Thanksgiving Leftovers

Okay, so I neglected to actually take any pictures of all the food I made for Thanksgiving. I wasn't a huge fan of the field roast, though. It was a little salty for me. I didn't just want to throw it out, though, so I decided to make it into a pot pie. And then I decided to turn my pot pie into miniature pot pies using muffin tins. The recipe (both for the crust and the filling) is loosely based on the recipe from the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. Their biscuit crust recipe calls for 2 friggin' pounds of butter/margarine, though! I didn't use NEARLY that much and mine was still tasty. The filling contains onion, celery, carrots, peas, and chopped up field roast. I didn't add any extra salt (or soy sauce like the recipe calls for) because the field roast was already a bit salty, and the recipe used vegetable broth, which also contains quite a bit of salt.

Pizza stones are awesome!

I finally got a pizza stone. It's official: I'm in love. This made the most perfect pizza yet. Instead of the usual quick pizza dough recipe that I normally use, I made the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. It was awesome. It made enough dough for two pizzas, so I froze half of it and we'll have another pizza soon. I'm not actually a big fan of the faux pepperoni on here, but we had some to use up. I never ate pepperoni (or any other pork product) growing up, so one day recently when I had a coupon, I decided to try the fake stuff. Now, I have absolutely no idea if this tastes anything like real pepperoni, but I really don't think it adds anything special to the pizza. It also tends to burn, which my boyfriend says is because the real stuff is much fattier (yuck!). The soy cheese melted soooo much better on the pizza stone than it ever has before. Yum!

Sparkled Ginger Cookies and Orange "Chicken"

These are the sparkled ginger cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance. They are absolutely awesome and you should immediately drop what you are doing and go make some. After you do, you should probably hide most of them from yourself because you will want to inhale them in just one sitting.

And this is orange "chicken" (those are green peppers mixed in...I was running low on vegetables that day). The faux chicken are TVP chunks. This is a bastardized recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Authentic Chinese Cooking. I was supposed to fry the TVP chunks before adding them to the sauce, but I wanted to go lower-fat (and less messy) so I baked them instead. That probably would have been fine, but I still battered them as per the frying instructions. They ended up kind of gooey. Oops.

I have cooked lots of food for Thanksgiving, but haven't taken any pictures yet. We are leaving for Nashville in a little while. I'm bringing a field roast (this will be my first time trying one--I'm really excited that we were able to find one at Earth Fare), cornbread stuffing, sweet potato latkes, gingerbread apple pie (from Vegan with a Vengeance), and pumpkin muffins (also from VWAV). I also have a can of cranberry sauce that I got from Whole Foods when I was visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago. Momma said that the kind I got would not be the jellied kind (which I don't like), but now I'm not so sure. I guess I'll be finding out for sure tomorrow.

Cannellini Piccata

I found this recipe on vegweb tonight while looking for a new use for a can of cannellini beans. I've never had piccata before and was worried it would be on the bland side since it didn't call for much in the way of spices. It was pure lemon-y deliciousness, though, and a nice change from marinara sauce. I'm glad I tried the recipe as is before adding spices to it.

I've been slacking on posting

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Funny story....I bought the book right after it came out, only I'm trying really hard to control my spending, so I kind of neglected to tell my boyfriend about it. I figured he would figure it out eventually, though, especially when I suddenly started making lots of cupcakes. Apparently guys do not think the way I do, though. Instead of analyzing where the cupcakes came from, he just thought "mmmm cupcakes." So, one day he went to the front page of theppk.com and noticed that the cupcake book was out. He asked me if I was going to get it. I am a horrible liar and don't like doing it anyway, so I fessed up that I'd had it for a couple of weeks already. Turns out he didn't care that I spent the money and, in return for not getting upset with me for hiding the book, he got to pick out the next cupcakes (but the Tiramisu ones got vetoed by me because I don't do coffee).
The mint icing on these just wouldn't stiffen up for me, and there was a bit of an incident with my makeshift pastry bag, but I think everything turned out just fine. I kind of like the mint icing being smooth like it is because it reminds me of a mint filling from a peppermint patty.

Asian-marinated baked tofu (Vegan with a Vengeance) with sauteed green beans and onions over yellow rice. I just love yellow rice. Even though it's really just turmeric added to regular rice, I think it is tastier and much more visually appealing. Hey, I'm easy to please.

Baked BBQ seitan with mushrooms, black beans, and (I think) onions over rice.

Homemade bread. It's shiny because I brushed it with oil after coming out of the oven. Although I have a bread machine, I did this one all by hand. Non-bread machine bread is so much easier to slice, plus there is no hole in the bottom from the paddle. I think I'm going to start using my bread machine for the kneading and rising, but then shape the dough and put it in a loaf pan. It might take some practice to get that right, though, as I'll have to figure out what temperature to bake it at.