Day Seven: Daydreaming about savory pumpkin tarts

Tomorrow, I think, I am making a savory pumpkin tart. Chiv had one at the Carrboro farmer's market a year or two ago, and every time I talk about making pumpkin-flavored anything, he asks me if I can recreate this dream tart. The problem is, though, that I've never had one; the tart he ate wasn't vegan, so I didn't try it. He doesn't remember what was in it, or what exactly it tasted like. I've just begun to look up different recipes to compare and contrast, and it seems like no two are alike. Tonight I am still playing catch-up from my day at the office, so I'm still kind of beat and boring, but I'm going to take a quick break, go grab a cocktail with the mister, and come home and try to come up with a plan. Recipe tomorrow. Wish me luck! Happy MoFoing! xoxo Jenni

Day Six: Pumpkin Cornbread and Pumpkin "Turkey" Chili

You guys? I feel like I can be honest with you. Work kicked me in the ass today. I had grand, pumpkiny plans for Day Six of VeganMoFo / Pumpkin Week, but I was way too exhausted to roll up my sleeves and mix anything together tonight. So, nothing fancy from my end. Instead, I would like to point you in the direction of Jes from Eating Appalachia, who has recently posted recipes for both Pumpkin Cornbread and Pumpkin "Turkey" Chili.

Jes always posts the most amazing recipes. Seriously, check out these ingredients. The chili calls for pumpkin beer and chocolate chips. I definitely plan on making both of these recipes this autumn, and if this sounds like your cup of tea, I think you should, too.

xoxo Jenni

Day Five: Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

Ingredients:
1 cup nondairy milk. (I used almond milk.)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree.
2 frozen bananas, cut into chunks.
1 scoop vegan protein powder.
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
Pinch allspice.
Pinch nutmeg.
Pinch sea salt.

Directions:
Throw all ingredients into a blender. Blend. Drink!

Day Four: Pumpkin Bread

I took it easy last night and made pumpkin bread from a mix. A lot of mixes from Trader Joe's are vegan -- they call for you to add eggs, water, and oil to the mixture. If you use Ener-G Egg Replacer in place of the eggs, it comes out just as well. I think if I make this again, I will make a ginger cream cheese glaze to put on top.

Ginger Cream Cheese GlazeThis is the cream cheese frosting from the zucchini cinnamon rolls that Jes from Eating Appalacia posted on her old blog, Cupcake Punk. The only change I made was to add 1 teaspoon of ground ginger.

Ingredients:
About 3/8 (3 oz) of a container of Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1/4 c Earth Balance margarine, softened
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp salt

Directions: Beat all ingredients together and put on top of cooled pumpkin bread or muffins.

Day Three: Smoky Pumpkin Hummus

There are already a few different recipes for pumpkin hummus floating around online, but I wanted to come up with a little something myself. I'm really pleased with this. It's basically a smoked paprika hummus, with the perfect undertones of pumpkin. The first batch I made was way too garlicy, so I've changed the recipe to only include one small clove of garlic instead of two.

On a related note, did you know that one shot of vodka gets rid of garlic breath? Even really, really bad garlic breath? I didn't believe it until I tried it (after tasting the original, 2 clove version of this recipe) and immediately my terrible garlic breath was gone. Vodka is magic.

Smoky Pumpkin Hummus

Ingredients:

1 can of garbanzo beans

1/2 cup pumpkin

1 TB lemon juice

2 TB olive oil

2 TB tahini

1 clove garlic, minced

1 TB smoked paprika

Sea salt to taste

Cayenne pepper to taste (optional)

Directions:
1. Drain and rinse garbanzo beans, then pop them into your food processor along with the pumpkin, lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini.
2. Mince your garlic. If you have a garlic press, awesome. If not, you don't even necessarily have to mince the garlic -- just peel it and cut it up into smaller pieces to make sure that it incorporates well.
3. Put your garlic and your smoked paprika into the food processor and mix until the hummus is smooth. If it's a little chunky, add a tiny bit of warm water to it and blend until you get the consistency you like.

I've been eating this on little wheat thins type crackers, but I bet this would be banging with some baby carrots or on some bagels.

xoxo Jenni

Day Two: Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies

So, I don't know what happened. I made the Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, and... I messed up. I would not sell my soul for these cookies. They were not good. Everything else that I've made from VCIYCJ has been fantastic, though, so I think that maybe 1) I didn't reduce the pumpkin down enough (though it did go from 1 cup to 1/2 cup, the cookies were still pretty cakey instead of crunchy) and also 2) I think I overmixed the dough, because I could taste the flour. Bleh. I'll make these again someday, though, because I've read a lot of really good reviews about them. Also I'll put some pumpkin seeds on these bad boys in the future, too, because I think they look prettier that way.

So Day Two was kind of a miss... even though Chiv's bachelor party was last night, and when the guys came back home they ate a shit ton of these and liked them. But I still have five more pumpkin-flavored things to whip up this week, so I'm not too bummed out.

Happy MoFoing!

xoxo Jenni

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

Vegan MoFo 2011!

Hi! It's been almost a whole year since I've posted last. I've decided to use this blog strictly for MoFo-ing. I've spent a little time going back and reading my posts from 2010 and 2009, and I am so pumped about writing again this year.

I have exciting news! (There are so many exclamation points in this post!) News that might make me sound crazy for wanting to do VeganMoFo this year: Chiv and I are getting married next month! On October 29th! He proposed last year on Thanksgiving when we went to the coast with his family. We're both really excited, and really ready for wedding planning to be over. And we're really excited about our honeymoon. We're going to San Francisco! I've never been to California. Also, we usually travel quite a bit, and we haven't really gone anywhere this year since we've been saving up for the wedding. So it will be so nice to get to go out and explore a new place.

So, yeah. I feel crazy for wanting to MoFo this year, but. You guys. It's VeganMoFo. I know I won't be as hard on myself for missing days this year ('Cause, you know. Weddings are kind of time consuming.), but I'm going to try to write as much as I possibly can, and I'm going to write up a bunch of posts out in advance so I have "fillers" on days that I can't try out a new recipe and write about it like I'd like to.

I am making my own cupcakes for the wedding, and my friend Stephanie is coming down from Chicago for the wedding and is helping me make our wedding cake. My dad is catering, and so a huge portion of the wedding food is going to be secretly vegan (including his amazing lasagna). We're also having tiny brownies and cookies made by Wendi at Organic Bakies. We met with her back in January for a tasting, and were completely blown away. Her vegan brownies are the best brownies I have ever had in my entire life. I will try to make a post specifically about Organic Bakies during MoFo, though. Just know that they are delicious, and if you live in North Carolina, you should totally order cookies and brownies and cakes from her.

I'm so excited. About everything. I'm excited about getting married. I'm excited about autumn. And pumpkin lattes. And VeganMoFo. I don't have many vegan friends, and the feeling of community with VeganMoFo is just really amazing.

Also, September 2011 marks 3 years of veganism for me. Confetti and party hats!

I think that is it. See you kids in October. :]

Day Fourteen: Olive and Mochi.

So, I missed a week of MoFoing due to work being absolutely exhausting. I am back on the horse, though. And to make it up to you, here is a picture of our new puppy, Olive:

We adopted her about a month ago. She's a rescue dog; someone found her in a field and turned her in to the pound. She has what I think is a breeder tattoo on her belly. I imagine her escaping some godforsaken puppy mill and roughing it by her lonesome until the day we picked her up and spoiled her rotten with cuddles, soft pillows, and a seemingly endless supply of sweet potato chews. This dog will cuddle against you like nobody's business.





In vegan food news: Chiv found vegan mochi at Trader Joe's today. I haven't had mochi in years. They come in a six pack of three flavors: coconut, mango, and chocolate. All of the milk used is coconut's milk. And they're pretty. I approve.

Day Seven: Raleigh's Farmer's Market + Remedy Diner + Dinner

Quick entry before I head to bed. Today was adorable. Chiv and I drove out to Raleigh to go to the Farmer's Market with our friends Allison Gee and Kristal.

Chiv, Allison Gee, and Kristal

We bought so many apples. Our favorite was the Mutsu, which was almost as big as our faces. We also enjoyed their names: King Luscious, Candy Crisp, and Ginger Gold.

Allison Gee talked me into buying two heads of butter lettuce. It tastes so good, I could eat it raw and whole, without anything else.

After the farmer's market, we all went to The Remedy Diner in Raleigh. Remedy is one of the first really vegan friendly restaurants I've been to in the Triangle. Most of their food is vegetarian, and most of their vegetarian food can be made vegan. They were also the first place in all of North Carolina to get Daiya cheese. My absolute favorite thing is their Philly Fakesteak. Chiv and I split this.

 Then we looked at used books for awhile and went to Foundation for the most perfect Old Fashioneds ever.



When Chiv and I got home later, we decided to have something comforting and terrible for us for dinner. I sautéed some honeycrisp apples, sliced bananas, and Daiya and put it on top of rosemary sourdough bread. Healthy? Not really. Delicious? Yes!