A special note to John and Amy – King Arthur Flour has just introduced a Gluten Free Flour Mix, and the product line includes several convenient mixes (GF Cookie Mix, GF Muffin Mix, GF Bread Mix). I have not tried these products myself, but reviewers on the KAF site give them multiple thumbs up. Sounds worthy of another experiment.

Back to the giveaway at hand – with the help of Random.org, a winner has been chosen:

Congratulations to Cameron! I will be in touch to arrange delivery of your prize.

Be sure to sign up for the King Arthur Flour email list and receive all sorts of great discounts on shipping and products. The KAF website is also full of help and suggestions for easy holiday baking, including a fun “Chat with a Baker” feature. Ask any question you have!

This all came about because of my love of the Adjusta Cup Measuring Cup (that is the item in the forefront of the photo above). I find myself reaching for this gadget almost every time I bake – it is designed to measure sticky and goopy ingredients, like peanut butter, molasses and shortening. With Thanksgiving next week, I am already gearing up for pie making and this tool is indispensable. I use it to measure out shortening and then freeze the shortening before making the pie crusts.

The Adjusta Cup is a great kitchen gadget to have on hand; simple to use, well labeled and dishwasher safe (although I wash mine by hand). I love the 1 cup version so much that I recently ordered the 2TBS version for small amounts of goopy stuff. At $9.95, it is pretty much a no-brainer, great for the cook on your list or perhaps Santa might put one in your stocking.

When I asked King Arthur Flour for help in putting together a giveaway box, we decided to include a couple items to help the busy baker and anyone interested in healthy family eating. The Gingerbread Cookie and Cake mix works for either cookies or cake (magical stuff) and we were able to mix up the cake after school this week for a quick treat. The kids liked how easy it was to follow the directions and work the project themselves; I liked that the kitchen was not a disaster after their cooking adventure!

A 5 pound bag of King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour is included in the giveaway as well, and is ideal for anyone interested in taking a small step towards healthier eating this holiday season. Much lighter than regular whole wheat flour, white whole wheat flour is much closer to standard white flour, yet offers the health benefits of whole grain goodness. We use it at home in our pancake and waffle mix, substituting out 1/4 – 1/2 of the called for flour. I like it in brownies and cookie bars, places where the kids don’t notice the difference and where there is a good amount of moisture. I also like to use it for any of my Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipes – sometimes the straight whole wheat recipes are too dense for us, and the white whole wheat adds a nice lightness to the whole grain recipes.

Finally, the rules!

I am going to make it easy – all you need to do is comment on this post to be entered to win. That’s it. You can write anything you want, does not necessarily need to be on topic, although to make it easy, how about you tell me about your favorite food to bake during the holidays. Or tell me about a recent kitchen disaster (or success). Or just tell me what you had for lunch.

Winner will be chosen by random from among the comments; entries will be accepted until Wednesday, November 23, 2011, midnight PST; limited to the U.S. only; one entry per person.

Disclosure: King Arthur Flour provided for my review one box of Gingerbread Cookie and Cake mix and one 5 pound bag of White Whole Wheat Flour. The Adjusta Cup I purchased myself and would have written about without the giveaway, I love it that much. Really, a great tool, one that makes many things in the kitchen easier. Thank you KA for sponsoring this giveaway. If you are interested in more KA products, please visit the King Arthur Flour website and sign up for their newsletter. For great baking suggestions, visit the King Arthur Flour Blog!

Grilling in the summer. Is there anything more ideal than cooking your food over hot fire? I don’t think so. Plus, manning the BBQ is o-so-manly, so you might even be able to hand off cooking to the husband, although it does not work that way at our house. Unless we are at the lake. Then he is totally master of the grill.

One of the easiest ways to make things interesting is to add a little spice to your food before and after you grill. My cousin made great hamburgers last week with just salt & pepper and Lawry’s seasoning salt. If you want to take it up a notch, check out some of the specialty spices and flavors from Juliet Mae Fine Spices, a San Francisco company handcrafting unique spice blends.

And just in time, my friends at FOODILY are giving away one “spice-y” prize every day for 5 days!

Win a sampler pack of spices for grilling from Juliet Mae Fine Spices. A different blend of grilling spices every day! Two ways to enter:

1. Login into Foodily with Facebook Connect, find a great grilling recipe on Foodily.com then share it with your friends

2. Post a comment below or Tweet or retweet your recipe with the hashtag #4thofJulyGrilling and cc: @Foodily with a few words on why you chose it.

One winner each day for 5 days! This contest runs this week only, so don’t wait. This might be just the thing to get your grilling juices flowing!

Disclosure: I am a compensated Foodily Brand Ambassador and was given this opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, Inc. All opinions expressed are my own.

The above photo is from Flickr Commons, by D’Arcy Norman. I liked it because the photo was taken right before a huge storm hit. Sounds like the burgers finished just in time. Reminds me of our trip to Mt Rushmore and the evening program right before the storm hit. Very dramatic!

What is a Spife you ask? Well, it is kinda a cross between a plastic knife and a little spoon perfectly designed to eat a kiwi, especially if you are a kid or you want to enjoy a kiwi on a picnic. And you could win some of your own!

Cynthia sent the Spifes to promote the Zespri Kiwifruit Lunch 2.0 Bloggers’ Recipe Contest. This contest seeks to encourage the use of Zespri Kiwifruits (which I find at my local Trader Joe’s) and create a kid-friendly lunch item. For the occasion, my daughter whipped up her very own entry and first recipe ever. Not bad for a 7 year old!

Kiwi, Strawberry and Honey Salad

• 2 Kiwifruits, chopped
• 10 strawberries, chopped
• 2 Tablespoons honey (from our bee hives in the garden)

Gently mix all together and serve with a sprig of mint.

To win your own Spife, leave a comment on this post with your favorite Kiwi Recipe from the Zespri Kiwifruit Site. I will choose 5 random winners and Cynthia will send you your own handful of Spifes!

And, if you have a great, original recipe in mind for the Kiwi for Lunch program, be sure to enter. Six semi-finalists will receive a copy of Food 2.0 and be advanced to the finals for a chance to win the $2,500 Grand Prize!

may-1-csa-box

Don’t forget to read to the bottom for the cute kitchen apron giveaway!

Last week was brutal – a cold took me out on Tuesday, and without my menu plan of last week, we would have surely been eating out every night! The Orange Glazed Chicken from Everyday Food was excellent, and very easy. I used whole chicken legs, as I like to have drumsticks and thighs, and the marmalade made it very easy to put together. I also just threw the whole carrots onto the roasting pan about 1/2 way through, rather than cooking them on the stovetop. And I served with the Bulgur Pilaf from How to Cook Everything (this is the book I plan to send my kids off to college with!). 

This week we have a couple busy nights, so I am hoping I can come up with more quick and easy menus. Our Two Small Farms box this week contained Romaine Lettuce, Carrots, Shallots, Strawberries (these were ginormous, and consumed within the hour), Fava Beans, and Summer Squash. Here is my menu plan for the week:

Sunday: Fava bean appetizer, (I ended up running out of time, so served this with baby romaine lettuce and carrots, as a deconstructed salad. The dip was great!) Carrot risotto, Salad, Rhubarb Anise Upside-down cake

Monday: Stuffed Squash with Bulgur and Feta, Roasted Salmon, Salad

Tuesday: Squash-rice Casserole

Wednesday: Dinner out

Thursday: Pasta with Fava Beans and Sausage, Salad

Friday: TGIF Mini-block party (hope we aren’t rained out this week!)

—–

Now to the giveaway! Last week, while I was home sick, in between coughing up a lung and sleeping, I managed to finish two cute kitchen aprons that would be the perfect Mother’s Day gift, one red, one yellow. So, I am having a contest! On Sunday, May 10th (Mother’s Day) I will select two winners, who will each receive one of these cute aprons below. They can keep the aprons or give them as gifts.

In the comment section below, in haiku format*, tell me why you want one of these aprons. Be clever, be cute, make me laugh, that is all I ask. 

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*Ok, you don’t really have to use a haiku. Anything is fine. But, if you tweet about the contest, or post it on your Facebook page, then come back and comment about that, it will give you another chance to win. For example, Comment #1 might be “I really need a new apron because I don’t have anything as cute as that in my kitchen!”, Comment #2 might be “Tweeted about it, www.twitter.com/kitchengirl”, and Comment #3 might be “On my Facebook page”. See, easy peasy, 3 entries to win!

Curtis Jackson

Congratulations, and thank you to all who entered the contest. Read the original review of the EatSmart Precision Pro Kitchen scale here. And if you have recommendations for other kitchen tools to test, please let me know. Always happy to test a new tool in my kitchen!

Witmer Company Peanut Butter Mixer

Buttonwillow Six

and

Jen Maiser, of Life Begins at 30

Congratulations to both of you! And thank you to all who participated.

* Winners were chosen by an objective third-party using the random sequence number generator on Random.org.

See my original reviews of the Witmer Peanut Butter Mixer here and here.

Witmer Company Peanut Butter Mixer

What: The Kitchen Gadget Girl Gadget Giveaway

When: December 1 – December 5. Winners announced December 7, 2008.

How: Make a comment below, telling me your favorite way to enjoy peanut butter AND your favorite kitchen gadget (note, only complete comments will be eligible to win). Also, be sure to leave a way to contact you!

Yeah, that is all you have to do. But, you say, you want to do more? Well, then, for each of the following, you will get an extra entry:

• Tweet about the contest, mentioning The Kitchen Gadget Girl Giveaway
• Blog about the contest on your own blog
• Kirtsy, Digg, Stumble, or use any other announcement method you like

For all of these, you can either comment again, or shoot me email at kitchengadgetgirls at gmail dot com.

Remember, I have two of these lovely Peanut Butter Mixers, so the chances of winning are definitely greater (I am pretty sure I got my math right there!). Enter early, enter often.