It's a big day for vegetable lovers who follow Weight Watchers! On Sunday, I flipped the switch, converting A Veggie Venture's most popular Weight Watchers page to the current point system, the myWW rainbow of green, blue and purple points.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who gather today around Thanksgiving tables near and far! When you have a minute, I have a little story to share ...

For cookie bakers, No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies aren't to be missed, they're the best chewy and butter sugar cookies you might have ever tasted but without all the fuss and muss of rolling and decorating. I'm making them for my cookie swap next week, the - get this! - 19th annual. For home cooks, savory and sweet both, the Food52 Cookbook isn't to be missed either, it's one of two favorite new cookbooks in 2011. It's a collection of "best of the best" recipes from home cooks -- I think it's fabulous and am giving away a copy! Head on over to Kitchen Parade, No-Roll Christmas Sugar Cookies (or click the photo) for the cookie recipe and cookbook giveaway. It's easy to enter to win -- US and Canadian residents for this giveaway, please, through December 14th. MORE GIVEAWAYS? I've started posting giveaways (mine and other food bloggers') on a special bulletin board on Pinterest . Follow me there for the latest! And it's Christm

Hello Vegetable Lovers! Anyone gearing up for Christmas baking will definitely want to check out Holiday Baking Tips from a Certifiable Cookie-Baking Fiend . That "fiend" would be me: during December, your 'veggie evangelist' is turning into a part-time 'cookie evangelist'. Plus I'm giving away a copy of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies , the award-winning cookie cookbook by Alice Medrich. Contest open through December 8, 2011 to readers from across the world - hello, Canadian readers! : - ) To enter, click the photo >>>>>>> Happy Baking!

Life is fragile, life is precious, life is precarious. We all know this, we all experience it, we all, too often, live this. And yet, and yet. Some times life's fragility strikes close to home -- even when it really isn't. For me, the life lesson hit twice this week, first when my friend Janet buried her granddaughter in a casket just twenty-four -- aiii, twenty-four -- inches long. And then again, with the sudden and unexpected death of a young husband and father, "Mikey" as wife and food blogger Jennifer Perillo of In Jennie's Kitchen called him. Those of you who follow food bloggers will see lots of peanut butter pies appearing today. That's because Jennie invited us to make pies in her husband's memory. You see, she'd been meaning to make him his favorite pie, "Tomorrow", she'd think, "Or on the weekend." But she never got to it and suddenly, it was too late. And so today I invite you too to make a peanut butter pie,

Happy New Year, vegetable lovers! This year, oops, that would be last year , I turned New Years resolutions into 'healthy habits' adopted way last summer. One is a concept salad, my Quick 'n' Easy Raw Salad . (We just love these concept 'recipes', right? If you like the idea too, grab it and make it your own way!) But first, what is your healthy habit? Or what healthy habit would you like to adopt in 2011? I'm giving away a kitchen scale , register to win at Kitchen Parade, my food column and home to seasonal, easy and healthy recipes made from real food without processed ingredients, where all new recipes include Weight Watchers old points and PointsPlus points, calorie counts and nutrition data. Register to Win a Kitchen Scale !

Sunday is the last day to enter to win a kitchen scale! This week, I dusted off the tips and techniques I used in 2002 to lose 30 pounds using Weight Watchers, see How to Lose Weight with Weight Watchers . I invited readers to share their best tips too and boy, have they, all to win one of my favorite Weight Watchers tools, a kitchen scale . If you don't have a kitchen scale, head on over to the contest to enter to win, it's easy and there are five ways to enter! WEIGHT WATCHERS RESOURCES ~ Weight Watchers recipes ~ (sorted by Weight Watchers points) ~ Low-Carb Recipes ~ Low-Calorie Recipes ~ from Kitchen Parade, my food column ~ Weight Watchers Recipes ~ (zero-point, one-point and two-point vegetable recipes, including the famous Weight Watchers Zero-Point Soup Recipes) ~ Low-Carb Vegetable Recipes ~ from A Veggie Venture, my food blog about vegetables © Copyright Kitchen Parade 2010

Please forgive, no recipe today. Instead a special give-away, just for the readers of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade. For just seven days, between now and April 27, 2009, BlogHer and HP are sponsoring a contest where an HP printer will be given away, ONLY to the readers of Kitchen Parade and A Veggie Venture. (Okay, well, anyone can enter the contest but I'm only telling my own readers about it.) This means that the odds of winning are very very high! All it takes is leaving a comment! But you must do it on this page! ~ Win an HP Photosmart Printer ~ Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables . Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes . © Copyright 2009

So easy, guys! Just toss together a few common pantry ingredients and you've got a creamy-spicy cocktail sauce for shrimp, veggies and more and maybe just maybe, an instant party. Better still? Make it to taste, make only as much as you need! But the recipe has moved to a new location, please see Five-Minute Shrimp Cocktail Sauce at Kitchen Parade, my food column. "Dear Heinz Ketchup, Please, will you make my life easier? You see, I take a lot of guff for your regular appearance on my table. You’re the stuff of my childhood and I really don’t want to give you up. Eggs, macaroni and cheese, hashed browns and of course burgers and ‘ dogs, they’re just not the same without your cute little red squiggle. And I might get away with it, truly, if you were just a retro indulgence. But please, I can’t defend the fact that your third ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. You make this public, why not make it go away?!! And oh yes, I’m well aware that not everyone

Today, a guest post from an A Veggie Venture reader who's just finished Michael Pollan's book 'In Defense of Food'. His essay is a lesson in the loss of connection to real food (in just one generation!) and ideas on what it takes to return. I'd love to know your thoughts and invite you to join the conversation. ~AK The butcher’s rack in my kitchen shelves my cookbooks. To use a poor albeit irresistible metaphor, it groans from the weight of undigested manuals on the art and craft of cooking. Of late, the central theme of the books has been shifting from cookbooks about food preparation to books about food itself . To this reader and (I can’t help myself) consumer of such books, the sources, chemical composition, care, preservation and delivery of food have become as important as the preparation and presentation of the final product. [ Note to Vegetarians ~AK] Mine is a farm background. Much of my childhood food came from within a radius of a hundred yard

Especially for the readers of A Veggie Venture, the good folks at O Olive Oil are offering three great ways to experience hand-crafted citrus-crushed olive oils and premium barrel-aged wine vinegars. These are truly gorgeous olive oils and vinegars. During taste tests last summer, my nephew -- a teenager! -- declared, "We could drink this!" He was right -- and food professionals and others agree -- which makes me extra-pleased to offer three great ways for readers to experience such immensely satisfying olive oils and wine vinegars. Why am I doing this? It's my small way during the season of Thanksgiving (don't miss this year's Thanksgiving vegetable recipes !) to thank readers, for trusting in me, for encouraging me, for sending favorite recipes, for inviting me into their kitchens. Plus, it's no secret that I believe that learning how to make homemade salad dressing is a healthful and frugal habit for families and individuals both. If good olive oils

No recipe right now but I'm going to go out on a limb here -- won't many of us be happy to save $5 after spending $25 on groceries? If so, don't miss this downloadable coupon from Whole Foods that's good for one purchase a day per customer through October 22. (Me? I'm off to buy ink for my printer. I wonder if there's a coupon for that!) How did I learn about Whole Foods' offer? I 'follow' Whole Foods on a service called Twitter. You can, too and if you like, you can follow me on Twitter too. DISCLOSURE: For anyone who's wondering, I have no relationship with Whole Foods (except as a regular occasional customer) and get no compensation from Whole Foods to share this information. They don't even know I'm doing it! But as you know, I'm committed to helping people save money on groceries and if you already shop at Whole Foods, this is a great offer. ASIDE: Whole Foods recently sponsored a budget meal challenge for food blogg

All too soon, we vegetable lovers will embrace the vegetables of autumn, the winter squash, the sweet potatoes, the cauliflower. But until then, food bloggers everywhere are reveling in the glut of produce at our farmers markets, truly, our cups runneth over. Every few weeks, I like to spotlight vegetable recipes from my fellow food bloggers, ones that I think readers of A Veggie Venture might especially appreciate. VegetableSpotting WEEK 37 - mid September (click the link for the recipe) RSS & e-mail readers: My apologies, the ten links above to vegetable recipes from other food blogs don't display in feed readers or e-mail. Please click through to today's post to view the list. VegetableSpotting - The Running List Many food bloggers list a 'blogroll' of their favorite blogs on their websites. Recently, I replaced my own blogroll with a running list of VegetableSpotting recipes. Check the lower right-hand corner of any page on A Veggie Venture for the

Dear Charlotte, Alex and Freddie, Your new book The Great Big Veg Challenge is an absolute wonder! Yesterday, the postman handed it over just as I set off to walk the dog. Too curious to wait, I took what was supposed to be a quick peek. Thirty minutes later, I was still sitting in the shade in the front yard with a now-impatient dog, slowly paging through the book, smiling at the drawings and photographs, enjoying the sheer fun of watching you meander your way, A - Z, through the alphabet of vegetables. In Cabbage, Freddie, I laughed out loud when reminded that when you first ate potato, cabbage and rapini colcannon , you said "This is heaven," and asked, "Are you really sure there is cabbage in this?" This from you, Freddie, the boy who wanted to 'get the cabbage over with, quick'! In Celery and Fennel and Kohlrabi and Kale, I paused to check out particularly tasty-looking recipes (kale chips? gotta do that one!). Thanks for all the new kid-friend

In homage to the return! of Tastespotting and all credit to YeastSpotting , say hello to VegetableSpotting, occasional links to inspiring vegetable recipes from my fellow food bloggers spotted while cruising my favorite food blogs this week. WEEK 26 - Late June (hover over a link for my take on the recipe, click the link for the recipe) RSS & e-mail readers: My apologies, these links to vegetable recipes from other food blogs don't display in feed readers or e-mail. Please click through to today's post to view the list. MORE VegetableSpotting: VegetableSpotting archive . © Copyright 2008

This week's recipe at KitchenParade.com: A recipe that's become a summer staple, vegetables in a soy and ginger vinaigrette, wrapped in foil and then grilled, so you know, Grilled Vegetables in Foil . So colorful! Beautifully balanced flavor and texture. Surprise, surprise, more vegetables come off my grill than meat but even then, there could be more recipes for grilled vegetables on A Veggie Venture. Is this the summer? It's a good start, these vegetable cooked in foil! NEVER MISS A KITCHEN PARADE RECIPE! Kitchen Parade is my food column, the one my mom started when I was a baby and that I started writing after she died - you know, a la Ann Landers and Heloise. The columns are published in my hometown newspapers and online at KitchenParade.com . Where A Veggie Venture is all about vegetable recipes, Kitchen Parade recipes cover all courses -- the Quick Supper recipes are real favorites. But good news: just like here at A Veggie Venture, all Kitchen Parade recipes

Year round, I am inspired by food bloggers from across the world who publish their best vegetable recipes, spring, summer, fall and even winter. This is a collection of their most enticing seasonal vegetable recipes, for your enjoyment, your inspiration. The list is updated nearly every day, so visit often for new and seasonal vegetable recipes from some of my favorite food bloggers. My Running List of Inspiring Vegetable Recipes (updated nearly every day) © Copyright 2008

This week's recipe at KitchenParade.com: My recipe for rhubarb upside-down cake , a classic summer dessert recipe with just a touch of anise. Rustic, homey and delicious. If you're a rhubarb lover, oh man, the rhubarb upside-down cake is a must-make right now, while the rhubarb's still so good. The column will also catch the eye of gardeners. Who else is battling bunnies? NEVER MISS A KITCHEN PARADE RECIPE! Kitchen Parade is my food column, the one my mom started when I was a baby and that I started writing after she died - you know, a la Ann Landers and Heloise. The columns are published in my hometown newspapers and online at KitchenParade.com . Where A Veggie Venture is all about vegetable recipes, Kitchen Parade recipes cover all courses -- the Quick Supper recipes are real favorites. But good news: just like here at A Veggie Venture, all Kitchen Parade recipes include nutrition analysis and Weight Watchers points. There's even a special page of Weight Watche

Today's recipe at KitchenParade.com: My recipe for sauerkraut salad , a great summer salad, perfect for potlucks and barbecues and good old-fashioned summer eating. It's a 'fresh classic', lighter and more healthful. This week's column introduces us to a convenience food that's too-often overlooked: sauerkraut. What is sauerkraut? Nothing more than cabbage (so it's chopped) that's been fermented (so it's already got flavor) with virtually no calories (so it's healthful). NEVER MISS A KITCHEN PARADE RECIPE! Who's been missing Kitchen Parade recipes? You know, like that recipe for Lime Chicken so perfect for a weeknight supper? Or light, bright and quick Lemon Asparagus Pasta that so celebrates the best spring asparagus? Or the recipe for strawberry rhubarb cobbler that has people moaning? If you were accustomed to learning about new Kitchen Parade recipes via announcements here on A Veggie Venture, well, those announcements are a thi

Today's recipe at KitchenParade.com: My recipe for strawberry rhubarb cobbler , one of spring's classic dessert recipes, topped with a buttery cornmeal crumb. Thank goodness for rhubarb recipes . Otherwise A Veggie Venture might become altogether too healthful , bereft of sweets and desserts. Once the rhubarb is ready for harvesting and starts to show up in the grocery stores, who can resist a thick slice of rhubarb pie , the perfect balance of rhubarb-sour and sugar-sweet? But for simplicity, an easy cobbler recipe is the ticket, whether a 'plain' rhubarb cobbler or today's recipe, rhubarb and strawberry cobbler . BUSTED Many thanks to Maggie, a reader who makes her home in New York City on the top floor apartment of a building originally constructed in 1839 as a one-family house. Maggie's apartment runs due north to due south so the northern windows get no direct sun and southern windows and skylights get so much sun that anything short of a cactus would