Vegan Thanksgiving 2012

Hey guys! Yesterday was the second annual "Way too early to actually be a Thanksgiving party vegan Thanksgiving party!"  Friends drove in from around the state, and many wonderful noms were had (amidst the videogaming and drinking of wine and spiked cider, of course).

Now let me just say that I have never been a modest cook.  I know what I do well, and I do those things in abundance, but I have never before had a table of (mostly) omnivores clap for me.  Twice, I might add.  It was weird and slightly uncomfortable, but in retrospect my ego is having a field day with it.

BUT ANYWAY, you're all here to see the food, right?  And to steal the recipes I used?  Good.  Here they are!  (And I'm sorry, but in the insanity of getting everything put together yesterday, no pictures were taken, so you get shots of my leftovers.)

Here's what's left of the spread.  There were also pumpkin cinnamon rolls (more on that later) and some crescent rolls with Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter (and oh holy god, go buy some and put it in your mouth).

First up, the stuffing:

This recipe is one that my family has used for years (but they use actual sausage and turkey instead of my tofurky stuff).  I don't know that I've ever actually used a recipe for this, but I'll do my best to guess accurately.  Really, go with your gut, and always use more sage than you think you should, and it will turn out exactly like my dad's.

Ingredients:
Sage stuffing mix (the rough equivalent of two boxes of Stove Top stuffing (but theirs has chicken in it; bleh)
Vegetable broth (one cup more than is called for by the stuffing)
olive oil (at your leisure, Thanksgiving isn't about eating healthily)
1 onion, diced
1 - 1 1/2 cups of diced mushrooms
1 pkg Tofurky turkey slices (optional), diced
1 pkg Tofurky beer brats (not even slightly optional), cut into half circles
salt, pepper to taste
1/2 tsp garlic
1/2 tsp marjoram
1 tsp thyme
at least 1 tablespoon of sage


Dump stuffing into large bowl, pour in all the broth (including the extra cup, should be quite wet).  Sautee the onions and mushrooms with the seasonings, add to stuffing.  Sautee diced turkey slices, add to stuffing.  Brown the beer brats (or other vegan sausage) in the pan and add to stuffing.  You may have to do it in two batches depending on how big your skillet is.    Mix everything together really well, and let it sit covered in the fridge overnight.  Next day, bake for 30-40 minutes at 375 (uncovered) and then eat everything.  (You may actually add more liquid before you bake it.  It should be pretty wet before it goes in.)


 Moving on, we had some green bean and corn casserole!

I used this recipe (here)  but with some adjustments.  First off, I doubled the green beans (two cans instead of one) and added a can of corn (it's a little soupy with just one can of beans).  Then, I nixed the carrots, and used flour to make a roux with the veggies before adding the milk instead of mixing cornstarch with water.  Then, in place of the french fried onions, my family likes to crush up toll house crackers and cover the top with that.  This is also one I like to make the day before (without the crackers) and then bake the day of to save myself some time/sanity.  Crackers go on right before it goes in the oven, and this stuff is delish.

I don't have a close up of the sweet potatoes, but essentially, I peeled, cubed, and boiled two large sweet potatoes, drained the water, added about 1/4 cup of soy milk, some vegan margarine, and about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar and then mashed the hell out of them.  So good.

Also unpictured are the cranberry sauce and the roasted cauliflower.  The cranberry sauce, I say without shame, came from a can.  As far as I'm concerned, it's kind of the fruitcake of Thanksgiving.  No one is excited about it, but you kind of have to have it.  The cauliflower you just chop, toss with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper and then bake at 375 for about 25 minutes until it's golden brown.

Now, the best part.  Pumpkin cinnamon rolls.  Sadly, this is the only picture I have of them.

 I take it as a testament to their goodness that they are the only thing I had no leftovers of.  Also, I only made eight (and there were seven of us, and Tristan had the other one for breakfast).  However, the website I got the recipe from (here) does have some lovely pictures.  Oh, they were perfect.  Totally a new tradition.

And my favorite part, scarfing down all the leftovers.  This is what Thanksgiving is all about it.  Well, this is what hosting Thanksgiving is about.

Look at all that glorious food.  Nomnomnomnomnom.

Oh, and here's the spiked cider I mentioned.  Well, this is just cider.  We heated all the cider in a big pot on the stove, and then you pour some vanilla vodka into a glass and top it with this, and it tastes like apple pie.  I preferred the Malbec I had with dinner (Hell yeah, Yellow Tail), but this was wonderful as an after with the cinnamon rolls.

After dinner, we all rolled ourselves to the N64 to play Super Smash Bros. and MarioKart, and a lovely time was had by all.  Tristan and I finished the night off by watching It's a Wonderful Life, and then fell asleep to the storm that rolled through town.

So that was my Thanksgiving up here at school.  The family one will be much closer to actual Thanksgiving, but this gives me a test run on all my recipes and lets me eat all the leftovers, so it's definitely a tradition I'll keep up for as long as I can. 

Here's hoping your Thanksgiving is as tasty and lovely as mine was!

Senior Year, Semester One

Holy crap, I'm a senior. When did that happen?

It's been weird getting used to school this semester. My house is the same, my roommates are the same, but I'm painting now and boyfriend is living in a different city. The painting is okay, I guess, but the second part is kind of suck. Seeing as this is the worst thing that's ever happened in our relationship though, I should probably count myself lucky and just shut up.

On the painting front, I'm in two painting classes (2&3) simultaneously so that I can still graduate on time, and I'm thinking that for all of my P2 projects, I'll focus on style variation and medium control, and for my P3 assignments, I'll do a series on pigs. It's not exactly going to be all snorts and sunshine, though. I'll probably do three or four adorable paintings and the last one will be either a plate of bacon or a picture of "blooding," which is where a hog is hung upside down and has its throat slit. Yes, it's gruesome, but the American fantasy of a green pasture with happy little pigs rolling in the mud is utter crap and people should be aware.

But for now, here's the first adorable painting.


It still needs some love in some places, but it's generally done.

Moving on, my a cappella group recorded all (most of) our new songs on Saturday and we should have a CD ready to sell by our Spring concert at the end of March. So stoked!! It's going to be awesome, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

I'll try to actually blog this semester. Jill and I have been experimenting a lot with cooking, so maybe exciting food stuff will appear on here. This will not become a food blog. There are already a ton of those that are much better than this one would be (Vegan Yum Yum, Use Real Butter, etc.).

If anyone still reads this thing, thanks for sticking around! I'll try not to disappoint.

All I Want for Christmas Is My Sanity Back.

Did I need to make a cheesy omelet on toast and hashbrowns right when I got home tonight? No. Did my skinny jeans appreciate the grease and salt? Probably not. Did that stop me from scarfing it down like I was starving and it was five-star cuisine? You bet your ass it didn't. You know why? Because the studio caught on fire tonight, I'm suddenly in a management position I didn't ask for, I have tons of concerts coming up that I don't really feel like going to, I forgot to buy butter, and I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a train. Welcome to real life, right?

Seriously, though, I'm going to lose my mind. I just finished the project of doom (see end of post) that was eating about 3-6 hours of every day on top of scheduled class time (and I even took it home with me over Thanksgiving break), and now I'm doing my final for that class: the same thing, but I get to pick my subject and I have to print all of my own fabrics. Goodbye, rest of my semester.

Tomorrow, I FINALLY get to finish the rock sculpture I've been working on all semester in my sculpture class and start (hopefully) on my glass piece that I've been looking forward to all Fall. After that, it's (theoretically) smooth sailing.

I am so ready to be done with this semester. (Or, you know, college in general.)

Project of Doom. Never again.

Thanks Giving

I never really got this holiday. I mean, being thankful is all well and good, but pilgrims and indians? That's kind of bull. There was no turkey at that dinner, we spent the next two hundred years screwing over the Native Americans at every turn, and we're one of the few coutries in the world that really, really doesn't need a few (thousand) extra calories for however long our leftovers hold out.

And I'm a vegetarian, so yeah, I'm kinda disenchanted about the whole deal.

But I am thankful. I'm thankful that I have a home to go back to over the holidays with people who love me. I'm thankful for parents with whom I can speak candidly and honestly and not be judged, even though I know they frequently disagree with me. I'm thankful for a boyfriend who treats me right and respects me. I'm thankful for dogs to wrestle with, even though there are several moments that make me want to strangle them (like when they get a bath, or a neighbor walks past the house, or I play piano and they "sing along"). I'm also really thankful that I can cook (and enjoy it), because I'll be doing a lot of that.

On a less "d'awwwww" note, I'm also thankful for food network. We don't have a working TV at school, so I really never watch TV except at home. I missed watching people cook.

Well, off to make Thanksgiving rolls to freeze and then bake on Thursday. Here's hoping that working in retail this Black Friday doesn't kill me!