One of the best feelings in the world is going home—after being stuck at work late on a Friday night—to find freshly baked pizza waiting for you in your apartment. I'm not talking about just any old pizza, but pizza bianca with a homemade dough, enough garlic to kill a vampire, vegan cheese, fancy kalamata olives, and marinated artichoke hearts.

Several sites define pizza bianca as a flat bread topped with only olive oil and salt, while others say the most common toppings are garlic, olive oil, some type of cheese, and herbs. I will choose to believe the second definition.

On this particular Friday night, the person doing the surprising was my boyfriend. I would say he is a bit of a pizza expert—still using the same pizza pans he received at the age of 12 and always making fresh dough using a recipe taught to him by his grandmother. She would stay up late and make fresh pizzas for her husband—long after the children had gone to sleep—as a Depression-era special treat just for the adults.

She eventually passed her recipe on to my boyfriend, who enjoyed spending time in the kitchen and learning how to cook from his grandmother when he wasn't busy with one of his many bands or general hell-raising. His cooking has definitely come a long way since then, when he would surprise his dad with a meal that consisted of only chili-cheese fries. Now he surprises me with delicious pizza.

There are literally hundreds of types of garlic out there, from purple stripes and silverskins to artichokes—the type most commonly found in your local grocery store. Each has its own unique flavor and qualities, and my taste buds wish they could sample them all.

I am definitely one of those people who sees nothing wrong with letting the flavor of garlic dominate a dish. I often use so much raw garlic that I feel like a walking vampire repellent—you can call me Buffy II.

Every once in a while, I like to infuse my love of garlic with my love of good ol' fashioned comfort food, and a big bowl of creamy garlic Alfredo pasta fits the bill perfectly.

If you can find it, I recommend using a variety of garlic with a higher level of pungency, such as Chinese purple, to add even more heat to this spicy meal. The richness of the MimicCreme—a new vegan cream that can be used in place of soy milk—in this recipe will balance out the kick of the garlic nicely. Toss the Alfredo sauce with your favorite type of pasta, and enjoy the creamy, pungent, vampire-scaring, comforting goodness.

Can you guess which sandwich is the happiest on Earth? OK, I'll just tell you because I'm impatient—it's vegan grilled cheese!

We're not talking about a wimpy sandwich made with strange cheese slices that come wrapped in pieces of plastic—no way. We're talking about using the gourmet stuff, Sheese, which comes in nine flavors of hard vegan cheese and five flavors of creamy vegan cheese.

The combination of bread and cheese dates back to ancient Roman times, but for my gourmet grilled cheese, I put a modern twist on the combination by using vegan mozzarella. I then layered the cheese with roasted red peppers and sautéed red onion slices and used grilled ciabatta bread smothered with Earth Balance. The happiest sandwich on Earth led to the happiest stomach on Earth—mine.

Vegans can sleep well at night knowing that they're not missing out on the strange snack that is jerky, now that there are many meatless varieties on the market—one being the Slim Jim-esque Primal Sticks.

The long, skinny, tubular, individually wrapped "meat" sticks remind me so much of their distant cousin that I can even hear "Macho Man" Randy Savage's voice growling away in my head. And that's not surprising, since Primal Spirit—the company that makes both Primal Sticks and Primal Strips—believes that "a meat alternative product should be completely satisfying to both vegetarian and non-vegetarian diners. Doing that requires that a product have the texture and great flavor of real meat."

Whether you're a meatless-jerky lover or, even better, highly skeptical of this meatless wonder, now is your chance to win some Natural Smoked Flavor Primal Sticks. Three lucky winners will each receive one box containing 24 sticks to gnaw on. To win your free box, just leave a quick comment below sharing a little something about your favorite faux-meat product—whether it's a prepackaged, frozen item or one you make at home. The three most interesting comments win.

The contest ends on March 14, and the winner will be notified by March 21.

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If you saw my post yesterday for the Southwest Veggie Burger and suspected that I would hold a contest for the featured product, Match Meats, well…you were right! Now is your chance to win a sampling of gourmet meat alternatives from Match.

One lucky winner will receive a 1-pound package of each of Match's top-selling vegan meats, including the "beef" I featured in my post yesterday. Just leave a comment below telling me what recipe you would love to use the product in, and the best answer, as determined by me, wins! The contest ends on June 13, and the winner will be notified by June 20. And don't forget that you can order the product on the Match Meats Web site if you're not the chosen one.

And just so you know…by leaving a comment, you're acknowledging that you've read and agreed to our privacy policy and our terms and conditions. Good luck!