still alive - be thankful!

I know other bloggers have gone far longer than a week without a post, but I am not normally among them so it feels like forever.  I hope you'll excuse my absence, considering how busy I've been preparing for Thanksgiving and Black Friday - or I should say it like this:

1. the first Thanksgiving (or holiday at all) that I've hosted in my own home!
2. the first Black Friday I've worked retail in fifteen years.

Fortunately, both went off pretty well, yet both were fairly stressful in the days leading up to them.  Additionally, I just haven't felt like I had anything interesting to say.  I realized recently that one of the reasons I've found blogging to be so much fun and so fulfilling in the first two years of this little blog was because I was still learning how to cook new and interesting things, so I was always trying to make something I hadn't made yet so I could come up with a unique post.  Over the last several months, I've found myself perfectly happy to repeat "favorites" from the last few years, and although I only rotate recipes every few months, I still didn't have anything interesting to say about making "this" dish again.

Here is a quick recap of my Celebrate Vegan mini-menu:

The two pasta dishes (Pasta with Shallots and Chard and Pasta with Red Peppers and Basil) were just like I remembered them - relatively easy with a ton of flavor.  Neither of them made as much as I thought I remembered, but believe me, with Thanksgiving coming up, there was no place in our fridge for leftovers anyway.

I made one new recipe from the book I wasn't able to make before because it needed tweaking for Mister's intestinal safety, the Jambalaya and it was quite tasty and fake-meat-alicious!

So let's switch gears.

There's a lovely song by Josh Groban (which you can hear a beautiful cover of here) with the following lyrics:

Some days we forget to look around us.

Some days we can't see the joy that surrounds us.

So caught up inside ourselves, we take when we should give,

So for tonight, we pray for what we know can be,

And on this day we hope for what we still can't see.  

It's up to us to be the change,

And even though we all can still do more...

There's so much to be thankful for.

I'm thankful for a great many things, not the least of which being how well my first Thanksgiving as the cook and hostess turned out!  Here was our menu:

When my parents arrived, we set out mixed olives, veggie crudites with Muhammara (from Celebrate Vegan) and store-bought dill dip (thanks, Mister), and Spanakopita (from The Accidental Vegan).  The main course was a Torfurky Roast which Mister has wanted since his first non-meat-eating Thanksgiving and I was thrilled to be able to give it to him.  Alongside the Tofurky was mashed potatoes, roasted broccoli, and my mom's becoming-famous salad, then dessert was Apple Pie with Vanilla "ice cream" by So Delicious.  Dad brought two delightful bottles of my favorite wines - Apothic Red and the 2009 vintage of Georges deBoeuf Beaujolais-Villages, as well as a four-pack of mini-champagnes "for after work."

Oh?  You wanted a picture parade?  Okay!

I began my preparations on Monday or Tuesday night, starting with the Muhammara dip since it would taste the best after sitting in the fridge for a few days.  I figured it was best to make it the same night we had Pasta with Shallots and Chard since my home already stank of an onion sibling (and since I already had the book out).  After simmering three chopped red peppers with a chopped onion and sliced garlic for an hour, I dry-toasted some walnuts,

And then placed everything in the blending machine...

and pureed it until it was mostly smooth and homogenously orange.

After it cooled a little, I scooped it into a "tupperware" and stuck it in the fridge, to be forgotten until Thursday.

Wednesday night, I intended to make the spanakopita because I've found that it sticks together better if it's made the night before it's eaten.  So I chopped up a shallot to substitute for the revolting onion in the recipe and sauteed the onion and spinach while the lentils cooked.

Added the brown lentils (I'm not actually sure why, either)

and then a big heap of crumbled feta tofu,

and stirred it all together.

This is where it gets fun.  By the time I started making this, I'd only worked one eight-hour day at work (the others went long in preparation for Black Friday) and after that 8-hour day (of being one half of the sales force, since one person got sent home with an eye infection) I had a 2.5 hour hair appointment (oh, how I missed you, Candi KaBoom!), so I really wasn't on my most... "with it" behavior.

I realized after all the work of assembling the spanakopita, including gluing sheets of phyllo together with olive oil while listening to the darkly angelic voice of Amy Lee through my earbuds, that I had missed one step of the two-step process required to preheat my ancient oven.  So, finding (at 2am) that my oven was still cold after it was "preheating" for 30 minutes, I covered the spanakopita with plastic, put it in the fridge and went to bed.

It came out just fine when I baked it the next morning.

Then came the piece de resistance.

Mister's long-awaited Tofurky Roast, complete with wild rice stuffing.

I put it in a little Corningware casserole dish and surrounded it with quartered potatoes and carrots, then poured half of the sage marinade over it and stuck that puppy in the oven.

It's not a real puppy, by the way.

appetizers - from the top: Muhammara, Dill dip, olives

more apps: Spanakopita, crudites

The Torfurky, all basted and roasted and ready to eat!

Sides: mashterpaters, roasted broccoli, and the canned
cranberry "sauce" Mister insisted we needed

I realized in a panic a few days before Thanksgiving (and a few days after I constructed the menu) that I had completely neglected to get/make gravy.  In an incredible (and incredibly fortunate) coincidence, my dear Mama Pea posted this recipe to save my butt.  It was good and easy to make in a pinch, but a little too thick to become a regular occurrence in our home, so next year we'll think ahead and find something a little more pourable.

Next year?

That's right!  It seems my parents enjoyed themselves enough to consider sharing the holidays - with any luck, that means I will always host Thanksgiving and they can have Christmas :)  In any case, thanks to my hard-working dishwasher and helpful husband, it didn't take all that long to clean up after dinner, allowing me to get to bed by nine(ish) since I had to be up at 3am to go to work.

In case you were wondering, Philadelphia is incredibly quiet and peaceful (and dark) at 5am.

b*tches love food

And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

Before my mother has a heart attack, let me explain that the title of this post is part book review and part personal experience; so it's only halfway offensive now.

I consider myself to be a relatively well-read young woman (please let me still be young!).  In addition to having the ability to form words from the random letters spewed in semi-organized fashion onto the pages of magazines, books, and websites, I also have the gift of critical thinking.  This sometimes leads to fun experiments or moments of food zen.  I read about food or lifestyles or the combination of those two (for example, veganism) and I feel inspired.  I don't always feel inspired to make any kind of permanent life change, but I usually feel provoked to at least try new things.

Between the 10th Anniversary edition of VegNews magazine and one of the girls at work lending me her censored copy of Skinny Bitch (she taped paper over the word Bitch on the cover and the spine so it wouldn't offend anyone who saw it on her desk), I have had a weekend of inspired food experiences.

In addition to fulfilling its usual quota of awesome (which led me to finally subscribe to it), the VegNews 10th Anniversary issue features an article on Summertime Drinks by Dynise Balcavage (of The Urban Vegan fame).  I'm way too lazy to make cocktails for myself, but that article may come in handy someday when I have a home large enough to entertain.  However, the article reminded me of a fun snack I wanted to pick up and try:

Dynise mentioned these in a post of hers a couple of months ago and I've been distractedly obsessed with trying them ever since.  They're just so weird!  I got some today at Essene and they are as delightful and addicting as she said in her post.  The best part, though, is how affordable and guilt-free they are - even if you ate the whole bag (which you could easily do if you aren't paying attention), you would only have eaten 450 calories of pure veggie goodness - I mean, they're baked pea fries for heaven's sake! 

They could be mistaken for bland if you aren't in the habit of taking a moment to taste your food.  The flavor definitely develops as you munch, so if you eat them too quickly, you won't recognize the subtle flavors lurking behind the fun, crunchy outside.  That's fine.  More for me.

Yesterday, I ran down to the Spice Corner (may I say again how happy I am that they are open again?) to restock some herbs and spices.  After I completely underestimated how much marjoram = 2 oz (roughly 2.5 cups, if I had to guess), had to have an employee help me find the bright orange turmeric that was right next to my head, and paid for my treasures, I had an irresistible craving for fruit salad.  I'm such a devil.  As luck would have it, the Golden Donut shop (on the corner that more or less marks the northernmost point of the Italian Market) had a nice big plastic cup full of fruit just waiting for my $2 of ransom cash.

As I strolled home, bag of herbs and spices swinging from my arm, eating my fruit salad with a plastic fork, I reflected on just how much I love where I live.  It's magical and it never gets old!  I have lived in my specific neighborhood for over five years now and I still cannot take it for granted - it's just an amazing place to live.

Today, Mister was puttering around and making me crazy with his doom-doom-doom music and talk radio podcasts, so I packed up Skinny Bitch and one of my growing collection of reusable canvas bags and headed over to the new tea cafe next to Salon Sugar: Cups and Chairs.  Since I had just gotten to the chapter of SB that discusses fasting, and since the parts I had already read more or less berated the reader for filling her body with crap and minced no words about the need to detox, the Detox iced tea looked pretty promising - Matcha green tea with lemon juice and a squirt of honey that I didn't feel like disputing.  I had never had matcha before and didn't realize how much lemon juice she had added until my first shocking sip.  Again with that whole "tasting your food" thing, after the initial shock of sour-bitter wore off, I found the tea very refreshing and I could see it becoming an expensive addiction.

After I finished the book and my tea, I headed around the corner to my bastion of weird gourmet treasures - Essene Market.  I was on a mission to find Kaia Kale Chips, which were featured in VegNews, but a thorough study of the snack foods section only turned up my SnapeaCrisps and falafel chips, which, although they looked fascinating, they were just a little too expensive for natural junkfood.  I also ended up with some Mediterranean flatbread to accompany the most amazing thing I think I have ever found at Whole Foods (from my earlier shopping adventure): Cava Kalamata Hummus.

I tried it earlier on a slice of multigrain bread and it is amazing.  Very possibly the best food ever.  I mean, hummus and kalamatas?  How could it not be perfect?

Anyway, I also got a banana for tomorrow's breakfast and because I'm suddenly on a fresh fruit kick.  Then I picked up some Endangered Species chocolate because I needed some quality dark chocolate.  Okay, maybe I don't need it, but my foodie tastebuds were crying out for the bittersweetness of serious dark chocolate.  As I approached checkout, I decided Mister would enjoy the Primal Strips vegan jerky they had hanging out by the Vegetarian Times magazine I picked up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

An hour and a half has passed since I put the period on that last sentence.  Just as I finished typing that, Mister decided he was hungry, so I started making dinner.  Dinner is simmering as we speak, and Mister and I just finished our appetizer:

First, you'll notice Mister replaced the burnt-out lightbulb.  If you didn't notice that, please back up a few posts and observe the very poor quality of the photos.  

You're back?  Good - let's continue.

I cut some multigrain flatbread into triangles, then did the same (okay, wedges) with a perfectly ripe nectarine.  I filled one little bowl with kalamata hummus and the other with a mix of olives I put together at WF today.

Mister and I destroyed that plate.  

So, while dinner simmers away, I'll share this week's short menu (because I'm taking a long weekend next weekend, so I only need to think through Thursday).

1. Modular Pakistani Kima from The Urban Vegan.  That's dinner tonight, and it just quit simmering (in other words, I was able to smush a potato against the side of the pot, which is my way to figure out if the potatoes are done cooking).  

2. Red Lentil Coconut Curry which has escaped my attention for nearly a year.  I created this recipe for Mister's birthday...last August 15th.  I think we're due to make it again, don't you think?

3. Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan

4. Cajun Red Beans and Rice from The Accidental Vegan.