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.

Eating During the Storm

Hurricane Sandy came and went in Baltimore. I'm very fortunate. Except for some leaks here and there, and a loss of income, my household was unaffected. It was, and still is pretty chilly here though.

I did stock up on emergency supplies though, and I still have plenty to eat. I wanted to make a big, filling, comfort meal beforehand so that we'd be well fed in case of an outage. Initially I decided on Mac and Sleaze from 500 Vegan Recipes, but I had loads of veggies from the farmers' market that I wanted to use up. I always bolster my M&C style recipes with extra veggies to make them healthier, but I ended up completely changing the recipe to do so.

I added:

-15 oz tomato sauce
-1/2 bunch kale
-1/2 head roasted cheddar cauliflower
-1/2 head broccoli, chopped
-1 roasted red pepper

Since I had power and gas, I did a lot of other cooking, partly just to keep the joint warm. I had overfilled my stock bin again, so I made a batch of that. Since I didn't have a perfect however many cups, I made some tablespoon-sized stock stars.

Naturally, I also made cookies.

I realize now that I began to make good on my promise by making Game Day Nachos from Alicia Simpson's Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations. I've made these incredible nachos before, following the instructions to the word. This time, I didn't have everything required, but I was close enough to make reasonable substitutions.

I'm the last person to obsess over how healthy my meals are, but I gotta say, these nachos stack up pretty well in that arena. The cheese-style sauce is mind-blowing because it requires no plant milks, no nutritional yeast, and no animal product stand-ins of any sort. It's all veggies. I can't help but think it's cool. If anyone ever gives you crap about being able to give up cheese and weird vegan foods, just slap them with this book.

The above is the best of the quick and dirty pictures, so you'll notice that I took care of any healthy moments by having these for dinner, with beer.