Day One: Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Crumb Topping

It's VeganMoFo! I'm so excited! I'm trying to do theme weeks to make this year easier for me. I've never done themes before -- basically each year I would make a huge list of things that I wanted to make / post about, and then each day I'd be like, "Eh. I don't really want to write about this today... Maybe later in the month..." And then I didn't post. I think themes might make things a little more managable and will give me less wiggle room for slacking off.

So, starting today and ending on Friday, October 7th, it's Pumpkin Week. I bought a metric shit ton of canned pumpkin in preparation, and I'm whipping out a bunch of pumpkin recipes that I've been meaning to make, but just haven't yet. I'm really excited.



Last night, I made the Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Crumb Topping  from Veganomicon. And holy shit, it was amazing. You should make it. If you don't own a copy of V'con, you can use the powers of Google to find this recipe. (Veganomicon is an amazing resource, though, so you really should buy it if you haven't yet.) The recipe calls for cashew ricotta, which I've made before for stuffed shells and which Chiv didn't really care for -- but when it's mixed with ziti, pumpkin, caramelized onions, paprika, sea salt, and three different kinds of ground pepper, and then baked for half an hour... You guys. It was really, really good. And also it makes your house smell amazing.

Here is a photo of our friend Kim, who came over to help us with some wedding crafts and who was super excited about the ziti:




While I was making dinner, Chiv ran to the grocery store to buy dessert. He came home and made me a tower of presents:



Did you know that Keebler Jumbo Peanut Butter Fudge Sticks are accidentally vegan? Apparently only the jumbo size, and only the peanut butter flavor. They taste a lot like Little Debbies Nutty Bars, which I basically grew up on and which I missed.

After dinner, we worked on wedding crafts. We're doing a ribbon wall to put up behind the dessert table. Kim came over to help me measure fabric, and after cutting the first yard of fabric carefully with a rotary cutter... we realized that we could just make a tiny snip in the fabric and rip the fabric along the grain to make ribbons much faster. Then we kind of went nuts tearing fabric all night. Chiv helped. And made himself a headband. So handsome.



All right, guys. I am going to act like a housewife and clean up the house and do some baking today. I will see you with more pumpkin flavored food tomorrow! Happy MoFoing!

xoxo Jenni