Short and Sweet Celebration

Even though I didn't do a whole Thanksgiving spread this year, I still want to make good on my MoFo promise and explore Alicia Simpson's Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations for the holidays. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I did so by making the Classic Macaroni and Cheese and Southern-Style Greens, and ate them with some Chipotle Lime Crispy Fingers.

Quick, easy, and crazy delicious. As with her nachos, Simpson's mac and cheese required no cheese analogs, no nutritional yeast, and no plant milks. I'm not opposed to those things, but it's impressive that she creates such smooth flavor using veggies and spices only.

This book is pretty awesome, and though the chapters by holiday are fun, this is more of an every day book than I remember to give it credit for.

This picture isn't as good because of the light, but when I realized that my Pika Chu stapler was in the frame, I had to post it.

A few days later, I decided to tackle the Raw Sweet Potato Pie to make a complete meal out of the meager leftovers. That didn't go as well.

When someone says "raw" and "in your high-speed blender" in the same recipe, they do not mean in your food processor. They probably don't even mean in your Magic Bullet. They probably do mean in your $400 kitchen Sarlacc pit/Vitamix. I don't have one of those.

The pie blended up eventually, but it was frustrating and I lost a spatula in the process. All that and the flavor wasn't great. The spices were perfect, and the crust was fantastic, but raw sweet potatoes may not be right for me. No pictures for that one though. It's ugly.

It's still haunting my refrigerator, but I'm starting to have some ideas for how to re-purpose it with other leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner.

Just Reporting on the Same Holiday Everyone Else Is (Was)

I ended up going out of town to a non-vegan dinner for Thanksgiving. That's OK though - it was not the first time I'd been in that position, and I decided to try one of the recipes that inspired me during MoFo.

The Beast is a casserole layered with semi-traditional Thanksgiving foods and flavors. I say semi because soy curls are probably not totally traditional. Megan over at Down Home Vegan posted the recipe she created after competing in a Vegan Iron Chef competition. Since I needed a meal that would travel for the holiday, I decided this would be it.

I am stunned by how fast and easy this was to make. I wanted to get a head start, so I started making the components while I had a few minutes, and before I knew it, the ramekins were going in the oven.

(Sadly, none of the pictures feature the pumpkin gravy, which was subtle and surprising in flavor).

I had to make a few adjustments, and baking it in ramekins was the first, so I reduced the cooking time a bit. I have these great ramekins that are large enough to hold a meal-sized portion, and that have these handy plastic lids. So they're much easier to pack and lug around, but more importantly, I clearly had a limited amount, and I couldn't share with the omnivores.

Typically, I do like sharing, but it sucks to bring an empty casserole dish home and spend the next few days hearing about everyone else's damned sandwiches and soups while I'm making new meals and being pretty grossed out. This goes doubles for those meals at which NOTHING is suitable except what I brought.

So The Beast was quick and easy, and it worked to suit my selfish side. On top of all that, it was a dish that goes where you want it to go. I couldn't find soy curls, so I used TVP. Then, I decided that I wanted to make my own cranberry sauce, so I used Alicia Simpson's recipe, but I added the vanilla and cardamom as directed by Megan (I will never make it any other way). Finally, I forgot to top it with puff pastry, and it didn't matter because the mashed potatoes made for a lovely crispy topping.

None of that mattered, everything was amazing. Plus, like any holiday food, it was even better as leftovers. I had made it the night before, so it was all leftovers all day!

The Beast was only missing one part of a holiday meal, so I also made the Pumpkin Gingerbread with Pumpkin Butter from Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations. I made it in a loaf pan and it was super cute. I did stress a little, thinking about how I should have made a glaze rather than the butter, since it would have looked more festive. Someone should have slapped me. The combination was awesome.

So at least I ate well. It's getting harder and harder to sit down to large celebrations that are so closely linked with a practice that I find so utterly revolting. It's heartbreaking and frustrating at best. I don't want to dwell too long on that right now. I'll keep dreaming of a day when I have the space to host the type of celebration of thanks that I'd like to see - one of hope, love, and compassion for everyone.

Brutally Delicious Potatoes and Cauliflower

I am off to a good post-MoFo start! At last week's farmer's market, the man and I netted two heads of cauliflower to take advantage of a sale. The cheddar cauliflower ended up split between a very loaded Mac and Cheese-style casserole and a dragon bowl, but I hadn't made any plans for the cool, fractal-looking green cauliflower.

I had to work late one night, and when I got home, I grabbed two of my chosen books to find a way to use it up before it started growing some fractal mold.

I tried 5 Spices 50 Dishes first, but nothing grabbed me except for the insanely simple Railway Potatoes. I had all of the very common ingredients on hand, particularly a bag of potatoes that was beginning to wear out its welcome. Great! But I still wanted to use up the cauliflower.

I decided to give Vegan Fire and Spice a try since many of Robertson’s recipes are easy to make in a not-so-fully-stocked kitchen. For a moment, I was torn between the Vegetable Pakoras and the Cauliflower and Mustard Dill Sauce. The latter won out though because by a stroke of luck, I had every ingredient needed, even vegan sour cream, which I don't usually have on hand. I could have adjusted the pakoras, but I do like to make things to the letter the first time through if I can. As it was, I was already adjusting by using the green cauliflower instead of the white.

Making these dishes at the same time was easy. I only had to chop some potatoes and an onion, which I did as I steamed the head of cauliflower whole. From beginning to end, I would say I spent 20 minutes in the kitchen on the two of these together.

When we sat down to eat, I immediately hopped back up to get pictures. Usually, I wait until the next morning, and then I fix a plate of leftovers for breakfast, and snap a quick picture of that in the gorgeous morning light of my otherwise shabby apartment. At first bite, I knew that there would be no such opportunities.

The potatoes were just spicy hot, and I dare say buttery. They, along with the onions, just melted as we ate them. The dill sauce complimented the cauliflower in a surprisingly decadent way. And as it turns out, there is no way to write about tasting food that isn't just a little gross.

However, that won't stop me. In fact, a large part of why I've decided to focus on a handful of books is to get well-acquainted enough to write competent reviews for them. I've expressed my annoyance with reviewers in the past, but that was only a scratch on the surface of my seething hatred for the jerk-ass review.

One particularly grievous sin is to review a book from which you've tried few or (worse) NO recipes. Nothing looked good to you? For real? OK fine, maybe nothing piqued your interest, but that means that you are basically the worst person to be writing a review for it. Baseball has never looked interesting to me, but you'll notice I'm not commenting on games, players' performances, or field goals.

Kidding, I know those are part of one of the other sports that I mostly ignore.

Anyway, I'm not going to be that person. Even though I want to go running to Amazon.com right now to sing the praises of these two books for that time I ate every last bite of dinner, I'll wait. I figure that once you've made 20% of the recipes, plus read the introduction and any other vital information, then you have the experience you need to form and share a solid opinion. It should certainly be enough to know the layout, quality of instructions, and general tastiness of the recipes.

One thing you won't catch me doing is gushing about mouthfeel. Can you even imagine?