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.

Take note of Carney’s favorite city beside Akron…

*Pictures I took at their April 4 show at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom. I was so close I got sweat on. It was awesome

If you know what’s good for you, go buy their entire discography! Attack and Release, which was produced by Danger Mouse (!!!), came out last month.. and it’s everything I dreamed it would be..