Southernish-Style Vegan Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving on Saturday this year, and it doubled as Christmas with Jen's mom. I figured I'd put the menu on here, because it was a darn good meal. I, as per usual, didn't take any photos of anything I made. But you can be sure that it looked completely professional and gourmet. Yeah.

The main dish, I guess, was the VegNews Mac 'n' Cheese. It turned out as expected. That's a pretty solid recipe. If you haven't tried it yet, I suggest it.

I also made Southern Fried Cauliflower and a bit of Southern Fried Seitan. I use this recipe, which is just written for seitan. When making it with cauliflower, I roast the cauliflower at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes and let them cool off before proceeding with the rest of the recipe as written.

Some vegan blue cheese dressing to dip the deep-fried goodness into. And some Franks Red Hot sauce.

Collard greens 'n' rice.

I also made these baked sweet potatoes that I like. I've never written the recipe down, but basically it's cubed sweet potatoes baked with margarine and pretty much equal parts chili powder and cinnamon (but maybe a bit more cinnamon). And then put marshmallows on top during the last ten minutes or so. But I forgot the marshmallows at home, so it wasn't nearly as good as it usually is. Oh well.

For dessert, I made pumpkin soy cream. For second-dessert, I made the VegNews/Chloe Coscarelli creme brulee.

It should be said that my sister-in-law helped with a bunch of prep work and I would have had to start a few hours earlier if I didn't have her help. She also gave me one of her two kitchen torches, so I'm thinking creme brulee might be a more regular thing at our house (which means once or twice a year, probably). Ooh, or torch-roasted marshmallows for kitchen-s'mores (which is just s'mores without the campfire).

Strumming Liam

Here's a long video of Liam playing the guitar. The second song is a version of Twinkle, Twinkle as sung by his ECFE teacher (who plays guitar in class). You can hear that version here. 

So yeah, the kid likes guitar. Also, we're pretty up-front with our children about death.

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For those of you in the Twin Cities metro, the Riverview Theatre is showing Vegucated this coming Monday at 7pm. I haven't seen it, but it looks interesting. Anyway, more info is here.

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Speaking of the Riverview Theatre, Liam went to his first movie back in September. He, Anna and I went to the new Winnie the Pooh flick. It was fun and he did pretty great.

Here they are before the show:

And in their seats waiting for it to start:

Halloween Photos

Some Halloweenish photos.

Carving a pumpkin with auntie Jessica.

Carving pumpkins with Lisa and Dan.

Halloween night. The squirrels added their own little touch to the pumpkins.

The neighborhood gang.

I forgot to "Boo!"

For the past four years, I've written a Halloween post in which my children dine on the flesh of innocents. This year, I apparently took a break. I'm sure the innocents will thank me later.

At any rate, you can read the previous years by clicking on this here hyper-text.

Speaking of holidays, Nathalie VanBalen, author of "Garlic Onion Beet Spinach Mango Carrot Grapefruit Juice" has a new coloring zine out called "Happy Thanksliving." Here's a sample page from her blog:

You should order it now so it will arrive in time for your kids to color it for Thanksgiving.

And speaking of "Garlic Onion Beet Spinach Mango Carrot Grapefruit Juice," VanBalen often puts free coloring sheets on her blog, often of the characters from the book. I printed out the two she made for Halloween this year and the kids colored them. Here are a couple that Anna did.

Thora:

Yellow Spotted Snails: 

Both of these are unfinished. Pretty much everything of Anna's is unfinished unless every single speck of white on the paper has been colored in. 

And here's Liam's Thora: 

So yeah. Good times. 

And a happy belated Halloween to all.