Thanksgiving Practice

I love Thanksgiving. That might be a little weird as a vegetarian since it's a holiday that is centered a lot around eating a turkey, but I still love it. I actually love pretty much every holiday, so I guess that isn't too surprising. But Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that makes me feel warm and fuzzy - you get to reflect on your year and remember all that you are thankful for, spend time with friends and family, and eat lots of delicious autumn inspired foods!

This weekend I had a lot of cooking that I wanted to do  - including several new recipes I wanted to try out. We started off the weekend with Gingerbread Doughnuts (I finally got that doughnut pan - SO much better than trying to fry them!) - I used this recipe and mostly followed it with the exception of using a flax seed egg in place of the real egg and almond milk instead of regular milk, plus I didn't buy the mini-doughnut pan so this recipe made 6 regular sized doughnuts for me.

I'm so excited about the baked doughnuts - they were really easy and, at least compared to fried doughnuts, fairly healthy. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself!

I actually jumped ahead a little bit here, because my cooking actually started the night before with pumpkin pies. It's been years since I've made a pumpkin pie and the last vegan recipe I used was one that called for tofu. I only had a pretty junky blender at that time and the tofu never quite blended into the rest of the batter which made for some interesting textures. Since then I've just kind of steered clear of any pumpkin pies.

This year though I was thinking about how a lot of other food bloggers often make multiple versions of the same thing to determine the best recipe. I usually have too many different things I want to make to try multiple versions of the same thing, but I thought maybe this pumpkin pie endeavor would benefit from trying different variations.

It turns out I only own one actual pie dish, so I used my springform pan for Pie #1 and made a graham cracker crust with a little ginger added. For this pie I used this recipe which was designed to be vegan and gluten free (I guess not so much though with my crust now, but I'm not gluten free so I don't particularly care). This recipe used coconut milk to add creaminess and tapioca flour and agar-agar to make the pie set up firm. The pie is also not baked - you cook the filling on the stove after you've cooked the agar-agar for a bit, which I found sort of interesting.

Pie #2 was your more traditional pumpkin pie - in fact, I used the Libby's Pumpkin Pie recipe and just substituted the eggs with flax seed eggs. For the crust I just halved the crust recipe I've posted here before.

Both pies turned out decent - I'm not certain I was in love with either one entirely, but then again maybe I just don't love pumpkin pie in general - it has to have been at least 10 years since I've had a regular pumpkin pie so I don't really remember. Overall the verdict was that the filling from Pie #1 with the crust from Pie #2 would have made the best pie.

I also tried out this recipe for a roasted pumpkin (I used butternut squash instead) salad - I failed on taking on pictures of it since we were caught up chatting with our friends once they arrived for dinner, but it was actually a rather pretty salad. I was worried that it was going to be awful because when I tasted the dressing by itself I really didn't care for it, but once all of the flavors were together I think it worked a lot better. There are a few things I would change if I decide to make this to bring to Thanksgiving though - cooking the rice differently (it was a little mushy and I think a drier rice would have been better), and cutting the onions in half to roast even though they were small - I think the salad would have been better with more onions evenly distributed throughout.

I may still have to try a few more recipes before I decide on what to bring back to Washington with me this year, but I guarantee you something will have squash in it!

-C