Domestipithecus

Because Thanksvegan isn’t Thanksvegan without it. I lurve Tofurkey. My first and second vegetarian Thanksgivings I disliked it. Now I can’t think of the day without it. Weird eh?

The day was nice, but my sister-in-law had to go to the ER because her stupid contact abraded her ENTIRE cornea. The poor thing was in pain the whole day. They told her it should feel better today, but she has to go to en eye doctor person to get it looked at. She’ll be fine, but it just sucks.

Boo told her that at least it’s happening now and not the day before the wedding. I don’t think that was very comforting, but he was trying.

Anyway, without further ado, I present the Tofurkey Day goodies.

I baked Tofurkey. One for the meal and one for Boo and I to slice up for sandwiches for the weekend. I roasted them with one red potato, one sweet potato, about 8 cloves of garlic and one yellow onion. I tossed the veggies with a spray or three of oil, sage and thyme.

I made the basting recipe on the box, so no fancy stuff there.

Then there was the Sweet Potato “Buttermilk” biscuits. They were so good. Flaky and tasty. I used this recipe on Chow, but made “Buttermilk” instead of milk (soy, of course). One Tbsp. of vinegar and then fill to one cup. The recipe comments said something about them not rising much, so I figured the extra acidity would be perfect (as the commenter suggested). I got crazy flaky delicious biscuits. I did grate frozen Earth Balance buttery sticks and then refridgerated the dough for a couple hours before rolling, cutting and baking.

Before baking

After baking

Look how high and flaky!

I also made Easy as Pumpkin Pie ice cream pie. I got a chocolate cookie crust (yes I was lazy and bought pre-made) and drizzled some chocolate on top. Heaven. So amazingly good I almost didn’t want to bring it because we wanted it all to ourselves.

This was the spread at my mother-in-law’s with a good shot of her homemade “turkey” (includes the Tofurkey and biscuits)

Clockwise from the top left: rolls, Tofurkey, green bean casserole, mom’s “turkey”, baked sweet potatoes, biscuits, soysage dressing and in the middle, mashed potatoes. Cranberry stuff from the can and agave-cinnamon earth balance are on the periphery.

The gravy

A typical plate of food

And of course, there was wine. Frey wine

For dessert, my sister-in-law made an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. I only had the apple. It was awesome - and I don’t particularly like baked apple stuff. I heard from everyone else the pumpkin pie was great as well.

The pies and mom’s sampler plate The white on the ice cream pie is defrost stuff

Gratuitous puppy shot

That’s Maggie, Boo’s parent’s dog.

I hope everyone had a good day full of friends and family, and of course, a boatload of food.

and I am totally going to stop numbering these things as I feel bad as I get behind.

Today I received our shipment of white wine for the wedding. Finding white vegan wine is the biggest pain in the ass. Red isn’t too hard, but white is near impossible.

We decided to go with a local (California) company, Frey Vineyards.

Because we didn’t want to be too spendy, we went with their Sauvignon Blanc. A very tasty $10 bottle of wine. I sampled this and their “Natural White” table wine at my bridal shower and this one won out, even though it was more expensive. I don’t usually like white wine at all, but this stuff, I love.

We ordered a bunch of bottles because most of the wine drinkers at the wedding are white wine drinkers. There is a 10% discount when ordering 12 or more bottles from their site so really, it wasn’t too bad for what we were getting. We were paying for faster shipping because Boo was afraid that it would end up sitting on a truck in the heat somewhere.

Tuesday, we received a call from Julie at Frey. She said that we had paid for faster shipping but it usually gets to our area even faster than the shipping we chose if we just do regular ground and she would change that if we wanted. We thanked her and told her that would be great and that we had only done the quicker shipping because it was for the wedding and we were paranoid. She congratulated us and I told her that we really liked their wine and that we were having a vegan wedding and finding vegan white was so difficult. She was glad that they could help and wished us luck with the wedding.

The order arrived today with a sweet handwritten note on the invoice, “I imagine that every little bit helps out… so I increased your discount to 15%! Have a lovely wedding day and enjoy! Best Regards, Julie.”

So I am not so much blogging about vegan food as I am vegan wine, but it all goes to the same place, right?

I wanted to let everyone out there know what a great company this is and how amazing their customer service is. Not to mention, they have tasty wine.