Monday, October 13, 2008

VeganMoFo: Thanksgiving

TOFURKY ROAST
It was okay. My sister disliked it, but she also said she dislikes "all things with tofu". Are you, my sister, even Asian? My mother thought it was a good thing to have, if only for the sake of having something that looked that part of the usual centrepiece. She said it made it more exciting. The texture was okay, but I couldn't really taste anything. There were tastier things on my plate...

MASHED POTATOES (VWAV - GARLIC & SPINACH VARIATION)
Yum! I can't believe how easily the potatoes fluffed, and the spinach was a nice touch.

PUNK ROCK CHICKPEA GRAVY (VWAV)
The gravy was delish, but it would have been better. It was my fault - I forgot the 1/4 cup nutritional yeast at the very end, so there was quite a distinct lemony taste that the nutritional yeast would probably have mellowed. All the diners enjoyed it though. I think my dad actually prefered the extra sour lemony flavour. Ha!

VEGETARIAN STUFFING (VEGWEB.COM)
It's for certain: homemade stuffing is much better than any storebought (including the over-salted mush inside Tofurky's Roast). The apples and raisins were nice additions to the traditional recipe. The ingredients are so varied and all-encompassing that I think that we can forgo a Tofurky next time and just eat stuffing, which is the best part anyway. I think I'll add more vegetable broth - I do like my stuffing a bit mushier. Speaking of vegetable broth, I made my own today! I've always been totally intimidated by homemade broths. I don't know why now, because it was so darn easy! I had a few vegetable scraps I'd saved up before in the freezer. So easy. So adaptable. I kept dumping in various scraps from the vegetables I was chopping up for other dishes throughout the simmering process.

CORNBREAD (THEPPK.COM)
This was the not-as-sweet Isa recipe, which I still found plenty sweet. I think I love all cornbread, so this was a no-brainer yum!

GINGERBREAD APPLE PIE (VWAV)
I got rave reviews! Our friend said it was professional, to which I said aw shucks, it was only the recipe. And really it was. I had no idea how to make a pie, and ta-da! a pie! With a pie crust that doesn't require rolling!

I didn't get indivdiual pictures, but here's a picture (with poor lighting, unfortunately) of the spread:
In the middle of mixing the stuffing ingredients, and my proud vegetable stock in the background: Stove-top action (big silver pot: mashed potatoes; saucepan in foreground: gravy):

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

3 comments:

Jen Treehugger said...

It all looks and sounds GORGEOUS!!

Sheree' said...

Looks like a wonderful Thanksgiving meal!

Karyn said...

Your Thanksgiving looks wonderful! I am panicking over mine - my family's going to my Grandma's multi-generational dinner in upstate NY, and the only thing vegan will be the coffee, provided that I grab some before my aunt dumps cream in the whole pot! They don't believe in vegetables without butter, and they cook the stuffing in the turkey! Like I said, panic!