Thanksgiving Potluck and a Thankful Kitty (for all of the wrong reasons)

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I went to a vegan potluck and ate a lot of awesome food with a lot of fun people. Some fellow bloggers were there:

• Yasmin - we had met at an earlier meetup. It was really nice to see her again.
• The Vegan Ricans, but I didn't have a chance to meet them.

Here's what Andy & I made:

SusanV's Black Bean Hummus. It was delicious and you must make it. I see a 7 layer dip in my future :). I didn't use the optional soy yogurt (because I didn't have any), and I added some olive oil.

I made Hummus using my stepmother's recipe - I put olive oil and paprika on top. She first introduced me to hummus and tofu way back when.

To go with the hummus, I toasted some pitas and also made Celine's cheezy quackers. If you haven't made these crackers, you should do it because they are really great tasting. I just made squares because I'm super lazy and try to avoid cookie cutters if possible. I also made them thin and a little bit browned.

Grapes, oranges and pineapple because who doesn't love fruit.

Here's the food table at the potluck. It didn't have any free space on it (yay). This was the first wave of food. Even more came later on.

Here is the dessert table. The coconut pudding that Vegan Ricans made was really light and delicious (in the large cookie sheet). I also had a pumpkin muffin that Yasmin made. Yummy! The pumpkin pie made by Mary was great. Everybody was raving about the chocolate mousselike cheesecake, but it was gone before I was in the mood for sweets (you can see it on the far right)

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Now for the thankful kitty. Of course it's Tubs. You can see how satisfied he is in the pic below. Where is he sitting, you might ask. Hmmmmm.....

Well, he's sitting on the ledge above one of the doors we had installed so that he couldn't get to the other side of the house. He jumps from the countertop to the top of the cabinets (the only cat that can do this in the house), then pushes aside the boxes Andy put on top to block his way and literally walks onto the ledge, then typically jumps into the forbidden zone. I'm sort of surprised that it has taken him months to figure this out. Well, now the spot he is sitting is filled with boxes. Hah!

Pre Thanksgiving Fest

I really wanted to try out some Thanksgiving recipes, so I made the whole deal. Mostly for Andy since he can't get enough of this kind of food.

Starting at 12'oclock & going clockwise:
bread
mashed potatoes and gravy
mashed rutabega
stuffing
green bean casserole
pickles
cranberry sauce
seitan saurbratten (center)
roasted acorn squash (center)

pumpkin cheezecake w/ soyatoo
I used the green bean casserole recipe that I found on SusanV's blog. It was phenomenal. You should totally try it. I used apple cider vinegar instead of wine. I als0 chopped the mushrooms really fine. I used the same broth that I had made for the stuffing. I also made my own fried onions for the top. I dipped the onions in soymilk, then in flour/salt/pepper, then I deep fried them until they were sort of golden. I kept them sort of pale so that they could also brown in the oven.

I used the stuffing from the Holiday Feast class I recently took. I used Dave's Killer bread, which made it really yummy. The other main ingredients are chopped hazelnuts, celery, onions, broth, sage and lentils. I made the broth recipe from the same class. I had used Imagine veggie broth a few weeks ago and it ruined my lentil soup (which I fixed with peanut butter). I won't do that again. It's boring to make stock, but it's totally worth it and it's freezable. If I ever make stuffed mushrooms, I'll use this as stuffing.

I made the pumpkin cheezecake recipe from A Vegan Paradise twice because Andy ate the first one on Thursday (a testimony to the deliciousness of the pie) and the pre TG was on Friday so I had to have one then :). This pie is really really good. Thanks, Roo for the recipe.

The first time I followed the recipe exactly. The second time I halved the soy milk and doubled the tofu so it would firm up faster (I was in a time crunch). It firmed up just fine both times, in case you want to follow the original recipe. Don't worry, I made half batches each time, so it was 2 pies, not 4 :). As with all pumpkin type pies, I covered it with aluminum foil for the first part of baking.

I used this recipe for the gravy. It was really good and I will definitely make it again. The recipe calls for 2 cups of water. I replaced part of the water with 1/3 cup soy creamer and 1/2 cup broth. Later on when I thinned the gravy, I used edensoy rice soy blend. I went for the optional mushrooms which I chopped really fine.

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Here is the dog that I would have picked up today to foster, but they found another foster family. I guess that this is sort of good because I'm already fostering 1 dog. If she is not adopted in 2 weeks, she might come to my house. I know the dog I'm fostering now will be happy to play with her.

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More of the 2008 calendar.

September: Peepa and the Judge. They are clinging to each other for warmth.

October: Kobie and the Judge. I don't know how the Judge snuck in there.

November: Scoatt. I like this picture because it looks sort of uncomfortable and shows how huge and fluffy he is.