Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Past

For the past two years, my mom and I have really cooked up a storm at Thanksgiving. I get excited about cooking in a "guest kitchen" that is big and has actual counter space and I like introducing my family to my vegan foods, as much as they may protest. The past two Thanksgivings, I have also tried some new dishes that have been great additions!

My favorite dish is what I call Chickpea Meatballs. It is adapted from the chickpea cutlets of theppk.com. Last year I tried the cutlets and I found the cutlets to be a little dry. Here are some shots of the chickpea cutlet process:

First I mashed up the chickpeas. 

Added the ingredients and the vital wheat gluten, which I had used for the first time, made it meat-like. 

My very own meat-like substance. 

The cutlets waiting to be cooked. 

Cooking the cutlets. 

But I was not a fan of the cutlet format, so a couple days later I tried the meatball format. I made some changes to the recipe, too. Mainly, I changed the order of which I put in the ingredients. I put in all the wet ingredients and the spices in first. Then I pre-mixed the vital wheat gluten and the breadcrumbs and them mixed it all together into a dough-like substance. I also add a little extra veggie broth at the end. It keeps them nice and moist. Then I roll them into little balls, sprinkle them with paprika then fry, then finish them off in the oven for a very short time. 

Cooking the chickpea meatballs

Ready for the oven. 

The chickpea meatballs at this year's Thanksgiving. 

These chickpea meatballs have been great. I have eaten them plain, with mushroom gravy (keep reading for this one) and as you would eat meatballs in pasta with red sauce. 

Another hit of the Thanksgiving meal for the past two years has been the mushroom gravy. Again, I got the recipe from theppk.com. And this year we made it again, thinner, and used it as a pasta sauce. Very yummy. 

Last year, mixing the onion, garlic and mushroom for the gravy. 

Last year's gravy on the stove. 

Last year's gravy. 

This year's gravy, a little thicker. 

Last year I also made my own stuffing. I have a problem with onions, though. So this is as far as a I got chopping the onion last year. 

This year my mom did any necessary onion chopping and I hid upstairs. My eyes are very sensitive. The stuffing came out really well last year:

I love a lot of celery and there is the onion my mom finished chopping. 

Toasting bread. 

And here is the stuffing. 

This year we opted for the Whole Foods brand vegan stuffing mix in order to save time and energy. I recommend it. It is tasty. 

Both years we also made the standard mashed potatoes and yams. 

Last year we made A LOT of potatoes and yams. This year we really cut back. 

Last year I did well with garnish. 

Here are last year's yams. 

This year's yams came out much better. 

The potatoes this year were a little garlic-y but good. I slacked on the garnish. 

We also made vegetables each year...

Last year's Thanksgiving plate...plastic

This year's Thanksgiving plate... fancy

And here is this year's Thanksgiving table (meat made by my mom for the rest of my family is strategically hidden). 

All in all, two years of great Thanksgiving meals. And who says Thanksgiving is all about the Turkey?

I am back! And...Loaf cakes!

After being asked many times to revive my blog, the peer pressure finally got to me and I am back! I have many pictures stored up and plan to update you on my cooking adventures of the last year as well as share current cooking creations. This was a busy year and it was hard to find time to cook let alone post. But I am going to attempt to catch up and to cook more!

Update on my vegan-ness. I am TOTALLY vegan now. Before I would always cook vegan but sometimes eat things like cookies that had eggs and milk cooked no. No more! 100% vegan... but I do eat honey. So maybe more like 99.9%.

I have recently been really into these loaf cake recipes fro

m my favorite vegan recipe site theppk.com.

Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf

and

Marbled Banana Bread

I made them both in one night which took some maneuvering around my small kitchen. But they came out really well.

Then this weekend for Thanksgiving I made the Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf into a Bunt Cake and made a Maple Syrup Glaze for the top. It was good but I needed to adjust the cooking time for the bunt shape...I will know for next time. I also did not have the proper amount of powder sugar so the glaze was a little grainy. But still tasty and a good vegan dessert among all the non-vegan pies the rest of my family ate.

I also made another Banana Marble Loaf this weekend but it came out too banana-y because I used a very interesting mutant banana! In the peel, it looked large. Then when I opened it, it was a conjoined twin banana! REGRET: I did not take a picture. I don't know what I was thinking. It was cool. But the largeness of this mutant banana made the cake very banana-y. I should have measured the pureed banana but fell victim to laziness.

All in all, the loaf cakes have been great to add to my repertoire and I have a feeling they will become standard dessert fare for me .

It's good to be back. More soon... I promise.

Remember when...

Remember when I used to post on this blog? Seriously have not cooked anything of note since Feb 14. Where does the time go????

Yup, more breading.

I was so excited by my breading success that I had to try it again. So here is some more breaded eggplant. However, in my tiny kitchen it was a lot more difficult. I have written about breading so many times, I will let my pictures tell my story.













Yummy. And no eggs or dairy.

Breading Success!!

I had a successful breading experience! This weekend I was at my parent's house and my dad and I made eggplant (parmigiana). His had cheese but mine, of course, did not. It was inspired by the same Throwdown with Bobby Flay that had inspired me the last time to try breading eggplant. This time, it worked!! And I used no eggs! In fact, mine came out better than my dad's. His eggplant burned a little when he fried it, I guess because of the egg.

So here is what I did. First, I salted the eggplant. Then I rinsed it. Then, I coated it in flour. With a light coating of flour, I dipped it in soymilk. Then I coated it with breadcrumbs. Then it went back into the soymilk and I coated it again with breadcrumbs. Double dipping!

It came out great and the breading really stuck to it.

Success!!!
(sorry, there are no pictures because I wasn't expecting such success and I was at my parents without my camera)

My favorite recipe: Banana Pancakes

I have been making these pancakes for a couple years now. I got the recipe from Post Punk Kitchen and have adapted it a little to make it easier and more to my liking. Basically, the only modifications are how I mix in the bananas and that I don't use All Spice because I never have it. And I don't really understand what All Spice is. All the spices? That is a lot of spices. I also add chocolate chips. Yum.

So, first I blend the soymilk and bananas together.


Then I mix it with the dry ingredients.


Then I put them on the stove on a griddle-like pan, flip them, and I am done. These are the easiest vegan pancakes you will ever make. Seriously easy and seriously delicious.

CUPCAKES!

Inspired by this post on my friends' blog Gastrofabulous, I decided to make a vegan version of the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes. The recipe my friend used was not vegan so I had some research to do. I looked for a recipe for vegan yellow cake but all the pictures I found made the cake look kind of green and soggy. Then I found a picture where the baker had used the recipe from the cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by the authors of my favorite website Post Punk Kitchen. I didn't have the book so I stopped at the bookstore before picking up the ingredients and copied the recipe down (unfortunately, I threw out the little piece of paper by accident). For the icing, I used the regular recipe, substituting vegan butter for regular.

The cupcakes were supposed to look like this:


But I don't have an icing tube so the icing did not look as appealing. But it was an easy recipe and I thought they were pretty good. And they are all gone so they must have been OK.

The yellow cake recipe was so easy. I put all the ingredients in a bowl and stirred. Piece of cake. Or, rather, piece of cupcake.


The icing was a little complex but not bad at all. Just two steps. I first made the vegan chocolate chip cookie dough, which is basically regular without eggs. Then I made a white icing with confectioner's sugar. Then I just put them together.


Add some chocolate chips and you are in business.


Tried to get a good closeup shot but the foil wrappers made it blurry.


My sister like them.


So did I.

I think this is a really great, yummy recipe. You should try it. The recipe is linked on Gastrofabulous.

On TV while I ate: Party of Five. I have been watching from season one. I don't know why I didn't watch this as a kid. It is so my kind of show :)