It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

I'm not sure how this long weekend flew by so fast! I'm definitely not ready to go back to work tomorrow, but I guess there are only a few more weeks until we're off for Christmas!

We made a quick trip up to Washington to visit my family for Thanksgiving. This was the first year we didn't have it at my grandma's, which I thought might be a little strange, but having it at my cousin's house actually turned out very nice. I guess lied when I said I was for sure going to make something with squash to bring, I ended up bringing a pear and goat cheese salad that my friend Sara gave me the recipe for - very delicious and nice to have something green at Thanksgiving! I also brought some Field Roast for me and my sister and it was really nice to have a savory protein along with all of the creaminess of the potatoes and mac & cheese.

On our way out of town Friday we stopped for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in town - Hillside Quickie. I hate that I can't eat here all the time - it makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I know a "tofu sandwich" might not sound like the most appealing thing ever, but they have the world's most amazing tofu. It's not at all squishy or bland - it's dense and meaty and smokey. And the best part? I found out that they SELL it there by the pound!! I now have my very own pound of smoked tofu in the fridge. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about this.

Yesterday we headed out with some of our friends to get our Christmas tree. It was an absolutely perfect day for it - no rain, fairly warm, and even a little bit of sun! We tried a new location this year - Donovan's Place in west Corvallis. I would recommend this place because: 1) They had a tree shaker, far less bugs came into the house this year, and 2) Free hot cocoa! The people working there were also very nice and took photos for us and tied the trees to our cars.

Jonathan cut the tree - I just took photos.

 This tree was a little bit bigger than I had anticipated. In fact, I think it may be the biggest Christmas tree I have ever had.

 Here it is in it's various states - where we found it, inside and hopefully relatively straight, and with the lights added. That's where I had to stop last night because we were headed over to dinner at our friends house and by the time we got back home I was too tired to finish it.

 

We finished the rest of the decorating this morning - can't get the star to stay on straight. Oh well. Pixel seems to approve.

 

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is getting into the holiday spirit! I know Pixel sure is - it means tons of extra "toys" (aka ornaments) are within a paws reach.

-C

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

Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving turned out great! I ended up spending an awful lot more time cooking than I expected, but it was a lot of fun. The food looked beautiful and tasted delicious - here is an updated menu:

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Smoked Gouda
Butternut Squash, Caramelized Onion, and Hazelnut Pizza
Cornbread, Apple, and Hazelnut Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes with Kale and Garlic
Cranberry Sauce
Brussel Sprouts with Hazelnuts
Glazed Carrots
Roasted Delicata
Rosemary Sea Salt Rolls
Pomegranate [not so 100-mile, but someone was nice enough to bring it and it was delicious!]

Oh yes, and of course the turkey... the boys spent most of the time before the meal outside tending to the deep fryer. This worked out well as it left more of the soup, pizza, and wine for us girls.  :)

Cranberry sauce was the first thing I started with - I absolutely love cranberry sauce, but I'll admit I was a little apprehensive about not having my traditional cranberry sauce shaped like a can. Aren't the cranberries absolutely beautiful? Most recipes call for orange juice or just plain water, but since water sounded boring and oranges don't exactly grow in Oregon I decided to go with apple cider. Yum!



Cranberry Sauce Cooking

I forgot to take pictures of the cornbread I made for the stuffing, but that's ok. I did remember to take a few other photos of the finished products though!

Roasted Delicata, Cornbread Apple Hazelnut Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes with Kale and Garlic

Roasted Butternut Squash, Caramelized Onion, and Hazelnut Pizza

Sara's Roasted Red Pepper and Smoked Gouda Soup

The Feast!

I wish it was Thanksgiving again just so I could re-eat this meal! But really, this year there are so many things to be thankful for and I appreciate the chance to share delicious food in the company of great people.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving - now on to Christmas!