holiday meals

Normally my family uses tofu turkeys for their holiday entree, which are simple: you just take them out of the box and bake them. If you haven't tried tofu turkeys, they're simple marinated/seasoned tofu shaped like a happy turkey. They're gluten free and come with an easy-to-make gravy. And they're just so cute!

However, my sister-in-law is sensitive to soy,  and I wanted something we could all have. Many vegan entree options have gluten, but half the people at our meal were gluten-free, so I was pretty much left with one option: THE VEGDUCKEN. This recipe (and similar ones) was circulating around the internet for a while, just calling to be veganized. First, I have to tell you, this recipe is good, but poorly written. Or, at least, poorly organized--the list of ingredients isn't in any particular order. I ended up rewriting the whole thing in a Word doc just to make it make more sense.

Here's what I changed: I used vegan butter (homemade, but Earth Balance would work) and halved the butter for the layering/sauce, and never used any mint. This turned out just fine, and we had plenty. I used two flax "eggs" (2 Tbsp flax meal mixed with 6 Tbsp water) to replace the eggs, and to replace the parmesan cheese, I just used 2-3 Tbsp light miso. (Because of the miso, this means the recipe wasn't completely soy free, but you could use a soy-free vegan cheese like Daiya to make it so.) I used gluten-free breadcrumbs--the Hannaford store brand is just corn, sugar, and salt. Oh and my mushrooms were reconstituted dried. Finally, because I am allergic to nightshades, I replaced the eggplant layer with lightly steamed sliced celery root.

And here's the thing: even with all these (in some cases rather dramatic) substitutions, it tasted great. And went together really easily.

Here it is before putting the sides together and baking:

And here it is, baked and with some slices taken off.

I recommend carving it at the table and serving it one piece at a time; when we tried to cut several slices in advance they fell apart and were not as pretty to serve.

It serves a lot! I actually made two because there were 11 of us eating and my family are big eaters, but we never ended up finishing the first, let alone cutting into the second. And everyone really liked it!

We hosted Thanksgiving so we wouldn't have to travel with the baby, but our dining room is small so half of us ate in the dining room and half of us ate in the makeshift second dining room (the living room).

My side of the family! My brother is holding the baby in the back.

Christmas dinner was a much smaller affair, with just us and Kevin's mother, so we cooked the meal together. Our entree was Elizavegan's vegan tourtiere, made with sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes, and phyllo dough instead of pastry crust--which was a delicious substitution! The crisp of the phyllo went well with the sweet potato and made up for the lack of starch the white potatoes would have provided.

For Christmas dessert, I wanted to make something special. Inspired by The Great British Baking Show, which I watched in less than two days during my first week home with the baby, I decided to try my hand at a Swiss roll (also known as a jelly roll). And it went GREAT!

The cake is the chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, spread out on a baking sheet and baked for only 10-15 minutes. I cooled it just enough to handle, then rolled it in a tea towel and let it cool completely.

After that I unrolled it, spread it with strawberry jam and Coco Whip (I didn't have time to make frosting), rolled it back up and decorated it. It was huuuuge, so I only used half of it to decorate and serve (halved, with edges trimmed off for neatness, it served 5 people). I couldn't believe how simple and yet elegant it was! I'll definitely make Swiss rolls in the future, hopefully with yellow cake that I can decorate with batter like they do on the show.

I also dressed my baby as a reindeer.

Finally, New Year's brunch is a big meal in my parents' house, with loads of food and plenty of relatives to eat it all. With a baby in the house we were lucky to make it till midnight, and were not up for making a huge brunch the next morning, but we did something a little special: Kevin made a delicious fruit and nut coffee cake (from Angelica Kitchen) and I made tofu florentine with a hollandaise sauce from Vegan Diner. I usually make the one from Vegan Brunch, but I don't find it too flavorful. The Vegan Diner one has a lot of flavor, but I think the wine comes through a little too strong. Still a delicious New Year's brunch!

Now the holidays are over, we're back to simpler meals... more on those later!

Vegan MoFo 2014! Labor Day BBQ

It's Vegan MoFo, the Vegan Month of Food! And what a good time to bring this blog back to life, since it was during Vegan MoFo last year that I fizzled out. I have a good excuse (working two jobs, one of them full time and totally new to me), but now that I have more time (quit the part-time one), I have less of an excuse and would like to get back to blogging!

As I am a college instructor and live on an academic schedule, Labor Day means back to school, so I never look forward to it, but the weather was hot and summery here in Boston and Kevin and I had a lazy day, complete with a nice dinner from the grill: tofu burgers with grilled onions and corn on the cob. Having everything (even the buns) on the grill made it feel like a real Labor Day Barbecue, which made the approaching autumn seem acceptable.

For the tofu, Kevin made a marinade of vinegar, tamari, mustard powder, and olive oil. I used the marinade to baste the tofu and the onion slices as they were grilling.

Also pictured : loads of homemade pickles. It was my first time grilling corn on the cob! Which, of course, means I studied up on the best method. I read this article on the difference between the 3 most-used methods and opted for the third (shucking and cooking, simple!).

And that's it for now! This year, I don't have a theme for VeganMoFo or anything, except: GET BLOGGING AGAIN. I always feel a little apologetic about this, since there are so many great bloggers with cool themes, but maybe next year I, too, will be able to have a cool theme. In the meantime, it's nice to be back! And I'll work hard to have a post each day.

holiday meal!

Happy holidays to people who celebrate them this time of year!

I have been working on a wedding food post for a long time, and I prooooomise I'll do it before the end of the month, but at today's awesome Christmas dinner at my mother-in-law's (hi Tanis!), I promised a couple people I'd post links to the sweets I made to go with our meal. So Miki and Sarge, this is for you!

A big surprise hit today was the sugared cranberries. I used this recipe at 101 Cookbooks. It's very simple, though it requires a lot of sitting time.

Tart cranberries get a sparkly sugar coating. I had never heard of this before, but apparently this recipe is a holiday tradition for some people... I might make it one of mine now. They goes well with crackers and cheese/dip/pate for appetizers as well as a side during the main meal, and are a good compliment to dessert. So basically you can eat them at any time. Plus they look so pretty and wintery!

Unfortunately, as delicious as the dessert I made was, it wasn't very photogenic. It's Martha Stewart's Frozen Chocolate Peanut Butter and Banana Loaf.

Very rich, and verrrrry delicious. Texture-wise, it's along the lines of a frozen mousse. I replaced the whipped cream in the recipe with the cashew-and-coconut-based Rad Whip from the PPK, and it worked out great.

There were other awesome vegan elements to the meal, but for the sake of this entry not taking me forever, I'll just leave you with some pictures. (Thanks to the husband for taking them, since I was busy talking. As usual.)

My carrot salad (so much tastier than the lighting in the picture suggests!):

The husband's white bean, carrot, and caramelized onion puree:

My mother-in-law's excellent mustardy shallots and green beans:

My sister-in-law's raw beet and parsley pesto terrine (with her apple-cranberry sauce, which went with sweet potato latkes, of which we didn't get a picture)...

...and her appetizer: nut pate.

I'm still full.

ALSO, before I'm done bragging about my great meal, I also want to brag about the awesome gifts my husband and in-laws got me:

I WILL BE SPENDING 2012 IN THE KITCHEN, THANK YOU.

give the gift of good taste: edible holiday gifts

I love giving gifts. I like taking the time to find something my loved ones will enjoy, I like making presents look nice, I like making people happy just by handing them something. Most of my gifts are store-bought, because I cook so much throughout the year, but this year, I did more cooking and baking for gifts than ever before.

First, the gifts that aren't edible. I don't like wrapping paper, so I generally wrap gifts in saved tissue paper, newspapers, or pages from the old Yellow Pages. I'm a bit of a closet pack rat, so I usually have that sort of thing around.

One of these packages (for my fairly-newly vegan sister) contains gifts by some other blog-wielding vegans you might know:

One of the adorable panda-with-cookie totes from Panda with Cookie's Etsy shop! AIt was a big hit. And in the tote, I put a copy of Melisser Elliott's Vegan Girls Guide to Life, which I had her sign when she visited last month.

Okay, so those are vegan gifts, but you're here to see edible vegan gifts. So without further ado:

TOFFEE. I have always loved toffee. Almost once a week when I was in elementary school, my mother would go grocery shopping next door to a small bookstore I liked. She'd give me $5 (most of the Fear Street books I liked back then were $3.99 or less), I'd go buy a book while she shopped, then I'd meet her back at the store in time to buy a Skors or Heath bar with my change. I miss toffee, and until I discovered this recipe at the kitchn, I had no idea it was so easy to make. It's not that much work or time, even, though it does require a lot of stirring.

Homemade toffee is VERY easy if you have a candy thermometer. I recommend getting one; I use it often to measure water temperatures for breads, oil temperature when I'm frying, and yes, for candy. I think mine was around $5 at the local hardware/homeware store. However, if you don't have a candy thermometer, neither did the lady who wrote the kitchn recipe above! She judges by color. I always get paranoid about having to tell the difference between "dark golden brown" and "blond" and "honey-colored" in recipes, so I stick to the thermometer. Also, I used a large, rimmed baking sheet to cool my toffee. If you don't have one (why don't you?), you can use several baking dishes, like 2 9x13s or something. Whatever you use, line the bottom and the sides with foil, and removal will be a snap. This recipe makes a lot of toffee; a large baking sheet full, enough to give as gifts to at least 4 people.

Homemade Vegan Toffee

1 lb (that's 2 cups, or 16 ounces) Earth Balance (vegan margarine). That's one box of the buttery sticks, or one tub plus 4 Tbsp
2 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups chocolate (chips and/or chopped baking chocolate; I did a mix since I didn't want the chocolate layer to be too sweet)
toasted almonds, roughly chopped (optional)

Line a baking sheet with foil, set aside. Get out all of your ingredients ahead of time.

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, melt the butter and sugar together. Stir this mixture constantly until it reaches 300 degrees fahrenheit. I've seen ranges between 285-310). If you don't have a candy thermometer, that's the point at which it's very thick and has turned dark golden brown. I think this is the "firm ball" stage, if you're one of those people who tests with a glass of water. It's going to be really bubbly at first, and thickens as it hardens. Anyway, that took me about half an hour. DO NOT STOP STIRRING, because if this stuff burns, all will have been for naught. Once you've reached 300 degrees, remove the saucepan from heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking sheet; use a spatula to smooth out. Do this quickly, because it will start to harden.

Sprinkle the chocolate across the surface, and allow this to sit for a few minutes, until the chocolate is glossy (3 minutes, 5 if your chocolate chips/chunks are large). Use a spatula to smooth the chocolate over the toffee. If using almonds, sprinkle the almonds over the top.

Allow to cool. Our kitchen is cold, so it was totally cool in under 3 hours, but it might take longer if you have heat in your kitchen. Anyway, once the bottom of the baking sheet is cool to the touch, remove the whole thing, foil and all, from the baking sheet. Peel the foil off the toffee (it comes off really easily), and break the toffee into whatever sized pieces you'd like. Store toffee between sheets of wax paper in an airtight container.

It's dangerous for me to know how easy it is to make toffee. The only thing that is not preventing me from making it (and eating it) all the time is that it takes a whole pound of Earth Balance, which is both pricy and fatty. It is a special occasion food, Sarah, remember that!

If you have trouble cleaning up the saucepan and spoon, I recommend running your hottest tap water or boiled water over them. This loosens up and dissolves the sugar.

Okay, so maybe toffee still seems too tough to you, or isn't your thing, or, like me, you want a sampler of desserts to give to relatives. What else is a good edible holiday gift?

Chocolate bark! This is another one of those things I thought was harder to make than it actually is. In fact, it is so simple that I feel silly giving a recipe for it, so I will just give you instructions.

Melt equal parts sweetened and unsweetened chocolate (ie, chocolate chips and baking chocolate) together in a double-boiler or bain-marie.

While it melts, chop up what you're going to put into your bark. In my opinion, the perfect chocolate bark consists of four flavor sensations: chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, and something that's surprising and/or has a kick. You can experiment at will, but here are some suggestions:

• Nuts: Almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, macadamias, peanuts;
• Dried Fruits: Cranberries, raisins, apricots, apples, dates, figs, currants, mango?;
• Something surprising/with a kick: candied ginger, candied citrus peel, prettily zested citrus, crushed candy canes or other flavorful candy, vegan white or butterscotch chips, pretzels (okay, those don't all have a kick, but are surprising and fun, so they go in this category).

Depending on how much chocolate you use, you want from 1/2 to 1 Cup of each of these things.

As with the toffee, you shape the bark by pouring it into a foil-lined pan. for 16 ounces of chocolate, you'll need at least 9X10 inches. I only used about 10 ounces of chocolate, so I used my 7x11 baking dish, and if you'll note, the bark is still pretty thick. Anyway, pour the chocolate into the pan, then sprinkle your chopped ingredients over the top. Use your hands to press them down into the chocolate. Let this cool for several hours. When the bottom of the pan is cool to the touch, you can remove it from the dish, peel back the foil, and cut it into pretty squares--or break it into rustic chunks.

I also made treats for my coworkers: Almond Crescent Cookies. When I was little, my mom made these a few times. She didn't like to make them, because blanching and grinding all the almonds was a real chore, but I LOVED them. I have never actually thought Crescent Cookies look like crescents; as a child they reminded me more of worms, so in my head, they will always be Worm Cookies.

I cheated: I used Bob's Red Mill almond meal instead of grinding the almonds myself. I made this recipe from Martha Stewart, substituting Earth Balance for the butter. The "dough" never came together; it was all crumbly. I added a Tbsp of soymilk, though, and it behaved EXACTLY like it should. The resulting cookies are very good, very subtle, and one of my coworkers came up to tell me that the cookies were exactly like the Vanilla Kipferl his German grandmother used to make (Kipferl is German for Cresent).

Finally, for my brother Robby, I made homemade grenadine. I used the recipe from the Cupcake Project as a starter, but changed a few things. I'll write more about it soon. (I'm planning an epic Pomegranate Post coming up in January.)

I also gave Robby some Chocolate Peppermint Penguins, which I made by taking the leftover chocolate and crushed candy canes from my Candy Cane Biscotti, mixing it, and pouring it into my Penguin Ice Cube Tray. I love that thing; I got it for free back when I worked for a publishing company that was a division of Penguin Books. I forgot to take pictures of the penguins, though, so you will just have to imagine how cute they were.

Did you give any edible or vegan gifts this holiday season? Did you get any? What were your favorites?

give thanks! it's the last day of Vegan MoFo!

Goodbye, Vegan Month of Food!

I have posted for all 30 days of VeganMoFo! It was great, but I am so glad it's over; no more "Wait, did I post today?!" feelings of panic before I go to sleep, no more forced entries on days I don't feel like talking about food. But I'm definitely glad I did it, and I'll definitely do it next year.

I finally have Thanksgiving pictures to post, and with them, a note on Thanksgiving. I touched on my thoughts on the day a couple years ago, but I want to reiterate them. Thanksgiving is about celebrating the blessings in your life, appreciating what you're thankful for. I think that it's important to take time to recognize the good things in your life. If you do that every day, maybe you don't need Thanksgiving, but is it really so bad that the government has reserved a day for us to spend time over a meal with our loved ones? People who claim Thanksgiving is about genocide and racism are unfamiliar with the history of the holiday, and I suggest to them that they read about our nation's history and that of the holiday, even if only the Wikipedia pages. Thanksgiving was always a harvest celebration. A feast or festival where we, humans, give thanks for the bounty of the earth, of our ability to survive, to be sustained by our environment--both in terms of food, and in terms of support from the people around us.

I appreciate my family. In the past few years, so many of my family members have gone vegetarian and vegan that our meal was almost entirely vegan. There was some token meat, but only for one person! And it's not in any of the pictures. All of the things below are vegan!

I got the idea for this delicious Cashew Goat Cheese recipe from C'est La Vegan. My family was so impressed with how much it looked--and even tasted--like goat cheese! It takes a lot time to make, but it's pretty easy. And I kept worrying at every step that I was doing it wrong, but it came out perfect.

I rolled it in a mixture of normal black pepper and freshly-ground cubeb, pink, and green peppercorns, just for effect.

One family member thought it was actual goat cheese, and tried to warn us vegans away from it!

Appetizers eaten, we then had THE MEAL:

Clockwise, from the bottom left: mashed sweet potatoes, rolls, earth balance, brussel sprouts with garlic, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (with miso instead of mushrooms, to make it cheesy. I totally recommend adding a couple Tbsps to YOUR next green bean casserole), corn, cranberry sauce, my mother's awesome stuffing, herbed gravy that came with the tofu turkey.

You will note the central part of the meal, the tofu turkey, is missing; we hadn't yet brought it to the table. My family's favorite, so-simple entree for holiday meals is Fresh Tofu Inc's Tofu Turkey:

The Tofu Turkey is lightly seasoned tofu, with a crispy skin. It's tasty, but not overpowering, and, unlike most other vegan holiday roasts, it isn't especially salty. We had two for 9 people, and had a bunch of leftovers, so it serves plenty. Plus it's cute! I tried to get a better picture of its little smile, but it was too blurry:

It comes with an herby, rice-flour-and-nutritional-yeast-based gravy.

We paced ourselves pretty well with eating, which is good, because there was PIE:

I'm cheating, actually--this is last year's pie, because I forgot to take a picture of this year's. But we had the same options this year! Pumpkin pie (from Bryanna Clark Grogan's recipe), and Maple-Pecan Pie (also from Bryanna Clark Grogan). This year, we ran out of pecans, so my mother tried it with half pecans and toasted walnuts. It was so delicious that she's planning to make it like that every time.

Finally, though this didn't make it into this year's Thanksgiving dinner, Sunchoke Salad with olive oil, scallions, and balsamic vinegar is a go-to dish for most of our holiday meals, and WAS present last Thanksgiving.

And with that, my friends, we have come to the end of VeganMoFo! I'm glad to be done with daily entries. I'll still try to post at least once a week. And next week, look for another food-from-literature post! I read Great Expectations this weekend. You can also look forward to some posts that aren't about food.

Thanks for reading this month, and for those of you who just started reading, I hope you stick around!

christmas on the homestead

christmas in cooperstown (upstate ny) was pretty normal: my youngest brother woke us all up at 7 so he could open presents, mom and I planned and prepared the day's dishes, siblings helping with occasional chopping and stirring, dad running into town to our store for last-minute ingredients. The menu, all organic:

green beans (vegan)
potato-style sunchoke salad (vegan)
mashed sweet potatoes (vegan)
mashed potatoes (vegan, but nightshades)
mom's stuffing (vegetarian, contains eggs)
roast chicken (ew)
2 kinds of gravy (one vegan, one... not)
chickpea casserole (vegan)
2 kinds of whole-wheat rolls (one kind vegan, one with milk)
pumpkin pie (vegan)
some non-vegan pie

sparkling pear and apple juice

There will be some food preparation pictures later. But after everything was safely stewing or baking or boiling in the kitchen, it was time for what has become a holiday tradition (we did it last year, too, though it wasn't as festive): hauling wood.

For most of the winter, the only heat in my parents' house comes from our woodstove. We use wood from already-dead trees on our property, which means dad has to chop it all up and lug it to the porch to dry before it goes into the woodstove. It's a lot of work for one person, so when dad randomly decided to fell a dead ash at the bottom of our lawn on christmas morning... my sister Liz, my brother Rob and I decided to help. (Mom stayed in to watch the various foodstuffs on the stove, Danny stayed in to play his new videogame.)

Dad and Robby chopped wood:
Robby, ironically, bought me Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness for christmas, as he was so pleased by the evil dead reference in my durianomicon entry.
Liz and I hauled the wood in sleds to the top of our hilly lawn to load the wood onto the porch.
That's Liz, just before she tethered her sled to the porch, and here's your heroine, loading up the wood:
It wasn't all heavy labor, though. Liz and I raced down.
This is a race. I'm losing because she cheated.
This is me being a bad loser and ranting about unfair sled races. The chickens, smartly, stayed away from the wood-chopping and sledding.

But we came inside to delicious smells and quickly threw together this beeeeeeautiful spread:
It's at a weird angle because I wanted to cut out the chicken in the bottom right corner.

Here's the chickpea casserole. It's from christina pirello's cooking with whole foods. I really like that book, if you can' tell, because all of her recipes are simple, low fat, and nightshade free. The casserole has chickpeas, winter squash, carrot, onion and garlic. There's plenty of miso in it, too, and you grate mochi on top, so it's rather cheesy in taste and texture. Mom and I went crazy for it.

Vegan pumpkin pie! I'd never made it before. I've made sweet potato pie, but my sweet potato pie recipe is different from my mother's pumpkin pie... we replaced the egg with ground-up flax seeds - TERRIBLE IDEA. The egg in pumpkin pie is as much for texture as for binding/lift - and the flax seeds made it rubbery. The taste was awesome (especially with a little soy whip!), and my brother wolfed it down, but mom and I decided next time we're either going with tofu or a fruit-and-baking powder mixture (with sweet potato I used sweet potato baby food mixed with baking powder and it worked great) to replace the egg.

soyatoo's whipped cream tastes like a less-sweet version of store-bought whipped cream, the kind that my mother didn't allow in the house when I was a kid (she always made her own). I love it.

I hope you all had a happy christmas. Even if you didn't celebrate it, I hope you at least got the day off from work ^_^

thanksgiving approaches. without pictures.

so you may be wondering, why hasn't vegetalion posted in a while?

BECAUSE MY SISTER STOLE MY CAMERA CABLE. The one that lets me upload pictures. And I like pictures. ALAS. it will be a photoless entry. My sister came to visit this weekend (the theft was an accident, by the way - it happened when she was packing to leave for home again), and brought with her a lovely diwali gift from my mother - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! I have already made some cupcakes from it... but no pictures till later in the week. They'll be worth the wait.

I've seen/heard quite a few vegans hating on thanksgiving recently. Granted, it IS a terrible day for turkeys. And people gorge, especially on rich, unhealthy, unvegan foods. But I have been raised in a very veg*n-friendly environment, and the day is really about having our closest family members sit around our dining room table and talk and laugh, and eat and tell each other their secret ingredients. And then after dessert the adults slowly waddle out to the kitchen table to have tea and talk about all of the relatives and old friends whose names haven't been dropped recently, while the kids split off to play outside or in the cellar or video games upstairs. Hours roll on, and sometimes we break out Scrabble or Pictionary or family videos, and my relatives stay until the first one says, "how did it get to be 8:00?" And they all leave. I love my family, and I love food - the two together are magical.

Plus my mother is an amazing cook and is totally willing to make me vegan pie. ohhhhh the vegan pie.

That said, I don't want to trivialize the mass slaughter of turkeys that goes on for this holiday. Last night I watched the I Am an Animal: the story of Ingrig Newkirk and PETA, an HBO documentary that is totally worth watching no matter what your views on PETA. Though it was not at all the main focus, there was some appalling footage taken at the Butterball factory. Watching it made me think that most people don't ever consider that the basted shape in their ovens started out as a bird - nor do they think about the conditions under which it was raised, conditions to which they would probably object - if they thought about it.

I think hunting is wrong. I do not like or approve of hunting. But I can feel a certain degree of respect for a hunter who hunts for food, because s/he at least sees where their meat comes from, studies how it lives and is actively involved in the process from death to plate. I think the disconnect between food as it grows and food on one's plate is one of the biggest causes of our dietary and animal-rights related issues.

I don't know where I was going with that preachiness. See the documentary, though. And I'll post a Food post on or after thanksgiving, I promise.

oh EW and I tried the hachiya persimmon... it tasted okay but it was REALLY GRAINY, so that it felt like I had a mouth full of baby powder with each bite. I had to throw it out. Stick to the fuyu, people! gah...