Pumpkin Pancakes

I had half a can of pumpkin puree left after making Chef Chloe's Creamy Pumpkin Pasta, so you know what that means...Pumpkin Pancakes for breakfast!

Pumpkin Pasta with Crispy Sage and Toasted Walnuts

I used Chef Chloe's recipe for Creamy Pumpkin Penne with Crispy Sage and Toasted Pecans. I didn't have any pecans, so I used walnuts, and I didn't have penne, so I used shells and elbow macaroni. I also added about 2 cups of non-dairy milk rather than 1 1/2 to make it a bit creamier. But other than that I followed the recipe exactly and it was perfect. Just the right amount of pumpkin so that it wasn't overwhelming, the sage balanced out the pumpkin nicely, and the nuts gave each bite a bit of crunchiness. Overall it was quite easy to make and really really delicious.

Thanksgiving

 

roll dough made by my dad

vegan rolls fresh from the oven

vegan apple pie

vegan apple pie made by me

vegan avocado pie made by my sister

homemade "tofurkey" made by my dad

vegan dressing made by my dad

vegan mashed potatoes, peas, "tofurkey," and lentil gravy

"tofurkey"

peas, lentils, "tofurkey," rolls

vegan pumpkin pie made by my mom

just some of our pies. clockwise from left: vegan lemon cheesecake, vegan pumpkin pie, vegan avocado pie, vegan apple pie, vegan pumpkin cheesecake pie

Thanks to my boyfriend for the pictures!

Thanksgiving Eve

vegan apple pie

My boyfriend and I are going to be driving to my parents' house for a full vegan Thanksgiving spread tomorrow afternoon, then we will be heading down to his parents' house in the evening for a second dinner. It's going to be a full day of driving, but it's also going to be a full day of family, which makes it all worthwhile.

To contribute to the two dinners, I decided I would stick to the classics and make my lattice-top apple pie. When I went shopping for the apples, I was looking for Golden Delicious and MacIntosh. The MacIntosh had been pretty picked through by the time I got to them...go figure all the good pie apples were gone on Thanksgiving eve... so I only grabbed a few, but then as I was leaving, I noticed that they were restocking them, so I grabbed some more. But because of this I kind of lost count of how many I was buying and ended up getting a lot more than I needed...about twice as many. So instead of the two pies, I ended up making three, and some mini individual-sized pies, and still had enough pie filling left over for at least another pie. I wasn't too upset though, in my opinion, when it comes to apple pies, you can never have too many. And thanks to some good friends, the arduous task of peeling the few dozen apples apples was over before I knew it! It did leave quite  a mess in my sink, though.

A Cornbread and Chili Kind Of Day

vegan cornbread and chili

Recently my parents have gone on a canning spree. Anything that can be canned, has been, from raspberry preserves (fresh picked off mountain roads by my mother), to tomatoes grown in their backyard vegetable garden, to barley and potato soup, and of course, chili. Since I don't have the set up my parents do for canning, I usually just borrow (read: take) a few jars of whatever they have around when I go home and visit. This last visit I left my parents' house with fresh homemade rye and plain bagels and two jars of barley and potato soup. And the time before that I got a jar of chili, a small jar of pickled green chiles, a jar of raspberry preserves, and a jar of apple butter. It's nice living relatively close to my parents.

The last couple days here in Virginia have been cold and rainy, i.e., perfect weather to break out my dad's chili...which is something that really deserves a post of it's own, but I'll leave that for later...and of course I had to bake some cornbread to go along with it. This was actually my first attempt at cornbread, with a recipe I adapted from Better Homes and Garden. It wasn't too shabby for my first try, if I do say so myself.

vegan corn bread

Persian Lime Pie

vegan persian lime pie

I bought a huge bulk bag of Persian limes at the store because I figured that I would have absolutely no problem finding ways to use them. I used a couple right at first, but then didn't touch them for several weeks after that. When I was looking through my fridge this morning I realized that I really needed to use up these limes or else I was going to have a huge bulk bag of rotten limes on my hands. Hence, this Persian lime pie was made. 

Note: don't be discouraged by the large list of ingredients, it's actually really easy to make.

The Natural

me helping in the kitchen by putting Swedish Fish in between my toes

One of my fondest memories as a child was "helping" my dad make cinnamon rolls. I couldn't really do much (in reality I couldn't really do anything that was actually helpful), but I was very good at showing him where to sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar before he rolled up the dough. I would sit up on the counter, he would sprinkle and I would say "you missed a spot," and he'd sprinkle and I'd point and say, "now sprinkle some here." Obviously, I was a natural in the kitchen.