Tofurkey Day!

Mmmm, I loves me some thanksgiving! How can you top a holiday where you reflect on what you're thankful for in your life and then cook and eat fabulous food? We never even got dressed or left the house once! It was a fabulous day.

We also adopted/sponsored a turkey through the Farm Sanctuary. Isn't Hildy cute?!?
We had a 99% vegan holiday, enjoyed by just my husband, our son (who doesn't actually eat food yet) and myself. It was low-key, fun and fabulous!

The menu:

Tofurkey Roast

Basted with olive oil, Braggs liquid aminos, and poultry seasoning. I think this was the best Tofurkey I've ever had! Tender and salty and delicious.

Mashed Potatoes and Mushroom Gravy

We added some Tofutti Sour Supreme to the mashers to make them extra-creamy! The mushroom gravy recipe was from La Dolce Vegan, I believe it was called "Malloreigh's Mushroom Gravy" or something like that. It was really good and soooo easy to make! I'm pretty sure that short of premade/instant gravy, this was the easiest gravy recipe I've every made.

Cornbread Stuffing

I used Wolffie's "Buttermilk" Cornbread recipe from La Dolce Vegan except I made it in the cast iron skillet, which is my usual preferred method for cornbread. However, this made it a little bit drier than I would have liked, so next time I'll probably just bake it in the pan as recommended. But the stuffing was fabulous! I used Bryanna's recipe.

Crapple

Ok, I know with a name like "Crapple," this dish deserves some explanation. It's actually called something like "Cranberry Apple Dish" or something, but one thanksgiving my mother hilarioulsy and accidentally renamed it when she offered one of our guests some "crapple."

CRAPPLE (AKA CRANBERRY/APPLE DISH)

1 can cranberry jelly
2 C of cored, peeled & chopped apples
1 ½ C quick oatmeal (uncooked) (I've used regular oats and they work fine, too)
¾ C Brown sugar
½ C flour (scant)
1 stick melted vegan margerine (I used Earth Balance Buttery Sticks)

Mix jelly & apples & put in baking dish. Mix topping & put on jelly & apple mixture. Pour melted margerine over top & bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Can also top with 1/3 C pecans.

OMG crapple is so good, we had some for breakfast this morning!

Potato-Rosemary Rolls
(the slightly unvegan item)

We made these rolls last year, and they are soooooo good and easy, especially if you have a bread machine. The only thing is they were un-vegan, because a) I don't know what to replace nonfat dry milk with and b)I kind of want to use up the dry milk and c)they also had some unvegan instant mashed potatoes in them that I wanted to use up. But they could probably be totally vegan with no prob if you used Barbara's instant mashed potatoes and maybe just skipped the dry milk altogether? Maybe someone out there knows a replacement for dry milk and will write in a tell me!

Cran-Orange Relish

Chad makes this concoction of fresh cranberries, whole oranges (peels and all!) and sugar in the food processor. Adjust to taste, and enjoy!

Pumpkin-Tofu Cheesecake

Oh I was so excited/nervous about this "cheese"cake! It is out of La Dolce Vegan, and the description said that it had fooled omnivores in the past, but I was still a little skeptical since it was all tofu and no tofutti cream cheese. But it was realllly good! I can't wait to have some more. Maybe now is a good time for more. Now? Ok, how bout now?

This was also super easy, involving mostly just the food processor and a springform pan. I would definitely make it again.

And that's it! Oh, we did have some red wine, too. Yay for Thanksgiving! And yay for all of our leftovers!!!!

So I was away for two weeks in Oregon helping my Mom recover from surgery (double mastectomy, in case you were wondering).

I was as vegan as possible, which wasn't very much. Partly out of laziness, partly out of trying not to stress my parents out even more during a difficult time.

I feel good being home and back to the vegan-ness though. I was feeling pretty yicked out by the end of the trip.

ANYWAY.

I've been cooking up a storm lately. Here's what we've been eating:

Sunday:
Breakfast: brunch fiasco, can never speak of this again. Just know that eating out Sunday morning in Michigan is not for the faint of heart.

Lunch: Chili Con Bulger and Baking Powder Biscuits, both from La Dolce Vegan.
YUM! We improvised a little since we had little in the way of fresh vegetables, but it came out reallllly good. We added an extra can of beans, and about 1/8 tsp of chipotle powder and it was fabulous.

Dinner: Nachos using blue corn chips and our chili from lunch, some tofutti sour cream (a little sketchy - probably better in recipes than straight) and some smoked tillamook cheddar we are trying to use up.

Monday - Chad took the day off work to make sure he wasn't getting sick and to hang out with us, so it was like Sunday all over!

Breakfast: Freedom French Toast from La Dolce Vegan. Trader Joe's Breakfast Patties (vegan, yay!)
OMG, yum!!! Best french toast I've had in a long time. I'm not such a french toast fan in general, but Chad loves the stuff, and it got 2 very enthusiastic thumbs up from him. The key here for us was to a) not cover it like the directions said b)only use low heat (around 2.4 on our stove) and c)use a little "butter" to grease the pan each time. The first piece was a disaster from too high heat, but the rest just kept getting better and better!

Lunch: Leftover Chili and biscuits

Dinner: Tofurkey Avocado Reubens.
OMG so freaking good, we thought we would both die. We adapted the PETA Avocado Reuben recipe by adding Hickory Smoked Tofurkey to the mix and leaving the avocado sliced instead of mashed. Chad and I both agreed that we seriously did not miss the cheese at all and that these were some of the best darn Reubens we had ever had. In fact, we liked them so much we had them again for lunch today!

Dessert: Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemony Frosting
Ok, these are pretty good, but not the best ever. The cupcakes themselves are good, it's the frosting that skeeves me out a little. The fact that it has shortening in it and little flavoring per se just leaves me feeling slightly greasy when I'm done eating them. Next time I think I would try another frosting recipe, like maybe straight vanilla.

Ok Silas is hungry now and I hate typing with one hand!