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!

Summer Thus Far

Woah, I'm not quite sure what to do with this new blogger format. It feels like Wordpress in an uncomfortable way. =\ Meh, whatever.

SO! Sorry that I haven't posted anything in forever. It's been a hell of a few months. First, I finally graduated with my BA in art, and now I'm taking summer classes to kick off my graduate degree in education. Along with that, I have a summer job as summer school teacher. The kids, while stressful and, well, kids, are amazing and I love my job. We're doing our lessons in an "Around the World" theme, so last week was Kenya and this week is France. Next week, we're headed to Mexico! :D I'm seriously loving this. As I type, I'm reviewing a movie for them to watch on Friday (our "free day" in which they get to watch a movie, eat some French food, and play outside).

 Also, I'm doing the 300x30 challenge, which is where you do 300 crunches a day for 30 days. It's day three, and I've completed my first 100 (I do them in sets to keep from hating everything). So far, so good. I imagine the first week will be the hardest (usually is), and if I can make it past day three, I can do the whole thing. Today should be the day I am most sore, and boy do I believe it. Also promised one friend we'd do weightlifting at the rec this afternoon and another friend that I would go swing dancing with him tonight, so I'm probably going to just collapse into bed as soon as I get home. Today will be long, tiring, and incredibly fun, so here's to coffee, the cool breeze coming in my window, and the promise of sleeping in tomorrow because my boss doesn't need me to take over the class til 11. :D

 In regards to the 300x30, I will post before and after pictures, but bear in mind that I'm also weight lifting and occasionally dancing and always eating a healthy vegan diet during this, so who knows how much my results will vary from the norm. So yay! That's my summer thus far. Tristan will be here on and off (currently off, D:), but otherwise it's just me and the students and the spiders in my house (whom I've sadly grown accustomed to). Ciao!

y0 dawg

Hola, long time no see. Apparently, this is going to be the semester that kills me. Despite the fact that I'm right on schedule for completing my senior show, I feel like I'm behind schedule. I have a solid three-day block with pretty much zero time for homework, meaning I need to complete all homework over the weekend and try to keep it straight for the next week. I'm about to start student teaching on Wednesdays in a room full of gradeschoolers who are probably aware of how much they intimidate me. I'm planning my wedding (btw, we're engaged!). I'm coordinating my singing group's spring festival. I haven't completely given up on my dream of continuing to have at least a meager social life (read as: dancing probably once a month and having the freedom to watch a movie with a friend on occasion or have my roommate kick my ass at Mario Kart). I'm not asking much, life. Just let me stay sane through May and it'll all work out. (Right? Right.)

On an unrelated note, huzzah! I've been vegan a year now and still going strong. Here's a fantastic (and short, 12 minute-ish) video about the social and environmental impact of a vegan lifestyle.

A Life Connected: VEGAN from NonviolenceUnited.org on Vimeo.

Love yo faces (and yes, I watch too much PhillyD).

This might hurt

Hey everyone, long time no blog. I'm sorry that this blog seems to be slowly dying, but, like old diaries, I'll probably come back to it every now and then to reminisce. That said, this post is not a goodbye. I'm hoping it's actually a wake-up call for some people.

I told y'all back in February that I've gone vegan. I still am. I am not the sort of person who preaches. I grew up with one, and I understand how off putting that approach can be. Also, I appreciate it when people stay out of my business, so I try to stay out of theirs. However, I stumbled across a video interview with Ellen DeGeneres earlier today in which she was answering questions about her own veganism. She mentioned the film Earthlings, saying it was a major player in her decision. The interviewer then asked if Ellen had seen Food, Inc., and if that video had cemented what she'd learned in Earthlings. Ellen replied that Food, Inc. had seemed like a Disney movie in comparison. Having seen the film and having been disgusted by it, I was curious how intense Earthlings might actually be. Conveniently, the full film is available on YouTube and was a recommended video on the sidebar. I watched it. She was right.

People frequently ask me if my veganism is a health thing or an ethics thing. I always told them it was health. That answer has changed, now, and I honestly regret having answered any differently in the past.

I am not a perfect person. Sometimes I drink too much, I procrastinate, I can't keep an exercise schedule to save my life, I swear like a sailor, and I let dishes pile up in the sink. These are but a few of my many downfalls. I do, however, make an honest effort to improve the world I live in, and I am proud to say that I do not contribute to the brutality visited upon animals. Below, I'm embedding Earthlings in its entirety. Whether or not you click "play" is up to you.

No Angst This Time! :D

Hey kids, it's time for a post on a particulaly awesome day in my life.

Thursday night, I discovered the perfect cut jeans for myself but couldn't find my size in my price range, so Friday started out with me finally finding them (and my butt looks stellar in them, thank you), and the library had one of my favorite movies (Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie), and then boyfriend and I shared a bloomin' onion for dinner and caught a movie I've been dying to see since it was in production. It's called "FORKS OVER KNIVES," and it's a documentary on how nutirtion affects diseases of affluence (heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, hypertension, etc.). It's based, largely, off the work of Caldwell Esselstyn, MD, and T. Colin Campbell, MD. I don't currently have time to write a full review of the film (will follow, no worries), but it's amazing. I can't say it changed my life because Campbell's book, The China Study, already did, but it changed boyfriend's. That alone makes driving past four theaters to get to the only one showing FOK worth it.

SO! Hometown peeps, head out to the plaza and WATCH IT. It'll make you think. This is one of the few films I've seen where movie goers clustered outside the exit to chat about what they'd seen and ask serious, thoughtful questions.

Also, boyfriend is amazing and y'all should be jealous. :D

It's Official

I'm going vegan.

As many of you know, I've been a vegetarian for close to three years now (March 18th). I know many people who have made the jump to veganism and rave about it, and I've been in a bit of a rut lately emotionally and physically. I'm always tired, I'm frequently depressed, I never want to exercise, blah blah blah. And I'm sick of it.

So I told myself I'd go vegan for a week. I don't mean going out and buying a week's worth of Amy's frozen vegan meals (which are delicious, by the way, and I'm in no way slamming the line), I mean real cook-for-yourself and actually-buy-vegetables kind of vegan. It's been two full days and I feel incredible.

This morning, I didn't shut my alarm off and roll over again for the first time in two months. I worked out. Even though classes were cancelled and I mostly lazed around the house, I feel like my body is happier with me. I haven't been depressed all week. I'm learning to bake vegan (which so far is equally as tasty and doens't make my stomach hurt afterwards (I'm also lactose-intolerant and used to ignore that and eat cheese anyway)).

Long story short, I can't wait to see the long-term benefits. If two days can make me feel like this, I will happily be in it for the long-haul. And no, I won't berate anyone for not being a vegan or jump on a soapbox and preach like the vegangelicals do, but I will be happy to cook for anyone and show them how tasty and healthy this lifestyle can be.

Here's to a new me. =)