Love & Lemons Cooking Club – August!

Join the Love & Lemons Cooking Club Challenge this month! It's easy to enter, and one lucky winner will receive a prize. Find all the details below.

Our Cooking Club is a fun way to celebrate the Love & Lemons community of readers. The concept is super simple—each month, I choose a recipe. You make it, and you leave a comment on the recipe’s blog post. At the end of the month, I randomly select one winner to receive a prize.

I love the sense of community that comes from so many people cooking one recipe each month. We’re kicking off our August challenge today with our quinoa salad recipe, and I hope you’ll join in the fun. Here’s how it works:

The Prize: A $100 Whole Foods Gift Card!

At the end of the month, I’ll randomly select a winner and share some of your photos. This time, we’re giving away a $100 Whole Foods gift card. 

In addition, for every entry we receive, we’ll donate $1 to No Kid Hungry.

August’s Recipe: Quinoa Salad

I couldn’t let summer pass by without choosing a salad for the cooking club, so this month, we’re making my quinoa salad recipe! Here are a few reasons I love it:

1. It’s packable. Meal prep it for lunches, or take it on a picnic.
2. It’s filling. You could enjoy this salad as main or serve it as a hearty side. The quinoa and roasted chickpeas fill it with fiber and plant-based protein.
3. It’s super flavorful, thanks to roasted tomatoes, olives, feta cheese, fresh herbs, and a zingy Italian dressing. Skip the feta to make it vegan, or use your favorite plant-based feta.

A note about the roasted tomatoes: They’re my favorite part of this salad. They have a chewy texture and rich, savory flavor that add so much depth to this dish. That said, they take some time to make. I recommend roasting them a day or two ahead to make the salad quicker to assemble.

If you want to streamline the recipe even more, you could replace the roasted tomatoes with 2 cups halved fresh cherry tomatoes.

I hope you enjoy!

Last Month’s Recipe

Last month’s recipe was my gazpacho. We made it to 200 comments on the post, so we’ll be donating that amount to No Kid Hungry. Thanks for joining in!

I wanted to shout out a few readers who made gazpacho for the first time this month:

• From Jean Ann: This was amazing. I never would have made this if it was not part of the cooking club. I am sold on gazpacho.
• From Kaitlyn: First time making a gazpacho and I was skeptical to say the least. But this soup is so full of flavor! It was incredibly simple to make.

Thanks for giving it a go! Gazpacho is one of my summer favorites, and I’m so glad I got to share this recipe with you.

I have to give another shout out to Li, who made the recipe 3 times(!!) in July. Always fun to meet another gazpacho lover! 🙂

Here are some of your photos:

And congrats to Kaitlyn, our winner!

To Recap

Enter the August Cooking Club Challenge by…

1. Making my quinoa salad recipe sometime in August.
2. Leaving a comment on the quinoa salad blog post by August 31.
3. Sending a picture of the salad to LoveAndLemonsCookingClub@gmail.com for a bonus entry.
4. And for another bonus entry, posting your photo on Instagram, tagging @loveandlemons and #loveandlemonscookingclub.

Happy cooking!