Vegan-giving ‘08: a night of lots and lots of Earth Balance

Though I am not a vegan (just a humble vegetarian), this past Thanksgiving was my 7th meat-free feast! Because it’s too expensive to fly home, I spent the holiday with Alexa, who is the most bad-ass vegan I know.

First, we went to the Portland Farmer’s Market, aka, where I would like to meet my future husband. Unfortunately, we did not purchase any of the glorious looking pickles, but we did get a whole lot of potatoes, cranberries, onions, and other necessary produce.

Alexa did most of the cooking, as she is just a chef in college kid’s clothing. I mostly just followed her direction, which is probably why our meal didn’t suck.

In this extremely embarrassing photo, I’m holding up my mom’s famous broccoli casserole, which we have de-animaled – we used earth balance and veggie bouillon. It (not-surprisingly) tasted delicious. 

Here’s a shot of our delish mashed potatoes (made with soy milk and earth balance) and our salad with homemade dressing. All Alexa’s work.

We made an extremely sketchy-looking gravy. Now. I’m not gravy’s biggest fan. I mean. If it were served to me, I would eat it. But since I was little, I pretty much just thought it looked like diarrhea. (sorry family members who have cooked me gravy in the past. I doubt you’re reading this). But this here gravy was fucking delicious. And also strangely meat tasting, so said Alexa. I’m sure it’s just because it kind of tasted like the 1950’s.

Our finished product. From top left: broccoli casserole, salad, cranberry sauce, our turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits. mmmm…

Finally, Alexa and I made pumpkin-encrusted tofu. We roasted pumpkin seeds and mashed them up and fried up the tofu with aforementioned crusty bits. Then we baked the pumpkin. An excellent stand-in for turkey.

I have to admit, I’ve always been a side-dish girl. This year there was nothing I ate that I didn’t like.

However. We were too full/tired to make our apple tartlets for dessert.

Oh, how we tend to regret not the things we’ve done, but the things we haven’t done.

How broke are you, Helen??

I am so broke that I had this horrible concoction for dinner:

Yeah.. It’s bean-noodles and fat-free italian dressing. I wouldn’t recommend it. It turned out to be a gelatinous, translucent blob of ambiguous ethnicity.

But. I didn’t have much to choose from.

The contents of my kitchen:

1. less than half of an extremely large bag of celebratory Skittles
2. about a cup of iceberg lettuce that’s going brown
3. soy cheese
4. soy milk
5. sugar-free strawberry preserves
6. smart-balance peanut butter
7. extra-protein wheat bread
8. three whole carrots
9. fat-free italian dressing
10. bean noodles
11. tortillas

Think you can feed me?? Guess what combination of the above foods will make something edible and delicious.

(hint. it’s not bean noodles and fat-free italian dressing)

Just collecting ideas and useful links on how to save money and stay fed in the city..

Freegan Manhattan 

Wikihow, dumpster diving

freecycle.org

frugalvillage.com, dumpster diving

A Shout Out to Eating Garbage: On Dumpster Diving