The day before the Thanksgiving Celebration

Last year, we stuffed our faces!

This year, we're doing it again and having four more people join us. 

We're making the same brussels sprouts (but doubling them), the same stuffing, and the same turkey.

New this year... Kira made a HUGE carrot salad! <-- She shreds a ton of carrots and adds spices and balsamic vinegar and oil.  It tastes awesome. It was inspired by carrot salads eaten while in France.

Friends are coming and are bringing a wild rice apple walnut salad, cranberry sauce, a green salad, and wine.  So excited!

The girls and I made pumpkin pies ...  (actually Kira and Tia did while Nat and I worked on the tofu turkey). I linked to the recipe version I use for pumpkin pies all the time now.  (It took a lot of trial to figure out what I liked!) I also have a soy free variation for pumpkin pie there.

We're starting the tofu turkey today -- you kind of need to.  You have to drain the tofu, then add spices <-- easiest done in the food processor, then place it in a colander with cheesecloth under it (so you can get it out of the colander) and let it drain some more; as it sits there the flavor of the spices comes out.

You also put it in the colander so you get a round bowl shape to it.  You hollow it out and fill it with stuffing to bake... see http://chefinyou.com/2009/11/18/tofu-turkey-recipe/.  I'll try to get some pictures of mine later. 


Today we have to make:
mashed potatoes and roasted potatoes <-- Kira is doing that.
Gravy <-- me
Turkey <--Nat and me
Sourdough baguette <--buy at whole foods
Dressing/stuffing (Nick cut up the bread yesterday) <--Nat and me
Brussles sprouts <-- Tia

Oh, and I made the cauliflower curry soup so we'd have more already prepared food ahead of time. 

Zucchini

 

Here is the zucchini roasting in the oven! It has a little olive oil on it and is with onions!  It was lovely with marinara sauce!  They were roasted until each piece was golden brown and wonderfully caramelized.  (I spent a lot of time pulling the "done" pieces off of trays and stirring zucchini! It was worth it!  It probably took about 1.5-2 hours to get it all roasted.)

The other green (one more product we love)

Half of us still love our stainless steel straws and half of us love these silicone straws.

One other silicone product we love!

Dinner came to me in an email...

The other day, I got an email from Forks over knives and it had a link to this http://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/creamy-potato-curry/:

I thought it looked interesting and was hopeful that everyone would eat it. Kira, our vegan who doesn't like vegetables, does love potatoes and likes curry and other Indian flavors. I'll include what I did here, but take a look at their site for the original recipe (and good photos).

1/2 - 2/3 cup cashews
6 Yukon Gold Potatoes, chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 yellow onion, diced
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 bag of frozen cauliflower
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 tablespoons of an Indian Spice mix that I have that has cumin, coriander, and garlic in it (this is it)
1 cup (or so) of frozen kale
1-2 cups frozen green peas
1 (15-ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

Instructions:

1. Soak cashews in 2/3s - 1 cup of water.  I soaked mine in the blender while I got veggies prepared

2. Place the potatoes and 2 cups of water in a large pot. <-- I didn't think this was enough water, but it was okay.

Cover and bring to a boil, then add the onion, carrot, garbanzo beans, and cauliflower.  (I added them all at the same time because I thought they would be a better texture if I did.)  Reduce the heat to medium-low-medium and simmer, covered, for 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add spices, and continue cooking, covered, for 10 minutes.

4. Blend cashews until smooth, then stir the cashew cream into the pot.

Before adding the green stuff (step ), I pulled some of the garbanzo beans, carrots, and potatoes for the vegans who don't like vegetables (Kira and Tia--my sweet girls who are slowly getting better about eating different foods).

5. Add the kale and peas and simmer for 5 minutes, or until the kale is tender.


Verdict... we will totally make this again!  3 out of 3 people who like vegetables really liked it!

Bad picture of the yummy dish below.  Thanks Forks over knives for another great meal!

Final Fall Harvest

 

We got these, plus four more eggplants, from our garden and then we pulled the plants to plant the winter garden.  It was end of October. We needed to plant the winter garden!

Last weekend I roasted a ton of zucchini and this weekend I did a ton of eggplant.  I'm getting ready to make Baingan Bharta, not just my Italian eggplant. 

Yum!

This was my "find" at the grocery store (Whole Foods) yesterday.  Ninja Squirrel Sriracha Trail Mix... What's not to love?  

Happy November

It's Nanoblopomo!  I'm not signing up to do a post a day, but I am going to try to do more this month... Considering the last few months, August was 3, September was 0, and October was 3, 4 would be a new high... Actually, in July I hit 6.  Okay, that's a stretch goal.

In actual substantive food thoughts, here's what I plan to make for dinner.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  I also have a plan to stream line things a bit.  When I was telling a new friend about my blog I explained how I tried to make really healthy food really fast!  I take short cuts all the time and use frozen veggies instead of fresh. When our garden is producing we eat very locally grown fresh veggies, but frozen does save me time because someone has already washed and cut them for me.  My own personal sous-chef...er, maybe not personal.

Kira plans to make home made pesto with fusilli pasta.  Maybe two posts out of tonight's dinner?  And tomorrow I will be roasting the final zucchini and eggplant from our garden.... The zucchini and eggplant plants are now out of the garden and we have bok choy and broccoli planted for winter!  They are cute and little, but soon we'll have winter greens--pictures below!