The Christmas Feast

OK folks, get ready, this is going to be a LONG post. I'm covering two days worth of cooking in this one post because I've been too swamped to get around to posting.

So, as you saw, we got the cookies for Santa made and we had one more batch left to make on Christmas Eve. That was these babies, Chocolate Mint Melties, from Eat Drink and Be Vegan. They are sooo good, although, not as minty as I had hoped they would be. I will definitely be making them again, only next time I will add more chopped chocolate bar to the batter.

While the cookies were baking I started up the Traditional Cranberry Sauce, also from ED&BV. I wanted to make this the day before so it would have time to chill because I wanted to serve it cold. I don't usually like cranberry sauce, this recipe however has changed my mind. It is super easy to make and incredibly delicious. I'll never buy or serve prepared cranberry sauce again. Unfortunately, when the time came to set up the buffet on Christmas evening, I forgot to get the sauce out of the refrigerator......so, guess who's been eating cranberry sauce like it's going out of style the last 2 days!!

Also on Christmas Eve I prepared the gravy, as the recipe said it was better left to set over night and gently reheated. I used the vegan gravy recipe from vegweb. I thought the gravy was delicious. My family of meat eaters weren't too impressed. Actually, no one said they didn't like it, but the fact that no one said they did says it all. Needless to say, I've got loads of gravy sitting in the refrigerator as well.....too bad gravy doesn't go so well over cranberry sauce!!

Anyway, after I got the gravy cooking I went ahead and chopped up all of the veggies I would need for various things the following day, just to save myself some time in the kitchen. I also made homemade pumpkin ice cream for a pumpkin ice cream pie that I made (no picture, sorry). I just poured the soft, freshly churned ice cream into a pre made graham cracker crust and froze it.

The final thing that I prepared on Christmas Eve was the cinnamon rolls that were for breakfast on Christmas Day. I used this Orange Cranberry recipe that I saw on tv while Rob and I were laying in bed relaxing on our recent trip to Chicago. These are the rolls before they've been baked and iced. In all of the excitement of present opening on Christmas morning, I forgot to take a picture of the cinnamon rolls. By the time I remembered over half of them had been devoured and the icing was hard, cracked, and disgusting looking. Sorry, I'll snap a picture next time I make them. By the way, the cranberry's are a wonderful addition to the cinnamon rolls.

Whew!! I was exhausted Christmas Eve night (I'm getting tired again just typing about all I did!). So tired, and hoping to get in bed early, but guess what........the teeter todder that the girls got "from Santa" took almost 2 hours to put together, and Mairin's stable nearly an hour.......Santa didn't get to bed until after 11pm.

So, on to the big day.....I'll spare all of the details of present opening, etc. and just get right to the food, since that's what this blog's all about anyway. Well, obviously, breakfast was cinnamon rolls and coffee. The cinnamon rolls required 40 minutes in the oven, so we snacked on a loaf of Panera's Holiday bread while we were waiting.

Rob's family wasn't able to stay for dinner, so we made lunch for them. Our lunch was the "No Chicken" Noodle soup that I blogged about last week. We also had some shrimp cocktail for snacking, as well as some cheddar cranberry cheese and crackers.

Then came the big meal. We had 16 people for dinner, both friends and family. I was the only vegetarian. Turkey and ham were provided by my mother and my grandfather for the meat eaters. I supplied pretty much everything else. We went with a traditional Thanksgiving type meal since we missed Thanksgiving as a family this year. Again, in all of the excitement, I forgot to photograph our feast, so the following picture is a shot of my plate of left-overs that I ate for dinner last night.

The menu consisted of: Mashed Yukon Golds with Vegan Gravy, Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts from Super Natural Cooking, Baked Sweet Potatoes with Maple Syrup, brown sugar and cinnamon, Vegetarian Stuffing (which by the way, my mom swore couldn't be make without chicken broth......it was, I made it with my home made veggie stock, and it was enjoyed by all), and a broccoli casserole supplied by my good friend Steph (thanks for the vegetarian dish Steph!!).

We had such a wonderful Christmas. We are truly blessed to have such great friends and family. This was our first year having Christmas at our house, and even though it was a lot of hard work, I hope it isn't our last.

There probably won't be too much new to blog about over the next few days, we're kind of busy until the New Year, but there will be plenty to blog about in 2008!!

Cookies for Santa

We're finishing up all of our final preparations before the "Big Man" comes tomorrow night. The presents have been bought and wrapped. The house has been cleaned. The Christmas dinner has been planned and the groceries have been purchased. And, most importantly, in anticipation of Jolly Ol' St. Nick, the kids have been GOOD!!!

Last evening, after getting a haircut and having 2 glorious hours to sit in Caffe Classico sipping my soy mocha cappuccino and reading the LEO and Velocity while Mairin had yoga camp, we came home to bake cookies for Santa. We always bake chocolate chip cookies for Santa, so that was a no brainer. This year, Mairin's been begging for gingerbread men as well, so we tackled that too.

For the chocolate chip cookies, we always make the Toll House recipe, but this year we changed it up a little. Instead of Toll House, which are produced on equipment that also processes peanuts, we opted for Sunspire Organic Semi Sweet chocolate chips. We used their recipe, which is nearly identical to Toll House. Instead of all purpose flour we used white whole wheat flour, which can be substituted 1:1 for all purpose baking flour. And, I didn't have any vanilla bean, so we omitted that and just used the extract. These cookies definitely taste more buttery than the Toll House version, and honestly, I think that makes them delicious!! This recipe made 3 1/2 dozen, so we have plenty for the rest of the holiday season!!

For the gingerbread men we used Heidi's recipe at 101cookbooks.com. These were very easy to make, and relatively healthy too. They rolled out nicely and were easy to cut, not sticky at all like I've heard about other gingerbread recipes (I've sadly, never made these cute little cookies before). This recipe also made 3 1/2 dozen cookies. Our 42 gingerbread men are patiently waiting naked in the freezer to be iced and decorated on Christmas Eve.

Since Mairin's been begging since November for the gingerbread men, she had decided that we would give Santa the chocolate chip cookies and she would keep and eat all of the gingerbread men. We of course, taste tested each set of cookies at Mairin's insistence......."we have to make sure they are yummy for Santa, he doesn't like gross things you know". Well, Mairin decided after the taste test that she's not really a big fan of gingerbread cookies, but that Santa will surely love them better than the chocolate chips. So Santa, get ready for some gingerbread and milk with you get to our house!!

"No Chicken" Noodle Soup for the Soul.

So much for finding an interesting suitable substitute for Chicken Noodle Soup. None of the recipes I've tried really satisfied that need for chicken noodle soup in the winter.....and surely none of them were winning Mairin over! So, I gave up on trying to find our oh-so-cool veg substitute for the soul warming goodness of chicken noodle soup, and just went back to basics.

Tonight, we had "No Chicken" Noodle Soup......perfect, it was absolutely perfect (Rob dubbed it Noodle Noodle Soup). EVERYONE loved it, and to make a dish that all of us like is quite a feat (making something Mairin likes is the true test!!). At first Mairin threw herself on the floor in a full fledged tantrum, refusing to eat the soup because I said we were having chicken noodle soup, and there was no chicken.........she wanted a chicken bite. The funny thing is, when we at meat, and I made chicken noodle soup, she picked every bit of chicken out of it!!


I just went back to my stand-by, quick and easy, chicken noodle soup recipe, excluding the chicken and substituting the chicken stock with Imagine No Chicken Broth. I'm telling you, you would never ever know this wasn't the real thing (except of course that there is no chicken meat floating around in there).

"No Chicken" Noodle Soup

2 Tbs Olive Oil

3 Large Carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds

4 Stalks Celery, diced

1 Medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

2 tsp dried thyme

2 32 oz boxes of No Chicken Broth

3/4 of a 12oz bag of No Yolk Egg Noodles

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium high heat. Add vegetables and saute until carrots are beginning to soften. Add salt and pepper and thyme and saute for a minute longer. Add 2 boxes of broth and bring to a boil. Here I turn down the heat and let it simmer for awhile, then add the noodles about 5 minutes before you are ready to serve.

This soup is "MMM MMM Good". I served it with grilled cheese sandwiches. You can expect to hear about this one being made many, many more times this winter (chicken noodle soup was always something I looked forward to and loved in the winter months, and I can't wait to eat it again....actually, just blogging about it is making me hungry all over again)

Sloppy Joe, 2nd Edition

Yesterday the girls and I shopped until we dropped. We braved the last minute crowds and spent SEVEN hours shopping. And, we survived!! However, we were all beat when we got home. Luckily, I had made some sloppy lentils in my crock pot the night before, so all I had to do for dinner was heat up the lentils and whip up some sides. As you can see, we had oven baked, frozen, crinkle cut fries and steamed broccoli.

This time I used the sloppy lentils recipe from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slowcooker. I added a bit more chili powder than was called for, and I also added some cumin, which wasn't on the ingredients list. But honestly, I really couldn't tell a difference from the Snobby Joe's I made last month, and these are less labor intensive. Plus, the fact that they cook in the crock pot, so you don't have to be around while they are cooking.