the pleasure of standing in line for vegan pizza with Allison Rivers Samson. Allison is the creator of Allison's Gourmet chocolates and a gifted cook who authored the award-winning "Veganize It" column in VegNews.

If you've never had Allison's hand-crafted chocolates, well, I'm a little sad for you. You should get over to her site and treat yourself to an order as a Valentine to yourself. But if you want Allison's delicious comforting home-cookin', you can look no further than your computer or iPad. Allison recently released Comfortably Yum, a colorful e-cookbook with recipes for some of our favorite comfort foods. And now she wants to give a copy to one lucky Vegan Crunk reader (details at the end of this post).

Allison sent me a copy to review, and honestly, I want to try everything in it! There are 10 recipes, so eventually I'm sure I will make them all. Each one is illustrated with a gorgeous full-color photo. I opted to try two for this review. Allison is vegan-famous for her mac & cheese recipe. You know the one — it ran in her VegNews column years ago, and it's become a vegan standard. Well, she's changed it up a bit, and now it's even better — Magic Mac 'n' Cheese.

This is unlike any other vegan mac recipe out there. There's no faux cheese and no nooch (nothing against either, but sometimes it's fun to mix things up). Instead, the cheese sauce is made from cooked, pureed veggies and chickpeas. And yet somehow, it tastes like cheese! I used gluten-free spiral pasta for my dish because I'm finding that I prefer the texture of gluten-free pasta over wheat pasta.

On the side, I made the Caesar Salad.

God, I love a Caesar, and this one is just perfect. Those are homemade croutons that I made from leftover sesame seed bread. They're roasted in garlic-olive oil. The dressing is what really makes this recipe though. I've never had a vegan Caesar that tasted so much like the real thing. It contains a bit of nori to replace the anchovies in non-vegan Caesar, and there are lots of other ingredients that make it rich and creamy.

Other recipes include Beet Burgers, Vegan Egg Salad, (Save the) Tuna Melts, Home-Style Veggie Pot Pie, Clam-Free Chowder, and Meltable American Cheese Slices (you can make a grilled cheese sandwich!!!). And you know Allison can't leave out dessert! The Chocolate Salted-Caramel Pudding Parfaits and the Chocolate-Glazed Fudge Cupcakes have me drooling.

If you'd like to order a copy, it's only $20 on Allison's website. If you order by Valentine's Day and enter 2CRUNK14 in the promo code box, you can save $3 (that's Allison's VDay gift to you!). And she'll donate $3 from every sale to Animal Place farmed animal sanctuary.

Or you can try to win a copy here! Just leave me a comment letting me know which Comfortably Yum recipe (they're all listed in this post) you'd like to try first. Be sure and leave your email address in your comment if isn't linked to a Blogger profile. I'll randomly choose a winner on Monday!