Spice Up Your Life! Review and Giveaway!

***This giveaway has ended***
Winner: Eve

My husband and I are 'foodies'. There, I said it. It's good to have that out in the open (if you didn't guess already by my posts!). We love our food - trying new restaurants, cooking at home, baking, preserves, you name it.

We have a reputation among our friends and family that good meals are guaranteed at our house. We are also vegetarian (I am 100%; my husband is vegetarian at home, and eats meat and fish on occasion at restaurants). Far from limiting our options, I have found that having a vegetarian diet has made me a much better cook. Once you get out of the mindset of answering "what's for dinner?" with "meat and two sides", you have a whole world of opportunities to be more creative with your meals. I adopted a vegetarian diet in January of 2001 and have never looked back.

So with my love of food and interest in cooking, I'm always on the hunt for new recipes. In fact, this month alone I got three new cookbooks. Yeah, it's an obsession!

One of the books I received this month was Spice Up Your Life, by Bindu Grandhi. (I was super lucky and won a copy over at Wishing Penny.)

The book is inspired by Indian flavours, so if you love Indian food like we do, you will love the flavours - turmeric, garam masala, cumin, cardamom and coconut make appearances. If you are new to these flavours, get ready to fall in love! We find the flavours to be rich, exotic and interesting, never overpowering.

This cookbook is a proponent of a 'flexitarian' diet - which just means that "it focuses primarily on grains, fruits, and vegetables, with proteins such as seafood and poultry mixed in sparingly." (So it's not just for vegetarians like me; there are lots of recipes inside to satisfy any family's needs.) This way of eating is good for your health - low in saturated fat, high in fiber, which can help you maintain a healthy weight and reduce your risk of hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and prostate and breast cancer. Sounds good, right?

There are loads of vegetarian recipes in here, and I'm also used to adapting recipes to be vegetarian (I've been told my vegetarian tacos and burgers are better than meat versions by die-hard carnivores!), so recipes like Chili Chicken can easily become veggie meals by switching out the chicken for seitan. So for anyone, the entire book would be a great go-to book for dinner, whether it's quick weeknight cooking that you're looking for, or something to impress guests on the weekend.

The very day I got the book in my mailbox, I flipped through and immediately found a recipe to make for dinner that night. I had all the ingredients already, and it looked easy and delicious. I was not disappointed! I made the Rice Pilaf with Red Lentils. Yum! My husband loved it, too. I found the rice and lentils cooked up quickly in my rice cooker (although you don't need one, I love mine) while I prepared the rest of the meal. It was truly a 25-minute meal, filling, delicious and perfect for a weeknight supper.

You can buy Spice Up Your Life on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, or Barnes and Noble. It's a great price and I'm thinking would make an excellent Christmas gift for the foodie in your life (or for yourself!).

I was so pleased with Spice Up Your Life and the meals we've already enjoyed from it, that I contacted Bindu to let her know. She has graciously agreed to provide a copy of Spice Up Your Life to one of my readers! Here's how to enter:

Mandatory entry:
Check out Bindu's website, The Flex Cook, and share in a comment what recipe(s) you would love to try from the sample recipes section. Please do this first!

Extra entries:

• 1 entry: follow me (publicly) on blogger
• 1 entry: add my button to your blog, or if you already have it let me know - leave your blog address, please!
  
• 3 entries: blog about this giveaway with a link back to this post

Six possible chances to win! Be sure to leave your email address, at least in your first comment, if it's not visible in your profile - and leave one comment per entry.

This giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada, and ends at 11:59 pm EST October 27th. Comments left after that time will be deleted. I'll draw the winner using a randomizer, announce both on this post and that day's post, and also email the winner. If I don't hear back within 48 hours, I'll draw another winner. Good luck!

***This giveaway has ended***