Thanksgiving

this thanksgiving I wanted to be more proactive in the menu selection so that I would have more to eat than corn (my mom usually does all of the cooking). we had thanksgiving in my sister's small apartment in manhattan, and it was a bit of a challenge because of the small kitchen and her lack of food/basic ingredients! the night before I left for NY I baked a pumpkin cheesecake. Well, I baked two- one as a test, and because it came out so good, another to bring to NY. this was my first time baking a vegan cheesecake PERIOD so I was pretty skeptical, but absolutely blown away by the results.


recipe here

for me, it's just not thanksgiving without green bean casserole. however, being that the traditional "homemade" version (ie the kind that utilizes canned cream of mushroom soup) is not vegan, I hadn't had it in a few years. then I stumbled upon this recipe, and again was skeptical, but my whole family loved it. I'm not a huge fan of mushrooms so I diced them into tiny chunks.
I did make a couple of adjustments to the recipe because I forgot to bring a couple of items with me to NY. one was the cayenne pepper, but my sister's roommate had a bottle of siracha hot sauce so I used a few drops of that. also, I used canned green beans (2 cans) instead of fresh and omitted the bread because again, I didn't bring any!
recipe here

since my father and I are the only two who like sweet potatoes, I just baked two whole sweet potatoes, sliced them open lenthwise, and smothered the insides with margarine, brown and white sugar, and cinnamon, and baked for another 5-10 minutes.

I also made mashed potatoes for the rest of the fam:

6-8 medium sized red potatoes (washed, peeled and quartered)
2 tbsp margarine
1 tbsp garlic hummus
plain soy milk
vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

1. boil potatoes until soft when stuck with a fork
2. drain and transfer to a bowl and mash
3. add margarine, hummus, salt and pepper, and keep adding soymilk as needed until potatoes reach the consistency you like

we also had corn and cranberry sauce, but those aren't too exciting :)