last but, not least..

I must be the very last blogger to post Thanksgiving one week and a couple days late.. hummm... My Beautiful Mom came w/ her Beautiful Mom..(my Granny, my kids Great Granny).. what a joy to have four generations at our table... That is what Thanksgiving is all about.. is it not? Good times were had by all! I hope everyone out there had a great day too! Here is my Thanksgiving plate mostly thanks to the The Real Food Daily cookbook. Wow, it was a lot of work and prep but, worth the effort. I made the corn sage stuffing. Be warned it says it serves eight, I think they meant 8 starving football players because man o live I could not lift that pan w/ one hand if I tried! It was an obscene amount of stuffing. I also made the Mushroom gravy... The best gravy ever! a bit spendy w/ all of the mushrooms but, by far the best gravy I have ever made! And again it makes a BOAT LOAD! I used it for the green bean casserole which was by far the hit of the night! Again a heck of a lot of work(making the gravy and frying two large onions)- no cans of funky onions or salty soup was opened in the process! ohhhh VEGAN GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE.. (makes my mouth water just writing about it!!!) I would say that recipes needs to be doubled to keep everyone happy (everything but the fried onions there seemed to be plenty for the topping). I also made the faux Turkey breasts from the same book. Very good! I don't know if I would make those again though. I really liked last years Tofurky from How it all Vegan.. It was just so easy and the right amount.. Just for me!

Not pictured is my ol' standbytofu pumpkin pie.. from vegweb .. everybody still loves this (I have been making this for years).. This year we had some very omni guest this year who even asked for that recipe.. claiming it is the best pumpkin pie they have ever had!!! I always use extra firm silken tofu and 3 tbs cornstarch... mix everything in the blender and Viola! Easy as pie!
From ED&BV the white bean and Rosemary soup... ummm... I thought the recipe looked very flippen kid friendly but, my kids did not like it! maybe too many fresh herbs? rather then dried? I just don't know, I am sure I will try it again on them both.. . Little Ms. Emma thought it tasted better w/ cheese flakes (nutritional yeast flakes) I thought it was very good and ohhhh so creamy!
ohhh the mac daddy from v-con! (isn't it funny how there have been just waves of the same recipes in the blog world from the same new books?) The kids LOVED this too no end! they had two servings and little Eli BEGGED me to put in his lunch for the next day! Me and honey personally like my cheese sauce a tad better.. Funny thing is there is very little difference. Evidently a difference enough though!... I think next time I will do my sauce w/ the crumbled bit of tofu! that seemed to add a bit of moisture my baked mac and cheese was missing. ..

This was a quickie dinner.. I was shopping at our Safeway and noticed this sauce was half off.. Okay, I never have any vodka laying around and have heard really good things about a vodka pasta sauce... (oh by the way this was one was accidentally vegan). I was very curious. .. and well, normally this bottle of pasta sauce was ten bucks! ahhh ya.. For that price it should be flipping fab huh? even at five bucks it seems to me to quite a stretch! Because, even Safeway has an organic pasta sauce for $ 3 .50... any hoo I bought it.. Eli had a Dr. apt. after school leaving me very little time to come home and make a fab dinner and it seemed like the perfect time to try this over price sauce... verdict? A big fat ehh... Nothing to write home about about! Thank goodness I was not one of the suckers who paid ten flippen dollars for it! I added some silk creamer to it as suggested on the bottle.. but it was still jarred sauce... oh well... evidently I need me some vodka around the house to make my own sauce...!

Back to the kid food- Vegan pizza, tacos, mac &cheese OH MY

From the Real Food Daily some yellow split pea curry soup. Zeenes suggested the tacos from the Real Food Daily in a comment from my last post how to use up some of the left over seitan that the kids weren't wild about. OH MY THIS IS SO GOOD!!!! Thanks for the suggestion!
My taco picture didn't turn out so here is little Emma enjoying hers!

The kids had a guest over one night and I made them a separate dinner. Which then gave me the opportunity to do a very spicy grown up meal. From the Flavors of Korean the cucumber salad (oi sangchae), cucumber noodles (oi kuksu muchim) and fiery tofu (maeun tubu bokum). All of the recipe use the spicy gochujang paste. Honey thought the tofu was the best he had ever eaten w/ the carmelized onions it seem to have a slight BBQ taste to it. Emma LOVES the noodles and has been eating them for lunch.
Some asparagus soup I made up the recipe using a box of leek and potato soup as the base and then added a dash of this and a dash of that. In the end it was okay.. but, not great. From the Vegan Deli I made the curried tofu salad. I was trying to introduce the kids to a tofu sandwich and thought this would be a good one to start with. It has tofu, vegan mayo a bit of curry powder, crush pineapple and raisins. A bit too sweet for my liking but, the kids ate most of their sandwiches. It surely wasn't one of their favs. Not a great photo but that's some baked mac and "cheese". It seems we haven't had in a while and the kids just go CRAZY for it!

Another use for some the left over seitan.. Honey got creative and added some sausage like seasonings to some finely diced seitan fried it up and added some to our pizza. Believe me its under all those tomatoes, green onions, red onions, red pepper and mushrooms so is a bit of veganrella mozzarella. Thanks Honey! Now I will leave you w/ this shot of Emma on her snow slide Daddy helped make for the kids over the weekend. Kleo asked if maybe this was normal for us to have sooo much snow this time of year.. Well, nope under this very spot where Emma's slide is where the tulips were coming up last year at this time. The weather man is calling for YET ANOTHER 8-12 inches headed our way tonight.. only to turn to RAIN tomorrow.. Ohhh what a mess.

still cooking

Awhile back I made the lentil balls from the Vegan Lunchbox and thought that my Honey would love them (he was traveling). The kids were not that thrilled about them and I thought it was the brown lentils so this time I tried it w/ red lentils. I cut down on the cooking time but, they ended up being a bit too mushy and well, just plain not as good as the original ones.

I made some more "beefy" seitan from La Dolce Vegan and covered them in some homemade bbq and baked them. Really good flavor but, the seitan didn't firm up enough for Honey who suggested a light fry after baking would have made this over the top good!
Sweet potato curry. One of Emma's favorites.
Ginger hoisin noodles from the Everyday Vegan. I double the recipe for the sauce and marinated the tofu in it- then lightly fried it up. I used udon noodles instead of rice, which was okay but, would have been better w/ rice noodles I think. Emma LOVED these noodles. Very kid friendly.
From the Real Food Daily- I made the basic seitan in the morning (4 lbs worth!) then marinated it using the Salisbury seitan recipe then smothered it w/ some Golden Gravy(all from the same book). The kids I must say had to be coaxed to eat this one. I thought it was good. I think it was the texture of this seitan more then the flavors the kids didn't like. Everybody in our house prefers the Vegan w/ a Vengeance seitan.. So now what do I do with the other two pounds of seitan? Along side I made Granny's hurry-up dinner rolls. Which were okay.
Roasted pepper Cannellini bean Sauce from Vive le Vegan. Honey liked it - The kids and I -not so much. I added some red pepper flakes to mine.
So, I saw Bazu's post w/ her walk the other day I thought I would share w/ you what our walk looks like.. I am 5'11 and the wall of snow is about eye level. It has been one heck of a crazy year here. We are working our way to braking the snowiest year on record here in Juneau. So far this is the fourth snowiest year w/ about 177 inches the record is 194 inches. The weather forecast calls for yet another storm headed our way and snow likely all week... uuuggghhhh! Yes, I know I live in Alaska but, we live in the rain forest not way up north.

Well, truth be told I don't fair well in hot weather - but, right now I am dreaming of a warm sandy beach and a cool drink something w/ an umbrella in it!

Snow ball fight anyone?