Christmas Cookies!!!!
I love making cookies at Christmastime. I guess it’s because I grew up doing this with my mom. I’m honestly not that much of a cookie person normally, but in the colder months, nothing beats a nice cup of tea/coffee and a biscuit.
Eric and I made Gingerbread cut-out cookies and iced them with red, white, and green icing and sprinkles. The recipe for the cookies is from The Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook.
WHICH WICH?
It was over the Thanksgiving holiday that I discovered a fabulous new sandwich place (new to me anyway). 
There is a Which Wich at our local mall, as well as a free-standing one just down the street from us.
When you walk in, they have all of these brown paper bags to choose from that you write on to order your sandwich. There’s a bag for vegetarians!!! You then tick off which vegetarian sandwich you want specifically and all the extras you want on it. It’s so nice to have an order form and not have to change or make a ton of requests when ordering, like I usually have to do as a vegan. The vegetarian choices are:
- HUMMUS & BELL PEPPERS
- TOMATO & AVOCADO
- TRIPLE CHEESE MELT
- BLACK BEAN PATTY
- ELVIS WICH (PB, Honey & Banana)
Obviously some of those don’t work for vegans. The sandwich comes on wheat or white bread. They are both vegan, except the wheat bread does have honey in it, which technically means that’s not vegan (depending on where you stand in that debate). I went ahead and got mine on wheat both times, choosing to go ahead and have the honey. It’s so hard for me to want white bread, as there are no nutritional benefits. I’m much more satisfied with a hearty wheat bread.
Now, I ordered the black bean patty both times. After doing some research as to whether it was a vegan black bean patty, I now have to tell you that it’s not. :/ Online when I was researching some people said they had been told it was vegan, others told no. I decided to write Which Wich myself. The ingredient list they sent me for the patty has egg whites and calcium caseinate in it. Boo!! I’m still super excited for this sandwich place though because the Hummus & Bell Pepper and Tomato & Avocado would still be yummy choices. Also, when you load up on all the extras…it’s just delicious! Now all I have to do is try to get them to make a vegan patty. 
The LONG overdue Thankgiving Day Post!!!
Thanks for being so patient. Eric and I have been very busy spending time with family and enjoying all the wonderful things about the holidays. We’ve also been busy with this new little girl….Mia….our new black kitten!! We adopted her from the SPCA at our local mall the Saturday after Thanksgiving. She is just adorable, and we are loving every minute with her. Scotch, our white female cat, is growing to love her too!
Now on to Thanksgiving Day memories. This Thanksgiving was especially unique for us because it was the first time we had Thanksgiving dinner at our house for both sides of our family. We ended up having 11 people total. Here’s the lovely tablescape my mother-in-law and I came up with. I had the placemats especially made for this dinner by an artist on Etsy.
We started with champagne and appetizers, of which I was in charge of neither. Ashleigh, my awesome sister-in-law, brought over toasted bread slices with fresh guacamole on top and hummus stuffed grape tomatoes. My mother-in-law also put out some great cheese (for the nonvegans) and these cool mustards. Also, there was habenjero cranberry jelly and wheat thin crackers. Both vegan!
Now for the feast… I made Spiral Diner mashes potatoes and VwaV Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, just like I did for the vegan meet-up Thanksgiving.
This is a recipe I found last year online, and I cannot find it anymore to link you. It’s called Acorn Squash and Wild Rice Casserole. I found it on a Canadian’s blog. There are very similar recipes all over the web though for squash and rice casseroles.
The Best Vegan Green Bean Casserole from the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen blog. This is the second year I’ve made this too! I LOVE it! I love all the fresh mushrooms that go in to it. I doubled the recipe this year to get the amount you see in the dish. We had 11 people, so I wanted to be sure and have enough.
This is our Celebration Roast sliced up from Whole Foods. Yum! We are BIG fans of this f aux meat.
Eric’s mom makes the BEST cranberry sauce. We served it in cute little vases on the table.
This is my plate all loaded up and ready to be eaten. You can bet I ate every little bit!!
A few hours later (well maybe only 2), after our food had settled and somewhat digested, we were ready to partake in dessert. This is the cake I made. The recipe came from the October issue of VegNews. It’s called Heavenly Sweet Potato Cake.
Vegan Pumpkin Pie from Whole Foods.
And here’s a look at my dessert plate…we had Soyatoo whipped soy topping to put on top of the pie.
Happy Belated Thanksgiving!!!
I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday! I promise to post about our meal very soon. We still have family in town so things are still very busy. It’s so nice to be together though. I’ll be back with loads of food pics, as well as some pictures of a new addition to our family! (I have to keep you wondering.)
