It's the T-giving

A couple days late but I still gotta share. This was the most stress free Thanksgiving I can remember that I have cooked for. I now understand the beauty of advance prep.

So here's the line up:
Seitan stuffing roulade, Kittee's totally awesome seitan and a bread/lentil/herb stuffing
Green Bean Casserole with home made fried onions from VeganYumYum
Mashed Potatoes
Cranberry Sauce
Chocolate Pumpkin Pie, from Eat Drink Be Vegan by Dreena Burton

So the night before, after work I made the green bean casserole, made the fried onions, cut up the potatoes (store those in water in the fridge), cranberry sauce, the stuffing, caramelized onions for the seitan and the pumpkin pie. It helped that Lex had to go out for a bit so while he was out I just kept cooking. It worked out well as I had very little to do the next day. So we went to beddy bye at around midnightish which is actually pretty normal for us anyway.

Next morning we had a relaxing coffee and a little fruit. Then a killer tofu scramble (tofu, veggie sausage, tomato, avocado, hells yeah. Oh, and some oven home fries. I've found that I really like making home fries in the oven. Cut up chunks of potato, toss them in just enough oil to coat and bake in oven at 400F for 10-15 minutes until they are golden. You can add any herbs you want to the oil as you toss them. The cook just right and have much less oil then pan fried ones. I do accept that classic homefries are an awesome comfort food, no denying that but with all the calories of the holidays I didn't think I'd miss them here. Cooking them in the oven allows you to multitask better as well.

Case and point, while my breakies was cooking away (it only took 10-15 mins) I whipped up the seitan dough, pressed it out into a rectangle on my Silpat and spread the stuffing mixture on top leaving a little border and rolled it up into a frikin huge roast. I set up my biggest soup pot into a steamer. Wrapped the roast in foil and set it to steaming for about an hour and a half. Then we set to eating breakfast. No pictures of that. Sorry.

Around 2ish we headed to our friend's (Megan & Dave) apartment to complete our killer vegan feast. They were just finishing up so we added our green bean casserole to be heated and the roast to finish cooking in the oven with the casserole to their rosemary batard. On the stove some more magic was happening. Home made pumpkin ravioli, a red wine broccoli rabe saute, the potatoes I had prepped boiling away and a bechamel sauce.

While these bits finished up we noshed some super awesome black bean dip (Megan made that).
That's Lex snagging some more dippage.

So dinner is almost ready. Let's meet Megan & Dave's fur babies before we fill our plates and bellies.

Aspen puppy (she loves having his picture taken. She loves love really).
Chloe cat
Poppy cat (Poppy is actually Mac's brother)
Tiger kitty

Ok, enough! Let's eat. Just look at this spread!

And my crazy full plate!
After such a feast we were all pretty much zombies. Then crammed in some pie.

You may make a squash lover out of me yet.

I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong. I need to rethink squash. I've eaten it of course. I don't hate it I just don't love it. I'm talking the hard winter squashes, not summer squash and zucchini. I have always eaten some kind of squash with Thanksgiving meal and usually Christmas. More tradition then craving. I am changing my tune now though. Over mofo with all these amazing looking recipes featuring soooo many squishes, I mean squashes. So I decided to try one. It's actually not from a mofoer but some mofos have tried it and verified it's deliciousness so I trusted and went for it.

With one carnival squash at hand I made Vegan Yum Yum's Squash Bisque. Yes I was using a different squash than was called for. Yes I had to scale down the recipe because I only had about 1 lb of squash. Luckily the recipe is all embracing, or very forgiving. It can be both can't it?
See how beautiful it is. So coming from a not-quite-a squash lover, try this soup.

So you need dessert too don't you? Lex though I was making too many chocolate desserts. I that even possible? Well just to satisfy him I threw together some non chocolate cookies tonight. The oatmeal raisin cookies from Eat Drink Be Vegan.
This woman knows cookies! I like that most of the recipes (as in, the ones I've made so far) make one sheet of cookies. They are truly quick recipes.

Cookies! and a good book

Chocolate Mint Melties. Yes, that's right. Chocolatey, minty, melty.
Chocolate mint melties from Eat, Drink, Be Vegan, Dreena Burton's latest cookbook offering.
Ok, I can hear the cries for more cookies
These are 5-spice Almond Cookies. There is just something about that crackled look on the top of a cookie. I love it. Can't say why. It's just cool looking and comforting in some holidays with your gran kinda way.

So many people have already sung the praises and talked the talk of this book. I've had it for a while and made a lot of the recipes in it. Talk about a tasty, useful, weeknight dinner book.

This book is broken up into ten recipe sections: Breakfast, Hummus, Nibbles, Sauces/Dressings, Soup/Stews, Sandwiches, Mains, Sides, Desserts, Beverages. In addition to the recipes there are sections there are cooking notes, kitchen tips, baking notes, grain and bean cooking guides

Cocoa Banana Muffins
Also from the breakfast section I can recommend the Tomato Basil Quesadilla.

Black Bean & Orange Hummus (I wasn't completely into this, just too citrusy for my hummus taste) but the Roasted Red Pepper and Almond Hummus was too good.

Zucchini Chickpea Tomato Curry

Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet PotatoesGoddess Garbanzos with Polenta Fries. I had never had polenta fries before and she made it sound like I was missing out so I had to try them. She was right. I was missing out.

Sesame Lime Soba with Shiitake and Snow PeasBean & Corn Tortilla Lasagna

Allow me to also recommend:
Pan Fried Tempeh (if you don't think you like tempeh you might be wrong here)
Tamari Roasted Chickpeas (my husband went crazy for these. There were some on the plate. He gobbled those up then pointed at the empty spot and said "any more?")
White Bean & Walnut Bruschetta (I've made this a couple times now. Really good as a appetizer or as a side with pasta).
Coco-Coconut Chili
Sweet Potato Lentil Chili (awesome awesome cold weather dish)
Popeye Pasta
Teriyaki Quinoa

Chocolate Sin-namon Cake with Creamy Vanilla Frosting. Check out the crumb on this cake. It was so light I couldn't get a neat slice. This was a really good cake.

For more desserts do try:
All-purpose Vanilla Cake (the best vanilla cake I have tried so far)
Chocolate Hazelnut Cream Frosting (for the vanilla cake obviously)
Strawberry Cream Frosting
Super Charge Me! Cookies (good travel cookies when you think the airline might ignore the fact you're vegan even though you chose the "pure vegetarian" option).

I still have more recipes to try so I'm sure I'll eventually have another collection of photos to drool on. If only I had better photography skills and a really kickass camera then you'd be in real trouble.

Pizza anyone?

Tonight I decided on pizza. So simple yet so satisfying. I had yet to try the pizza recipe in Dreena Burton's Eat Drink Be Vegan so the final answer was easy. Making pizza from scratch can be time consuming, Dreena calls for a pre-made pizza crust for her pizza focusing more on the topping & sauce.

I wanted to make it entirely from scratch so first order of business, get that pizza dough going. If you do not have a bread machine, I very highly recommend one. Making dough by hand is a great skill to have but a bread machine helps when time is tight but you don't want to compromise with someone/something else's bread. Lex picked one up for me from a resale/reuse place in town called Recycle North for $10. It's in perfect condition and makes perfect bread every time. This little baby is actually rather large as it will hold up to a 2lb loaf but they do come in smaller sizes. For things like dinner rolls and tonight's pizza dough there is a dough setting which will mix, knead, & rise your dough so you'll just need to take the dough and form it to your needs. So I popped my pizza dough ingredients into the pan of the machine (I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance) and 1.5 hrs later the dough was ready. While the machine did it's magic I could prep the sauce and other toppings and run through a few dishes.

The sauce for this pizza is super yum. A slightly spicy peanut sauce, very simple to throw together. Spread your dough on the pan, top, place in preheated oven and we get: