Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

The big rectangular pan holds my Tofu Pot Pie; bread and cornbread stuffing to the right; Pelka's "Wadorf-y" green salad above that; Sarah's mashed Comox Valley German Butter potatoes above that. Center right-- a trio of condiments-- orange-y homemade cranberry sauce, my homemade palm oil-free vegan "Buttah" and  vegan "ham" gravy, flanked by a platter of my roasted beets with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Above that is a platter of roasted local veggies, and beside that roasted home-grown cauliflower and red peppers.  At the top corner of the table is a butternut squash casserole; at the end of the table is my seitan "ham", and you can just see the corner of a glass bowl with lemon-almond green beans.  More description below!

My Tofu Pot Pie in the foreground (it's been a traditional holiday main dish since the 90's); my Cranberry Sauce on the right (I added orange rind, chopped orange and apple and some ginger, this year); and my roasted beets with olive oil and balsamic vinegar with parsley on the left.

  David and Tanya's delicious lemony-almond green beans.

                                                     My seitan "ham"

 David and Tanya's delicious casserole of butternut squash from their garden, baked with garlic and parsley and olive oil and topped with toasted sesame and nutritional yeast "Parmesan".

 On the left, Holly's roasted cauliflower and red peppers (both from her garden); on the right, my stuffing (a mix of DH's whole wheat bread and my cornbread, with traditional herbs, onion and celery).

              Fireweed's  gorgeous roasted local veggie platter.

 Along with the homemade cranberry sauce (described above), my homemade palm oil-free vegan "Buttah" and Vegan "Ham" Gravy.

 And for dessert, along with So Delicious Coconut Non-Dairy Vanilla Bean Frozen Dessert, my Ginger Apple Crumb Pie, made with all Denman Island apples (Mutsus from our neighbors at Apple Lane Orchard, and large Russets from friend and guest, Holly).

Phoebe and Ringo got lots of lovin' from our guests and family (Sadie and Thelonious made themselves scarce!) and they were all worn out by the evening!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I forgot my camera when we had our first Thanksgiving dinner at my son Tim's house last Saturday. We had a wonderful (mostly vegan) dinner with Tim and his wife Amber, granddaughters Zoe (and her friend Lindsay), Faith and Mariah, my stepson Laurence from Vancouver, and our friend Brenda. On the Thursday before I had made 2 seitan "turkeys" and 2 seitan "hams", and some vegan gluten-free bread for Amber to use in her stuffing recipe (which she did not stuff into anything animal!.) Saturday morning I made vegan pecan pies (with a GF crust) and 2 kinds of (GF) gravy, and the 2 remaining seitan roasts (I brought one of each). Amber had made the vegan GF stuffing with cranberries and pecans, mashed potatoes (with almond milk), a lovely salad, and a delicious and colorful vegetable casserole of sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts and cranberries. They had turkey, but everyone tried the vegan dishes and enjoyed them.

On Monday afternoon we headed over to the main island (Vancouver Island) for another spread (mostly vegan) with my daughter Sarah, her DH Ben, and granddaughters Kate, Hannah and Cleo; Ben's parents, uncle and 2 aunts. I brought the last 2 loaves of pre-made seitan "turkey" and "ham", their respective gravies, plus tofu pot pie (a family favorite) that I had made the components for Sunday night and put together in the morning. Sarah has recently become a vegan, so she had made vegan pumpkin pie and apple-cranberry pie (with a veganized Weight Watcher's pie crust), stuffing in the slow-cooker, smashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and roasted veggies, and my granddaughter Savannah made a lovely salad with organic greens, pecans, pumpkin seeds, tomatoes and a raspberry dressing. So we vegans had lots to eat and to share!

Here are some pictures from the second feast:

  The vegan end of the Thanksgiving table (Lto R back: Smashed potatoes, roasted veggies, Susan Voisin's Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping; L to R front: "Ham" Gravy, my Seitan "Ham", my Tofu Pot Pie.

 Sarah's roasted veggies

  Smashed potatoes, roasted veggies and Savannah's salad

  My seitan "ham"

  My Tofu Pot Pie (recipe from my book Soyfoods Cooking for a Positive Menopause)

  Sarah's Apple-Cranberry Pie with veganized low-fat WW pie crust (see below)


BASIC PIE CRUST (SARAH'S VEGAN VERSION)
Adapted from a recipe in Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook.
Makes 1 pie crust

1 cup all purpose unbleached flour
2 teaspoons powdered sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. cold vegan butter
2 Tbsp. cold vegetable shortening
(UPDATE: Now I would use 1/4 cup of my homemade vegan palm-oil-free Buttah, very cold, in place of both)
1 tsp. cider vinegar
3 to 3 1/2 Tbl. ice water

Follow normal pastry procedures and chill for 1 hour to 24 hours for best results. (Sarah froze the chunks of margarine and shortening as Julie Hasson recommended in her book Vegan Diner, and also her recommendation to use powdered sugar.) Sarah says: "With 1 cup of frozen marg/shortening, I was able to make a large batch for 4 cups of flour and it worked perfectly. It isn't fat free but much lower fat than normal pastry."
1/8 of recipe = 3 points , 114 calories
MY NOTE: This recipe was excellent, BTW. I prefer to use my Low-fat Oil Pastry most of the because it does not use solid fat, but this recipe IS flakier, if that's important to the dish, so I'm glad to have it in my repertoire. This recipe uses 2 tablespoons of fat per 1/2 cup flour. The flaky pastry dough in Joy of Cooking (1997 version) uses 3.2 tablespoons of fat per 1/2 cup of flour, and my Low-fat oil Pastry uses 1 1/2 tablespoons fat (oil) per 1/2 cup of flour (and I use 1/2 whole wheat).

  Sarah used my recipe for vegan Pumpkin Pie filling (in my book The Almost-No-Fat Holiday Cookbook and online here), with the same crust as above.


  Grandaughter C. modelling her Halloween costume for the family, with Grampa Brian being silly.


  Big sister H.,  expertly playing the theme from "The Piano" for us.

I hope you enjoyed (or will enjoy) your Thanksgiving dinner(s) as much as we did!

I was featured on livestrong.com re hosting a vegetarian during the holidays. You may not agree with all I had to say, but remember that I have a large non-veg family and I like to spend holidays with them! 


PS: the photos are some of the easy suggestions I had for omni's trying to provide a vegan entrée for their guest without stressing about cooking something unfamiliar!)


Read the article at:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/311443-hosting-a-vegetarian-on-turkey-day/



Happy Thanksgiving!

Lobster mushrooms we picked on the way back from our morning walk a few days ago

This going to be a quick one because I had a busy week of writing (sent the manuscript off in the middle of the night, with trees cracking in the bush from the wind and fearing that the power would go again!) and now three of my beautiful granddaughters are here for the weekend. Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving and I have to play catch-up! I haven't had time to plan, or to write anything Thanksgiving-ish for the blog, but I'll post about it after the fact (and below I'll list some recipes on the blog that would be good for Thanksgiving festivities).

*********************************************************************
I love these gorgeous orange fungi; DH does not, so more for me! They are easy to spot and you can't really confuse them with anything else. You can read about them here. They are best just sautéed, so that's what I did, in a little Earth Balance, after trimming (I had about a pound after trimming-- worth about $18 on the market!).



They were so tasty, with a little natural spiciness! But what to do with them? I ended up adding them to my spicy brown Basmati Thai Pineapple Fried Rice, which will be in the new book-- brilliant! I ate the leftovers for days (not much time to cook!) and enjoyed it every time!



Here are some ideas for the holiday weekend!

That would be me!! (That's kind of a joke!)


Plate of Thanksgiving leftovers the day after-- clockwise from 6:00: vegetarian bread stuffing with sage and onion (recipe in my book The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook); a Peruvian squash stew with corn and peas called Locro (Update: recipe in my new book); my Soy and Seitan "Turkey" with vegan brown gravy (Update: gravy recipe in my new book and most of my other books); homemade cranberry sauce with oranges; Tofu Pot Pie (recipe in my book Soyfoods Cooking for a Positive Menopause); Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Moroccan Spices (Update: recipe in my new book) .

We had 18 people (all family) for our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner on Monday and I was so distracted that I forgot to take pictures until the next day! But, it was very much like years past, except for some of the side dishes. Don't get me wrong! It was great fun being with everyone. But I have been organizing a big fundraiser and I'm generally pretty distracted right now. (And also why I'm not blogging alot just now.) Besides the above items, we had some lovely whole wheat dinner rolls and an apple bundt cake that my oldest daughter Bethany made; mashed potatoes; pumpkin pie (my vegan recipe); a Persian-style brown rice pilaf with edamame (Update: recipe in my new book), a root vegetable stew (see recipe link below-- it was one of my picks for the #2 question in the Vegan Mofo Survey, "What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?") and a Brussels Sprout Slaw with mustard dressing and candied walnuts (see recipe link below). These last two recipes were from magazines and they were quite good-- I would make them again.

My vegan Pumpkin Pie (recipe in my book The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook)-- pics from last year or before:

What is Vegan MoFo? Click here to find out!





We had our Thanksgiving dinner last night with 3 vegan couples, good friends and fellow food-lovers. We had a great time and ate way too much, as usual! One really nice thing about the meal was that most of the vegetables and fruits-- the chard, the squash, the potatoes, the apples, the pears, the chantarelles, the beets, even the gourds decorating the table-- were locally grown (mostly by ourselves or our friends) and organic!

I made most of the meal, but I spread it out over the week, making the "Turkey" 4 days ahead, the stuffing, Cashew creme Topping, and Pear Cranberry Sauce 2 days ahead, and the Tofu Pot Pie and pastry for the tart the night before.

Our menu this year was:

Chard and Apple Salad with Maple-Glazed Butternut Squash and Raspberry-Balsamic Vinaigrette (recipe below)



Soy and Seitan "Turkey"

Tofu Pot Pie

Traditional Sage and Onion Bread Stuffing

Pelka's Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Rich Brown Gravy

Pelka's Orange and Wine-Glazed Beets

Pear Cranberry Sauce



Italian Pear Tart with Cashew Creme Topping



Sarah's Vegan Steamed Pumpkin Pudding with Pecan Topping and Brown Sugar Sauce


Sarah's Steamed Pumpkin Pudding was absolutely stunning and scrumptious!

I'd like to share the salad recipe with you. I wanted to use our chard and a nice local butternut squash that I had, and I needed a salad, so this is what I came up with. It was super-delicious and a big hit!



Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S CHARD AND APPLE SALAD WITH MAPLE-BRAISED BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND RASPBERRY-BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE
Servings: 4-8

Salad:
8 oz. Swiss chard (Ruby chard is nice), washed and spun, and thinly sliced
2 medium apples (crisp ones), thinly-sliced
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Squash:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2-3 cups cubed, peeled butternut squash
1 tablespoon soy bacon bits or chips
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons maple syrup
OPTIONAL:
8 oz thickly-sliced chanterelle mushrooms, sauteed in 1 tablespoon Earth Balance
Raspberry-Balsamic Vinaigrette: (you can make this ahead of time)
4 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons mashed fresh or frozen, thawed raspberries (unsweetened)
1/3 cup aquafaba or Fat-Free Oil Substitute for Salad Dressings
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 tablespoon agave nectar
1/2 tablespoon grated orange zest
1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
3/8 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
freshly-ground black pepper to taste

In a large bowl, mix together the chard, apples and lemon jujice. Cover and set aside in a cool place.

Heat the olive oil for the squash in a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add the squash cubes and soy bacon bits, the salt and pepper. Quickly brown the squash a bit on all sides, then turn the heat to medium, cover, and braise for about 10 minutes, or until the squash is cooked through but not mushy. Check it every few minutes. Stir in the maple syrup and turn up the heat, stirring gently to glaze the squash cubes. remove from heat.

To make the Vinaigrette, mix all of the ingredients together and whisk, blend or shake.

Divide the chard-apple mixture between your plates and then top each with some of the squash. If you are using the optional chantarelles, top the squash with them. Drizzle each portion with a little of the Vinaigrette and serve immediately.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 138.9 calories; 45% calories from fat; 7.2g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 229.0mg sodium; 381.5mg potassium; 19.7g carbohydrates; 2.7g fiber; 10.4g sugar; 17.0g net carbs; 1.5g protein; 2.8 points.

For 4 larger servings, the Nutrition Facts are: Nutrition (per serving): 277.8 calories; 45% calories from fat; 14.4g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 457.9mg sodium; 763.1mg potassium; 39.4g carbohydrates; 5.5g fiber; 20.7g sugar; 34.0g net carbs; 3.0g protein; 6.0 points.

For 6 servings: Nutrition (per serving): 185.2 calories; 45% calories from fat; 9.6g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 305.3mg sodium; 508.7mg potassium; 26.3g carbohydrates; 3.6g fiber; 13.8g sugar; 22.6g net carbs; 2.0g protein; 3.8 points.


Enjoy!