My First Thanksgiving Feast!!

Holy crap, I set this to post on the 25th of November, but it somehow never posted. So, here it is...ridiculously late!!
 
Believe it or not, this was my first time ever cooking a holiday meal. And, I'm damn proud of myself. I deserve a cocktail. You can tell from my spread that I have never been a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal lover. My momma and I usually made lasagna or tacos for holidays, and sometimes, we just went out to eat somewhere. I just never understood why people would want to eat such boring food year after year. Plus, I was a picky kid and wouldn't really eat anything besides mashed potatoes, green beans and rolls from the Thanksgiving feasts my family had. So, for my first Holiday meal, I decided to pick random foods and put them all together into a rad dinner. It was so very excellent. Oink oink!

Here's what I made:

• Veggie curry potpie with handmade crust
• Homemade stuffing with honeycrisp apple
• Broccoli-walnut coleslaw
• Spinach-artichoke dip with white beans, with pita wedges and crackers to dip
• Frozen rolls, which happened to be vegan

Here's the spread:

I made the artichoke dip as a kind of appetizer. I got the recipe from Nava Atlas's book, Vegan Holiday Kitchen. Instead of the recommended onion, I used red onion. It's what I had on-hand and it worked excellently. Here are some photos of the progress:

The dip is stunning!!! Absolutely delicious. You need to make it.

The slaw was also excellent. It was also inspired by a Nava Atlas recipe, but I changed it up to fit my tastes, adding some spices and celery salt, along with changing adding more Veganaise. You can never have enough of that stuff.

Next up is the stuffing. It was also inspired by a Nava Atlas recipe, but again, I changed up the ingredients to fit my own tastes. I do absolutely LOVE the addition of some cubed apple to the mix. It gives the stuffing a slightly sweet taste. The original calls for apple juice to moisten the bread, but I used veggie broth instead. I thought the apples alone would sweeten it enough. I was right. It was quite lovely.

And, finally, we come to the potpie. I've been making this dish for quite a while. It has evolved over the last 2 years and has ended up as a most tasty curry-spiced veggie delight. You can find my recipe here. For my very favorite homemade pie crust, click here. It's really easy and exceptionally tasty.

 

So, there you have it. My very first Thanksgiving meal! What did you all have?

Even Daisy wanted to sample a little bit of everything...

Green Day...the food, not the band + Dog Blankie

I completely forgot to do my St. Patrick's Day post last month of all the green food I ate that day! I was emptying out the SD card for my camera this morning and stumbled upon my green food photos. So, Better late than never...or whatever. If you don't like it, well, too bad because here they are.

Breakfast: Green Smoothie
Ingredients:

• 1 cup baby spinach
• 1/2 banana
• 1/4 cup fresh pineapple
• 1 clementine orange
• 1 small apple
• 1 medium carrot
• 1/4 cup cranberry juice
• 2 TB flax meal
• ice, if you want some

Method:
Put everything in the blender (I so LOVE my Vita-Mix for smoothies) and blend until well combined.

Lunch: Chickpea Salad SandwichIngredients:

• 1/2 cup (slightly heaping) cooked chickpeas
• 1 TB + 1 tsp Vegenaise mayo
• 2 tsp mustard (yellow, spicy brown or dijon are all tasty here)
• 2-3 TB raw onion
• 1 heaping TB nooch
• 1 TB dill relish
• 1 TB unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/2 tsp Braggs Aminos
• Green food coloring

Method:
Put all ingredients in a food processor and whir a few times, until combined. I like mine chunky, but you can puree if you want. It's your sandwich, after all.

Dinner: Green Mashed Potatoes, Steamed Broccoli and Chickpea Patties
The chickpea patties are just the chickpea cutlet recipe from Veganomicon, made into thicker patties instead of cutlets. I always add more garlic and some steak sauce to this recipe. The Mashed potatoes are easy:  green food coloring, Earth Balance, almond milk and salt. And, well, if I have to describe how to steam veggies, you may be a hopeless case.

So, there you go. My St. Patrick's Day green meals. Late, but oh well.

As for my Eco-Craft I started a last week, I am almost done! Check it out :)