It makes sense that December is the time for giveaways! Before we get to today’s, I will announce the winner of the Core Fusion Bootcamp DVD. I used the Random Integer Generator and I am very happy to announce that Diana from My Marble Rye is the winner! Diana said: My goal is to run a 10k or a half!!! I hope I can do it!!!

OF COURSE you can do it! Congratulations Diana! Email me your address and I will have that DVD sent right to you.

When I did a Cooler Cleanse review and giveaway over the summer, it went really well. I loved my three-day juice cleanse and so many readers wanted to win a free one! So when my friends at Cooler Cleanse reached out to me and told me about their new program. Healing Cooler, I jumped at the chance to help again. The concept and the motivation behind Healing Cooler is dramatically different from that of other juicing programs.

The main difference — and what I especially like about Healing Cooler — is that it is NOT marketed as a cleanse or a fast. Upon visiting the website, you see a montage of pictures with phrases such as “Send help for a speedier recovery.” And their slogan is “A healing gift from the heart.”

What does this mean? It means that Healing Cooler promotes juicing as a way to get vital nutrients to assist with healing.

On the What’s Inside Our Juices page, they clearly state the following: Our pressing method means that Healing Cooler juices stay potent for three days when kept chilled. Nowhere on the website do they encourage you to drink all six juices in a day or substitue juices for a day’s worth of food. And while you certainly could (and it is arguably most effective), that is not the main point of this gift. The Healing Cooler is a way to give someone vital nutrients to help them heal, whether it be over the course of one day or three. No matter how you drink your Healing Cooler juices, you will get the amazing benefits of juice!

From their site:

Give a gift of health and happiness to someone you care about. Opening a Healing Cooler, the recipient will find six fresh pressed juices bursting with flavor and nutrition. They’re potent aids for refreshing and reviving the body when it’s down, or boosting its daily defenses.

For centuries, people have used premium fruit and vegetable juices to maintain and build good health. Today’s extremely efficient juicing methods extract the maximum amount of goodness from ripe, organic produce. That makes pressed juice one of nature’s most powerful — and delicious — pick-me-ups.

Whether you send a Healing Cooler to lend your support or just to say “Thank you,” there’s no more thoughtful way to show you care about someone’s well-being than to give a cooler filled with fresh pressed juices.

Designed as a gift, there are four options of juice packages to give:

• Immunity
• Strength
• Recovery
• Create Your Own

The Immunity, Strength and Recovery are each designed with specific juices meant to aid in these functions. On each page you can read more about the juices included and why they were chosen. It is clear that a great deal of thought and research was put into designing these programs. The idea is that you give a gift to someone in your life who needs a boost in one of these areas. For $60, it is a very reasonable gift and also very thoughtful — especially during these cold winter months.

You might be wondering how the juices actually taste. I know the idea of vegetable juice might not sound so appealing, no matter how many times I swear they taste better than you think. Healing Cooler sent me a free pack of six juices to try as part of this promotion. I opted for Create Your Own because I wanted to try juices from Immunity, Strength AND Recovery.

First, let me say this is an awesome gift to receive. It gets delivered in an insulated box that acts like a cooler. I loved the ice pack!

The Healing Cooler also includes an optional handwritten card:

I got my own sweet handwritten card from Healing Cooler! I loved it. And how cute is that box.

My thoughts on the juices I tried:

Green Leaf (Immunity, Strength, Recovery) - DELICIOUS. You might think green juice sounds yucky, but I promise you will find this tasty. If you’ve done Blueprint Cleanse, there is a great chance you think green juice is gross. This tastes NOTHING like their green juice — I SWEAR. You can hold me to this. A delicious, super healthy blend of vegetables, lightly sweetened with pear.

Kale & Co (Immunity, Strength) – LOVED. I was nervous about this one because it contains apple, which I thought might be the reason I didn’t like Blueprint’s green juice. But this is totally different! The apple is so subtle and provides just the right amount of sweetness. The watercress really added to this one. I would drink this every day if I could!

Pineapple Kiwi (Immunity) – Very good, tasted much more of pineapple than kiwi.

Pear Mint (Immunity) - I didn’t love this one the way I expected to, but it was a good juice.

Ten Veggie (Strength) – Lots and lots of vegetables in one! Crazy! I wasn’t sure if I would like this because I tend not to like juices that contain tomato, but I really enjoyed this one. The beet and carrot are strong flavors that bring down the tomato, so it is just a really delicious mix.

Red Veggie (Strength) - At first sip I thought “holy tomato!” I didn’t think I liked it, but I am happy to report that as I continued drinking it I got used to this one and ended up really liking it. I wouldn’t choose it over the others greens or the Ten Veggie, but it was much better than I expected it to be considering it contained tomato juice.

I really enjoyed my juices. I planned to drink them all in one day but ended up splitting it up over three. To each her own! That is the beauty of the Healing Cooler.

Hopefully you all think this is as awesome as I do because I’ve got FIVE of these babies to give away.

Giveaway rules:

You can get up to two entries.

(1) Entry one consists of TWO parts:

• Post on the Healing Cooler Facebook wall to say which cooler you would like in January, and why.
• Leave the same comment here so we can confirm your entry. Half entries will not be counted.

(2) Once you’ve done that, get a second entry by tweeting the following (you all know how much I love the Twitters):

Win a free @healingcooler of 6 healing juices from @dysterious – details here! http://dorishinyblog.com/?p=5096

I will work with the Healing Cooler team to select the best responses. You will be able to select a shipping day after the holiday season is over, since FedEx is a bit overwhelmed with holiday stuffs.

I will announce the FIVE WINNERS on Tuesday, December 28. Good luck!

A few weeks ago, Rachel’s clothes were all in the laundry and she was forced to cook naked. She posted a picture of herself wearing nothing but her apron. It was a hot picture and a lot of us went a little nuts over it. This is how I learned that side boob is the new cleavage.

Frustrated with the typical contests in the blogworld that don’t recognize creativity or humor, Rach decided to hold a blog contest of her own. One that any of us would have a shot at winning. And so Project Tasteless was born. Challenge #1? The Naked Chef Challenge. Because her own nude cooking was so wildly successful and, well, sexy.

And I had to participate. Being naked except for an apron sounded like exactly where I wanted to be.

First things first, I had to borrow an apron. I do not own an apron and really, I have no reason to. I turned to the Twitters with a request for an apron and my good friend Erica responded! She had an apron for me. One caveat — it said “Erica” on it.

That made it even better and funnier.

Okay so I had the apron, now I just needed a recipe and someone to cook for/assist me in taking the photos. Since I was going to be wearing nothing but an apron, I figured it was only fitting to ask a boy to come over. I started texting all the boys I know to find out who wanted me to cook naked for them.

No one did.

I could not find a single person willing to let me cook naked for him. Why are things like this so easy for women on TV? Why is it so hard for me? I decided to open the field up a bit and I turned to the Twitters, where I asked the world at large.

No one responded. I asked again. Nothing. Except for one guy who told me “I’m not that fat.” I think he was trying to make me feel better about no one wanting to see me naked. Uh, thanks. Block.

Then I tried on the apron and took a picture of myself in the mirror, which I proceeded to sext to the same guys who already shot me down. No one took the bait.

Luckily my roommate, who is rarely home, was spending the night in the apartment so I had someone to cook for and help me! Relieved, I could focus on the next pressing task: the recipe.

I am not a chef. I rarely order takeout, but the food I make for myself every day is very basic and very quick. I considered making my Magnolia Banana Pudding which is SO GOOD, but remembered a comment Rachel made once about how her boyfriend, one of Project Tasteless judges, does not like banana pudding. I thought hard about any other recipe I would be comfortable enough with to make nude. After all, you can’t just make a brand new recipe when you’re naked and anything can go wrong. Better to be familiar with the potential hazards. But I don’t really make anything. I eat pretty basic meals. I didn’t think I could dip bread in hummus and submit it for a contest. Then it hit me.

MY PASTA!

My Pasta is this really delicious pasta dish that my mom used to make for me starting in high school. Then I started making it myself. It is so good and so easy and delicious. My Pasta was the perfect recipe for this challenge. And yes, My Pasta is the official name. If my mom would ask what I was having for dinner and I responded with “My Pasta” she knew exactly what I meant.

When I tell you what is in my pasta, it will sound weird. The ingredients don’t seem like they should be in pasta and it might be hard to imagine them together. But I promise you — it tastes great and it really just works. My roommate agrees.

Ingredients:

• One bag extra wide egg noodles
  *Today though, I used one bag wide whole wheat egg white noodles to healthify it
• One can pineapple chunks in its own juice
• Cinnamon
• One container 1% cottage cheese (not whipped)

Directions:

• Cook entire bag of noodles per instructions in large pot (larger than one shown, which was too small)

• While waiting for pasta to cook, drain juice from pineapple chunks (unpictured)
• If nude, pose seductively

• And drink wine

• Strain pasta when it is finished cooking and then pour it back in the pot

• But make sure you get your potholder down from on top of the cabinet

• Stir in container of cottage cheese right away, while pasta is very warm

• Stir in entire can of pineapples

• Stir in cinnamon, to taste (I use a lot)

• Repeat as needed

• Serve and eat

That was fun! And even better, a boy DID end up coming over. Sadly for all involved, I was fully dressed by that time. I found Project Tasteless Naked Chef Challenge to be a fun bonding experience with my roommate, who I have known for 10 years now. My recipe might not be the most creative or especially complicated, but it is easy and delicious and healthy. Cook it naked, and it is also fun.

On Sunday night my phone rang at 10:30 pm. I had the sound off since it was past my bedtime, but I wasn’t asleep yet and I saw the phone light up with a call. It was my adorable baby brother Matt Matt. He was at Whole Foods with his wife-to-be Mallories and they were picking up ingredients for a recipe. “Can you go to foodsubs.com and look up piquillo pepper? They don’t have it at Whole Foods, we need to know what we could use instead.”

“This is why you need a smart phone, boy,” I said. Really, I just want him to get a BlackBerry so I can BBM him all day every day.

“I don’t need a smart phone,” the young one said. “I have a smart sister!”

I was about to go to the website they told me about — one I had never heard of because um, I am lazy and just make up what I might need in my head if I am not sure. I never actually thought to be resourceful if I didn’t have an ingredient I needed. But then I remembered that I was sent a book that I was supposed to review in June called Substituting Ingredients: The A to Z Kitchen Reference. Because it was around the same time I implemented Tuesday Blags, I had too much to write about to get a chance to discuss this book. And I kept forgetting about it. And really, I can be pretty irresponsible sometimes. I apologize, Sourcebooks.

[Source: Sourcebooks (hehe)]

But now I thought of it!

So I got out the book and there were so many categories of peppers: peppers, chili and peppers, chili, milder and peppers, gold (also known as yellow peppers) and peppers, red sweet and peppers, green or bell. I never knew there were so many types of peppers. I gave Mallory some options and she ended up using a blend of red bell pepper, anaheim pepper and fiesta pepper to make their pressed burgers with prosciutto and piquillo-paprika aioli. Uh, yeah, my brother is marrying well, wouldn’t you say? Especially considering the most I ever made him was eggs.

So the book came in handy! The book is better for more than just peppers though. As someone who doesn’t have many ingredients at home because (1) I share a 320 square foot apartment with no closets with a roommate, and our kitchen is a narrow entryway between our bedrooms and (2) I am not a cook and don’t really want to be (sorry future husbands), I have to say that even I find this book helpful.

Substituting Ingredients would be so handy in the kitchen for anyone who needs a quick substitute! As I open this randomly, I can tell you right now that you can substitute currants, fresh for gooseberries. You can also substitute jaggery, whatever that is, for 1/2 cup white sugar plus 1/2 cup brown sugar. Woo hoo! Or in baking, substitute nuts with bran. Who knew? Not I.

There is a section of cheeses split into groups, and you can substitute any other cheese in each group for another! CHEESE! What I find most helpful in this book is the oil section. I am pretty picky about the oils I cook with and want to make sure I am using the right substitutes. You can find easy substitutions for vegetables, fruits, grains, meat, fish, and baking ingredients as well as measurement equivalents (I NEED THIS. I can barely add let alone figure that stuff out), baking pan sizes, household ingredients that can also be cleaning products, remedies for kitchen disasters and quick substitutions for herbs and spices.

All in all a good book for people who need this kind of thing.

I have some really great product reviews coming in the next few weeks, including a new open patella knee sleeve, an eco friendly yoga mat, a Magic Bullet and the brand new Core Fusion Yoga Energy Flow DVD!

And a BIG thank you to everyone who signed up for the free Core Fusion class for Dori’s Shiny Blog readers. The response was outstanding and the class filled up in less than seven hours. We have a wait list too! I’m excited to meet everyone on August 12!