My Vegan Thanksgiving

Happy day after Thanksgiving.. Sorry there this will be very short and to the point.. My Mom and oldest son is here visiting, our time together is to short for me to be sitting in front of the computer for too long.... I do hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving and a will have a wonderful weekend.

Soooo what was on my plate?

-Smashed cauliflower-used 2 tbl. vegan sour cream + earth balance + one head of cauliflower.
-Mushroom gravy from Vegan Vittles.
-I made the sausage tempeh from Vegan w/ a vengeance and use that in my stuffing.
-I also tried the Savory Wild Rice Stuffed Onions from Veg Family's- The vegan holiday table.
-Tofurky from How it all Vegan.
I also made regular mashed potatoes and cranberries.
One Tofu pumpkin pie- I suggest adding 3 tbl cornstarch to that recipe and using firm silken tofu.. Turns out perfect everytime.
One Impossible Vegan Pumpkin pie from The fatfreevegan.. w/ a dollop of tofu whip cream from How it all vegan.

Alaskan Vegan Kid Food at it's Very Best!

Ya me! I happen to love low stress happy dinners! I try not to cater to the kids to much and expose them to things they may or may not like.. But, at the same time I really do appreciate low stress dinners. It's a mothers dilemma.. I swear Emma would have "hot dog"soup (Cheezy corn and frank chowder from Bryanna's 20 min. to dinner) every day and Mr. Eli pick would be bean and cheese burritos. So here are three creations the kids have never had before and loved ...really whats not to love?

First off we have a Calzone - I used Bryannas(Nonna's Italian Kitchen pg. 199) pizza crust recipe (w/ 1/2 whole wheat). Stuffed inside is breast of tofu aka tofu chicken from the same book pg. 170, diced and sauteed w/ garlic then added some jar spaghetti sauce, pineapple and the last of our stash of veganrella (sniffle).
Next from Vegan Planet Thai Peanut-burger wraps pg. 459 w/ spicy peanut dipping sauce pg 160. The 'burger' part is made up of onions, garlic, ginger peanuts, tofu, peanut butter, cilantro, soy sauce, chili paste and bread crumbs. Me oh my it was very good and the kids loved it! Emma especially liked the spice peanut sauce. The 'burger' part is baked and well, mine didn't hold up and turned out very crumbly- but worked great in the wrap.
Oh happy days.. Again Vegan Planet Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchilada pg 361. I saw this done by Seattlegal over at The Vegan Cookbook tester (Her picture is soo much nicer then my mess here), My first thought how much the kids would love them and for me- what a welcome change to our regular enchiladas. Well, when I went to get my cookbook low and behold that page was already marked w/ a yellow sticky. < -I guess I shall publicly confess here -> I often go to bed w/ a arm full of cookbooks and read them. Then I mark pages that I think the kids would eat, ah ya, while watching the food network sounds kinda weird huh? Needless to say this contributes heavily to my midnight munchies and my waist size because I after all have no self control! (its on my wish list though).
Any way these were a big hit! I made some home made enchilada sauce to go over it. I feed some to my older daughter Amber (17 years old) and her friends.. one of the boys asked "wow- so no meat in there huh?" and when I told him it was black beans and sweet potatoes he said " these are so good- I have eaten sweet potatoes before but, I have never liked them.". I thought they were very reminiscent of the Addictive Sweet potato recipe, give them a try-if you don't have Vegan Planet- you wouldn't be sorry (after all of 338 reviews it receives a 4.5 out of 5)! Be sure to read the reviews they offer a lot of great ideas- oh and change the serving size its default is 12 servings. And now I will leave you w/ this picture of little ms. Emma all tuckered out from playing in the snow all day. She is curled up in our kitty Sammy's bed- Evidently it's not just for kitty's anymore.

A Snow Day...

Winter is here! The kids are home from school- A SNOW DAY! Yesterday we got well over a foot of snow and they are warning us another foot on the way. Last year we didn't get our first dusting after Christmas. The first picture is a the view from our kitchen window. Does it look kind of familiar? My blog header picture was taken from my bedroom deck which is directly above the kitchen a couple of years ago.
This is a shot from out the front door..
Now on to the food.. A vegan breakfast crepe from The Garden of Vegan pg.41With some dinner crepe filling (Again, from the Garden of Vegan pg. 157) It consist of red onion, garlic, mushrooms, small tomato, red lentils, green beans and the recipe called for walnuts but, I didn't have any so I substituted some toasted pine nuts.

And the final product- a dinner crepe.. The verdict? Well, the kids ate theirs but, thought it was mighty strange. Evidently (in their 4 and 5 year old world) pancakes are flat w/ butter and syrup. It is my job to keep them on their toes, is it not? I thought it was pretty darn tasty. The crepes worked out beautifully, very reminiscent of my honeys Swedish pancakes he use to make.
And for desert... cranberry Apple crisp from La Dolce Vegan pg.234. I used some fresh cranberry's instead of frozen. I don't know if that influenced the tart factor but, the little kids didn't eat to much of it. I sent the rest w/ my older daughter Amber so her and her friends could finish it off.
I tried Leslie's Tofu Noodle soup- Well, I adapted--her adapted soup. I made a small batch, because my honey is gone again. My other changes include little bits of wheat gluten (equal portions of wheat gluten and water. Cut into tiny pieces) rather then tofu, I also added corn and green beans. A one pot wonder! LOVE THOSE! (0h ya, art by Emma)
And finally last night the kids and I got home late- Well, let me rephrase that we got in late. After picking up Eli from kindergarten there was some serious snow for the kids to play in and for me to shovel.. So here we have once again some baked tofu nuggets, I aslo made 'cheese' sauce for some left over noodles and asparagus.. Yep, Megan the vegan mention it being particularly odd -that its on sale in the the winter- being a spring vegetable and all.. Funny that was my first thought too, when I saw it on sale here.

Okay guys- It must be time to go play in the snow huh? errr.. and shovel!

our vegan dinners

BBQ seitan w/ homemade bbq sauce from the Vegan World Fusion Cuisine cookbook. I was really trying to come up w/ another way for us to eat seitan w/ out frying it. This worked out really well. First I marinated the seitan in the bbq sauce for about an hour and baked it @375 for about 30-40 minutes. Corn bread from the Cookin Southern Vegetarian style cookbook. Along side are smashed sweet potato's and green beans. Rice noodles w/ eggs broccoli and dark sweet soy sauce from the cookbook Real Vegetarian Thai. Instead of eggs I used some of Bryanna's Curried "chicken" from her cook book Authentic Chinese cuisine that I had in the freezer. I also used the "chicken" to fill the won ton wrappers (baked, not fried).

I found this Celebration loaf in the store and knew the kids and I would be home late and wanted to try some new fast food. The label reads "premium vegan grain meat stuffed w/ butternut squash, apples and mushroom" I couldn't get a picture of the label but, you can check it out here at their web site. What intrigued me most was that it is not a soy based fast food, rather wheat gluten. And the verdict? Well, when I got home and looked at the label a little closer it is rather high in fat. The kids had mixed feelings about it, the first few bites they really liked, but in the end they didn't eat it all. I thought it was okay, and would make a really good sandwich. But, like most pre-made packaged foods it rather spendy(well, over $6.00).

a few of our vegan family favorites

Another Yummy repeat- General Tao's Seitan
Nope its not baby food.. This one of my all time favorite soups! It comes from the cookbook Vegan Vittles, Cheddary cheeze soup. I usually make it w/ the broccoli this time I made it w/ cauliflower. Basically it uses silken tofu and nutritional yeast flakes as the cheeze base. I am totally addicted to the nutritional flakes (does anybody else out there have this "problem"?). We call them cheezy flakes in our house, Emma and I often have cheezy flakes on toast or bagels in the morning. Oops, I digress- back to the soup....I have to puree it all for my children's sake-they prefer their veggies raw. Neither like cooked carrots, one doesn't like visible onions the other one doesn't like cooked cauliflower. They both prefer this soup over the kind I make w/ broccoli. I also made a whole wheat beer bread - I often substitute the all purpose flour with a combination of spelt and almond meal- it always works out great. I have also used different kind of beers w/ great results. It seems the lighter beers give it a more of a sourdough kind of taste, I however prefer to drink darker beers and those work fine. It is a very forgiving recipe.
Yep, more enchiladas.

The almost vegan birthday...

Yes, she does exist my oldest daughter Amber who turned 17 on October 30th. We celebrated it a couple days late with a couple of her friends and a bean taco bar. Amber or her friends are by no means vegetarian let alone vegan, but there where no complaints. I made a layered bean dip from The garden of vegan (pg 105) leaving out the vegan cheese but, did have some regular shredded cheddar on the side (hence the almost vegan title). I made the Vwav lemon gem cupcakes (Ambers favorite) into a cake and the icing from here The little ones got a lick of the frosting and gave it "ten thumbs up.. No wait a hundred thumbs up!" Yep, the little kids again made the wrapping paper. Amber w/ her boyfriend Brendon.


Other then that I have just been cooking a lot of non blog worthy repeats this week. I didn't even take pictures. "Chicken" fried seitan, baked tofu nuggets, and last night I was so lazy we just had boca burgers.