Random

Surprise, Alltrue is back!

They’re now under new ownership and included the following in an email I received today:

The new ownership team has extensive operating experience in subscription ecommerce and plans to work closely with many of the prior team members to continue making progress on the brand mission — and our current priorities are (1) to ship boxes in a timely manner each season (starting with Spring and Summer), and (2) to communicate transparently and regularly with the community as we get up and running again.

The decision to acquire Alltrue and carry the vision forward was very heavily guided by our belief in the brand, the product experience, and the positive impact that the company and community has had over a long period of time. Our intention is to continue this legacy and build off of it. The mission at Alltrue will always be to introduce our community to the best sustainable and ethical products, and to inspire a life lived with intention.

So it looks like both the Spring 2022 and Summer 2022 Alltrue boxes will be available for purchase (and shipping!) soon!

I’ll post more info on spoilers/coupon codes as I see them. Stay tuned!!

Sadly, the popular lifestyle subscription box Alltrue (formerly Causebox) appears to have gone out of business.

It has been discussed heavily in Reddit forums, where it was stated by a (now former) Alltrue employee that “Every employee was terminated with less than 24 hours notice last Tuesday April 12th.”

Not exactly the best news for subscribers. — Needless to say, you probably want to contact your credit card company ASAP to try and reverse any unfulfilled orders/charges.

I personally signed up for another year in advance when they offered it at a lower rate before increasing prices. I used PayPal and am unsure how they’re going to handle it. Fingers crossed!

Photo credit: Associated Press

Thanks to the big record-breaking winter (autumn?) storm that hit the Buffalo area last week, I’m way behind on my subscription box reviews. I haven’t gotten any packages delivered and I can’t really review what I don’t have. (I’m not that awesome. Not yet, anyway.)

Luckily, when it was all said and done my neighborhood only got about 7 inches of snow. Other nearby not so fortunate areas of the city/’burbs got over 6 FEET. In-SANE! My brother-in-law was actually stuck on the thruway for over 8 hours. With no signs of getting rescued, he had to tunnel through the snow to seek shelter in a nearby hotel. Sadly, others weren’t so lucky. I believe there were a total of 13 storm-related deaths last week. Awful.

So on that note, I suppose as much as I’ve missed my mail delivery, things could have been a LOT worse.

With all that behind us… BRING ON THE BOXES!! 😉

I was recently sent two packages of Blue Diamond Almonds for the purpose of writing a post that incorporated them into my summer activities/festivities.

As the due date approached, I was at a total loss as to what I would post about. Leisurely snackin’ on almonds poolside while basking in the summer sun? (Nope, we don’t even have a pool. And I don’t “bask”.) Hosting a get-together where my guests indulge in decadent appetizers which happen to include a hearty dose of almonds? (Nah… Too much planning.)

When it finally came down to it, I knew I had to do something relatively simple… Something that involved chocolate. And didn’t require any basking.

The answer? Ridiculously Easy Vegan Chocolate Almond Clusters! Woo! [read more…]

I’ve always been a fan of Target. I even tried to work there back in the day. Three separate times. I never did get hired though, mainly because I was too punk rock to take out my lip/nose/eyebrow rings. Ah, youth.

Anywhooooo… It was only natural that when I found out I was pregnant, I opted to open a Baby Registry at Target.

My baby showers came & went, and we received a lot of the things I had registered for. Awesome. All we had to do was order a few more things that we hadn’t gotten. My mom offered to buy the changing table and Mike’s dad said he’d get the second crib. Again, awesome.

So we order the items & wait for them to arrive. First, we get the changing table/dresser. Mike puts it together the same day. About 2 hours into building it, he realizes that there’s a huge gouge in the top of the dresser — right in front, on the biggest piece. Ugh. Since it was pretty much all assembled, we decided to just live with it. Luckily the paint is still intact, but the gouge is definitely noticeable. Later, we noticed that the box was damaged too. Figures. That’s what you get for $30 shipping charges?

Then there’s the crib. All of the other packages were shipped via UPS, but for whatever reason the crib came in a big Enterprise truck. When I got up yesterday morning, I heard the truck & looked out my bedroom window. I watched the guy put it on a dolly & start wheeling it towards the house. I expected him to walk up the driveway to put it on the back porch, as all of the delivery dudes do. Oh, but not this guy… He wheeled it to my FRONT porch, carried it up the stairs and leaned it against the house for all the world to see. Nice.

So the huge box sat on the porch from 9am until 5pm when Mike got home from work. He brought it inside to open it up and shortly thereafter, I hear some very salty language. Turns out, the box looked like it had been attacked (and bitten) by a grizzly bear and the crib inside was damaged. The whole back/headboard thingy was cracked in half. Wonderful. Again, $30 in shipping well spent.

Today, after reading through the Target return policy online, I called customer service. I nicely explained the situation to a brain-dead rep who didn’t want to be bothered. He told me to return it to the store and they would replace it. I explained that it was an online-only item and he seemed confused. I then told him it was out of stock now, and there was a long pause… And then the call ended. Um… awesome customer service there, Target!

So now my father-in-law is stuck having to help Mike take the cumbersome crib back to Target, and we’ll have to order a replacement elsewhere. I just hope we can find the same one (and receive it intact) soon, since we already have one & it would be super lame to have mismatched cribs. Eff that!

Needless to say, I just sent Target a nice little complaint email. I think my frustration and inconvenience deserves a free gift card, no? 😉

Edit: WTF? Now it looks like shipping is free on orders over $75?? I hate you, Target.

I have a confession to make:

I’m a lazy cook.

Like, super lazy.

Sure, like any card-carrying herbivore, I have a nice little collection of vegan cookbooks propped up on a shelf above my stove. I even have a binder full of recipes that I’ve clipped out of magazines over the years. And copies of vegweb recipes scattered here and there.

Yes, I’m fully armed with the resources & inspiration to create a plethora of yummy, cooked-from-scratch vegan delicacies.

The problem? Recipes scare me. More specifically, crazy long lists of ingredients: A cup of this, a teaspoon of that, a dash of some random spice I’ve never heard of, a tablespoon of the juice of an exotic fruit that you can only buy in Chinatown during a lunar eclipse…

So it goes without saying that the first thing I do when I consider trying out a new recipe is jump down to the ingredient list. If there’s more than, say, 10 or so components, it’s a no-go.

With that said, I bring you one of my favorite, super easy go-to “recipes” for Yummy Vegan Pasta Salad. I used quotes because it’s really not much of a recipe, per say… More of a common sense list of ingredients that can be easily swapped for other things — perfect for the lazy cook!

I make this for summer gatherings & my (non-veg) family seems to dig it. I whipped up a batch for Memorial Day & I’ve been enjoying the leftovers all week. So good!

Wendy’s Super-Easy Vegan Pasta Salad

• 1 box of your favorite pasta (I used some kind of spinach/zucchini blend)
• 1 lb of carrots (7-8 medium sized), sliced
• 1 small can of garbanzo beans
• 1 red pepper, diced
• a few fork-fulls (real technical here, guys) of sliced green olives
• your preferred dressing of choice (I used Wegmans brand sub oil – sooo good!)

Boil the pasta, chop the veggies, run cold water over the pasta to cool it down before draining it & mixing all the veggies in. Add as much dressing as you like. Mix. Let it chill in the fridge for a bit, and enjoy! Bam! So easy!

Obviously you can throw in any other ingredients you’d like, and omit anything you don’t — except the pasta — that’s kind of important. 😉

Oh, snap! People like me!

I’ve been given two nifty little blog awards by luminousvegans. And here they be:

 

I guess there are a bunch of rules & junk that I have to abide by in order to accept these, but ya know, rules are for chumps. haha. However, I suppose I should do something to justify posting these, right? Right.

Part of the requirement for the “One Lovely Blog Award” is to list 7 facts about yourself & then nominate 15 other blogs for the award. Well, being that I don’t even follow 15 other blogs at the moment (and the ones that I do follow probably already have these awards), I’m just going to do the “7 facts” thing. The “Illuminating Blogger Award” also asks for something similar. So here goes…

7 super random facts about Wendy (hey that’s me!)

1. I’ve met the majority of my boyfriends on the internet. Including my husband. What can I say? I’m socially awkward & super shy when I meet new people. The interwebz saved me from being a lonely, crazy turtle lady (I hate cats).
2. I think onions are the devil. If I’m served anything with onions in it, as tiny as they might be, you can be sure I’m gunna pick out every last little speck of ’em. EVIL.
3. In high school I got sent to the principal’s office for writing an obscene poem about my substitute teacher pleasuring himself. I don’t remember anything about it, except that it rhymed & my friend thought it was hilarious. I wish I had a copy…
4. I have French stitches in my chin. Well, had. I was with one of my exes at the Socre Coeur when my camera started to tumble down the hill we were sitting upon… I ran down the hill at full speed, trying to catch it… No luck. The camera won the race and once I got to the bottom, still going at full speed, I tripped over a wire that separated the grass from the cement — and SPLAT! — I went face-first into the concrete. I immediately started screaming, and a crowd of people gathered, talking to me in languages I couldn’t understand… Scariest thing ever. I think I’ll do a separate post about this at some point…
5. I hate musicals. Or any movie/show with excessive singing/dancing. You couldn’t pay me to watch an episode of Glee.
6. I wrote a zine in high school called “Lice”. It was mostly about my life, punk rock, and the random musings of an awkward 16-year old. I only did 3 issues, but I loved writing them. I actually got a positive review in Maximumrocknroll & sold them on consignment in my local indie record shops. I loved trading zines with people in other countries & getting lots of fun stuff in the mail. I still have a little suitcase full of the zines I’ve collected over the years & I treasure every one. (Hmm… this might require its own post at some point too.)
7. I’ve been working on this post for like an hour(!), so you’re not getting a 7th fact. 😉