Christmas Dinner 2011

I am declaring Christmas 2011 my best Christmas EVER. I spent the entire weekend with people I love and cherish. Who could ask for anything more?

My best friend's hubby is a chef and he and I collaborated on Christmas eve dinner. No, he isn't vegan, but he likes the challenge of cooking vegan food. (You may recall the fig sauce he prepared awhile back, posted HERE.)

For a little over two hours, we set to work on some amazing food to bring to the family dinner: a savory "Holiday Tart" (recipe from VegNews HERE), acorn squash stuffed with wild rice stuffing (stuffing recipe HERE), and mashed potatoes with butternut squash. There are no photographs of the cooking process as we were on a time crunch and were bustling around that tiny, 800-degrees kitchen, but behold! The finished product!

Here's the tart, fresh out of the oven.

This was delicious! The filling is mostly chickpeas, walnuts, spinach, celery, onion, and garlic and some other herbs. This could be eaten without baking, and it would make a delicious dip or spread. I think it would also be great crust-less, just baked like a casserole.

The wild rice stuffing was delicious! I cooked the rice in vegetable broth, and it cooked for a very long time, and we still had to drain excess liquid, but it still turned out perfect. Instead of an apple, we diced up a pear-apple, which was fun. Pecans are great in rice dishes.

And mashed potatoes, well, you can't go wrong with mashed potatoes! (Especially garlicky ones.) The butternut squash was a great addition.

At the family dinner, everyone was eating pasta and seafood, but I was happy to share my food with everyone (we made plenty to go around!), and I got some lovely feedback!

Here's my plate:

I also made a no-bake fruit pie with So Delicious vanilla on the side, and that was warmly received, but I have no pictures of that. (I've blogged about it awhile back and the "recipe" is HERE.)

It was such a delicious meal and I was SO FULL that I couldn't even THINK about turning my new hula hoop that night! I had an amazing weekend, so full of love. I am so lucky to have such amazing people in my life.

I hope you had a lovely holiday, too! What was on your holiday plate?

Dinner and a Movie

A few weeks ago, Amber and I had a pretty chill evening that still included some Kitchen Time. We had a little dinner-and-a-movie night. Amber makes some pretty rockin' oat-and-black-bean burgers, so she whipped those up while I prepped a batch of kale chips. [Note: Every person whom I have introduced to kale chips, veg*n or omnivore, loves them. It's a fun way to get some greens in your diet.]

Preppin' the burgers

Snackin' on some greens while the patties fry up and the potato crowns bake

Here's my plate (no bread for me, thanks)

While we dined on diner-style fare, we watched this super-cute little movie, Flakes, featuring the always-adorable Zooey Deschanel.

Yeah, the trailer may not be very enticing, but trust me, it's a cute little flick. I mean, it's a CEREAL shop. In NEW ORLEANS. And there's a lot of talk about Airstreams, which is SO up my alley/out of my dreams. If you LOVED Empire Records, you'll at least LIKE Flakes. And it's available instantly on Netflix!

My favorite lines from the movie:
Neal: So what do you want to do tonight?
Miss Katz: Hold hands.

Yeah, I'm a total sap, in case you didn't know.

We paused the movie to make some cookies and cream-style shakes in the Magic Bullet, but there are no pictures, because I was briefly in heaven.

PS. Speaking of vegan dinners and movies, check out my new friend PJ's blog, which is ALL ABOUT vegan dinners inspired by movies! It's called Vegan Cine Grub.

Recent Eats: Ladies Nights

Before a night of baking with some of my favorite vegan gal pals in mid-March, Amber fueled us with some comfort food. First, bruschetta

and spinach dip

followed by mac & cheese (VegNews recipe)

And then we got our bake on, starting with rainbow cupcakes.

followed by cream cheese brownies (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, of course).

Unfortunately, the colors in our rainbow cupcakes came out quite muted, but that didn't effect the taste.

Not long after this night, we reunited again for another bake-a-thon. We kicked the night off with some improv nachos, using what was on hand. We made a cashew-and-nooch-based cheese sauce, then globbed on some vegetarian refried beans, some chopped green pepper, and scattered some diced Follow Your Heart on top. (No, those aren't carrots you see!)

Oh man. Good stuff! Next up, we got to business on making oatmeal cream pies AND whoopie pies. The latter that I couldn't help but refer to as Whoopi(e) Goldberg Pies, which led me randomly shout, "I ain't no DAMN secretary!"

I'm not sure if anyone else caught that reference, though.

First, make the cookie outsides.

Next: slather on your best schmear between two cookies, press lightly, unhinge jaw, and enjoy.

These were cookie "pies" of epic proportions and tastes, and creating them was no small feat. It takes a certain level of vegan badassery, I think. (But we haven't quite reached the level of making our own vegan cinnamon rolls. Yet.)