Eric and me with our adorable nephew Nathan, neice Madilyn, and nephew Remington

G-Dad, Granny, Ash, Jenni, me, and Eric in lovely CA  (Eric’s parents and sisters)

Eric and me at the top of the mountain after an awesome (but tough) hike in Northern Cal

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.

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.

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.

I’ll start with my contribution…Mashed Potatoes (I used a recipe I got from a Spiral Diner cooking class last year)…

and Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from VwaV.  I am making these same mashed potatoes and gravy for my family on Thanksgiving, so it was great to test out the recipe.  The gravy is soooooo good.

I also put out the remaining slices of our Celebration Roastfrom Whole Foods.  It disappeared quick!  Eric and I bought another celebration roast last night for Thanksgiving.  We love it sooo much.  It’s excellent on a sandwich with cranberry sauce!!

Now for everyone else’s dishes… Sweet Potato Casserole

Green Bean Casserole

Tofurkey

More Mashed Potatoes

I really didn’t understand what this was exactly, but I know it’s from an Indian restaurant.  They are basically fried hot peppers and hot potatoes.  There were two sauces to dip them in.  VERY spicy!!

Southwestern Corn Pudding from VwaV.  This was awesome!!!  I’ve actually got the recipe out right now and am debating adding it to my Thanksgiving menu.  My mom always makes this corn casserole, so this definitely reminded me of it, except this one is almost better with all of the southwestern spices, not to mention that it’s vegan.

Macrobiotic Rice and Veggie Casserole

Shepard’s Pie

Here’s a picture of my plate before digging in.

And of course, what meal would be complete without desserts?!!  Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake from Fat-Free Vegan.

Gingerbread Iced Cookies

And to keep things funky today…I had an interesting, and new, afternoon snack!  I needed a substantial snack, as Eric and I are going to a Bikram yoga class this evening and dinner will be later than usual.  Apple slices, dunked in almond butter, and then rolled in Nutlettes cereal (which is 100% soy protein).  I’m good to go now!!

The menu:

• Celebration Field Roast
• Rosemary Roasted Potatoes
• Green Beans with Carrots
• Wild Rice, Pearl Onion and Cranberry Pilaf
• Wild Mushroom Sage Gravy
• Cranberry Mandarin Orange Relish

Yum, yum, and yum!  I definitely recommend it…even if it’s not for your real Thanksgiving…it’s a great dinner to enjoy.  I ordered it the day before, and they were able to have it for me.

Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Pecan Streusel from VwaV.  Vegan Dad has blogged about it before too here.

I then packaged some pieces up for our lovely coworkers.

The rest for us!!

I then made Blakened Tofu from ED&BV.  We had it with roasted sweet potatoes that I roasted in the oven for an hour….sooo tasty and couscous.