Monthly Clubs, Baskets and Samplers, Oh My!
If you’re anything like me, each new month here at Allison’s brings new cravings for all the marvelous new monthly flavors. 
Even if you’re not a monthly club member, there are several ways to get your hands on an awesome selection of our vegan baked goods. Several of our vegan gift baskets include a variety of cookie flavors, and for even more variety our Decadent Bliss and Ultimate Nirvana vegan gift baskets also include a baker’s choice selection of our vegan fudge and heavenly brownies. Our Just Cookies, Baker’s Choice and Baker’s Choice Ultimate Samplers also offer a variety of cookie flavors for your sampling pleasure as well as different sizes of original and pecan brownies to satisfy your chocolate-tooth. So, stop craving and start enjoying all the flavors of these pure, compassionate treats.
Monthly Clubs Shipping Next Week
It’s the first week of a new month, which means that many of you are probably starting to wonder when your brownie, fudge, and cookie of the month clubs are going to arrive. Because the first of this month fell on Wednesday, and we have a long holiday weekend coming up, your fudge, brownie, and cookie of the month clubs will ship next week, on Tuesday, Sept. 7th for delivery on or around Thursday, Sept. 9th. With delicious flavors like (Wheat-Free) Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and Butterscotch Pecan Fudge, we know they’ll be worth the wait. 
Last Chance to Vote in the Veggie Awards!
Don’t miss your chance to vote for all your favorite vegan products, people and places in the 2010 VegNews Veggie Awards! 
Allison’s Gourmet is nominated in four categories: Favorite Vegan Bakery (Online), Favorite Vegan Cookie Company, Favorite Vegan Chocolate, and Favorite Column – Veganize It!
But just because you love us isn’t the only reason to vote now. By voting you’ll be entered to win some amazing vegan prizes, and you’ll get to see if your favorites make the awards list published in the November+December issue of VegNews. Voting closes August 31st, one week from today, so don’t waste another second. Vote today, and if you vote for us, we’ll love you forever. 
Simple, Pure Food
One of my favorite things about late summer in California is all the fresh produce available, especially when it comes from my own garden! 
There is something so satisfying about picking and eating veggies that you, or a farmer you know, grew. I’m always a little surprised by how easy gardening is. You just plant some little plants and give them some water and, amazingly, they grow! It sounds funny to say, but I am amazed by the generosity of my garden plants, making all these amazing leaves and flowers and fruits for us to pick, eat and enjoy! My body and soul feel nourished eating simple, whole foods.
But what about dessert? Although organic brownies and peanut brittle probably aren’t growing in your garden, here at Allison’s Gourmet we’re also committed to the philosophy of whole foods. Our treats are extremely delicious precisely because we use only the finest pure, organic ingredients. We use whole-grain flours and avoid ingredients like corn syrup and egg-replacer. 
The original flavor of our award-winning organic brownies, for example, contains just a few simple ingredients:
(vegan) organic cane juice, organic whole-wheat pastry flour, organic hi-oleic sunflower oil, organic fair-trade cocoa, arrowroot, sea salt, and non-aluminum baking powder.
Just like those zucchini going crazy in your garden, these are desserts you can feel good about eating.
School’s Back In, But Summer’s Not Over
I always find it strange that this is the time of year when kids all start going back to school. To me, it feels like the height of summer. 
All the fruit is ripe, gardens are bursting with fresh produce, and days are still warm and lazy. So, even though school may be back in session soon, lets all try to hold onto the tastes and joys of summer for a while longer. Include some organic cookies like (Wheat-Free) Peanut Butter, or Mint Chocolate Chip in your first school lunches. Go to the river or the lake on the weekends, eat watermelon, and enjoy some summery desserts like our Sour Cherry and Apple Pie flavors of vegan fudge. In fact, having delicious organic cookies, brownies and fudge in the house is convenient year-round, for school lunches, dessert parties or after-school snacks. Join a monthly club and let the summer fun continue!
Treats in Your Mailbox
We shipped August’s monthly club orders on Monday. 
If you’re a monthly club member, check your mailboxes for our latest selection of vegan, wheat-free Cookies, Brownies, and Fudge arriving soon.
As you may have noticed, our roster of wheat-free baked goods is growing. Check out our soft peanut butter cookies, sugar-dusted snickerdoodles, and coffee-infused mocha brownies all made with organic oat flour. Our fudge and confections are also all gluten-free, naturally.
August’s Flavors: More Wheat-Free Options
August will be here next week, and it’s bringing with it some new and exciting wheat-free options to our brownie and cookie line-up. 
Sugar dusted (Wheat-Free) Cinnamon Snickerdoodle Cookies, and gorgeous (Wheat-Free) Toasted Coconut Brownies are sure to be the highlights of your summer. They’re not, however, our only wheat-free flavors. (Wheat-Free) Peanut Butter and (Wheat-Free) Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies also make our favorites list, as well as (Wheat-Free) Mocha and (Wheat-Free) Half Original/Half Pecan Brownies.
Interested in trying all of these flavors and more? Our Cookie and Brownie Samplers make great treats for the entire family and excellent corporate food gifts for environmentally-friendly and health-conscious businesses. For more compassionate corporate food gift ideas, check out our Gift Baskets and Gift Sets.
Brownie O’Clock
Like so many other people these days, I realized a few years ago that I’m sensitive to wheat gluten. My sensitivity is partly what has prompted my move to make more of our products wheat-free and gluten-free. I was so tired of not being able to eat my own products!
Ever since we transitioned our organic brownies to be made with organic oat flour, I’ve had our baker make a few mini brownies in each batch, so that I can have some to taste test for “quality control.” Taste testing all of our products is one of my favorite parts of my job, but when our products were made with wheat, my taste tests of each organic brownie batch could only be one little bite. Now, I get to eat a whole mini brownie by myself if I want to! In fact, I’ve become so addicted that Tessa, my assistant, began calling my almost-daily brownie habit, “brownie o’clock”. The term has now expanded to include “chocolate o’clock” for Tessa, and “cookie o’clock” for my husband, David, who loves our new (Wheat-Free) Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies.
Do you have a daily ritual or special self-loving indulgence? What’s your “pleasure o’clock”?
Gift Baskets: Super-Deluxe Samplers in Pretty Packaging
Check out the gorgeous new packaging we finally have for our vegan gift baskets! Instead of different flavors of one kind of product, as you get with our Organic Tea or Just Cookies Samplers, our vegan gift baskets offer an elegant sampling of many of our products and are perfect for larger groups or for those who want to try a wide variety of our products. 
We have two gourmet coffee gift baskets which include either a four-flavor organic coffee sampler or a 12 oz bag of our superlative Peruvian Femenino coffee beans, as well as several flavors of cookies, brownies, fudge and confections all in one beautiful basket. These gourmet coffee gift baskets are the ideal way to spice up a social event or get an idea about your family’s favorite delicacies before birthdays and holidays come around.
Looking Forward to Tropical Brownies in August
We just completed a successful test of next month’s (Wheat-Free) Toasted Coconut Brownies, and let me tell you, they are gorgeous! 
Beautiful white coconut ribbons get layered on top of our luscious dark chocolate vegan brownies like a tropical chocolate paradise. Then, as they bake, the coconut toasts to golden perfection and these decadent vegan brownies look and taste absolutely angelic. So, if you can’t get away to the tropics this summer, let our tropical brownies come to you!