Thanksgiving Dessert Recipe: Gingered Pear Crisp

As promised from my last post, I have added a dessert recipe on my recipes page for your Thanksgiving menu! Go get my Gingered Pear Crisp from Vive le Vegan!

This dessert is easy to make, and also offers a sweet finish to a meal that isn't heavy or rich. Be sure to serve this crisp warm, with either non-dairy ice cream... or better yet, Celestial Cream!

(Thanks to Sanja, who publishes the Coconut and Raspberry blog, for the delicious photo!) :)

Enjoy your vegan feast!

Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes

Our Canadian Thanksgiving was in October, and unfortunately I wasn't posting regularly to offer up some dishes for a Thanksgiving celebration. I'm here to help for US Thanksgiving, however, and have a selection of recipes to bring to the table.

The recipes are: Festive Chickpea Tart (pictured above; not in any of my current cookbooks), Autumn Puree (ed&bv), Lemon Broiled Green Beans (ed&bv), Traditional Cranberry Sauce (ed&bv), and Chocolate Pumpkin Pie (ed&bv). These recipes can all be found here in this seriouseats.com feature. There are a couple of other vegan Thanksgiving recipes to check out in the link too!

Another suggestion, if you'd like to serve a tofu dish, this Olive Oregano Wine Baked Tofu would be an amazing addition to your menu (recipe link is in the post). AND... I'll also post another dessert recipe for you, in case you mightn't want to serve two pies in a meal. Check back in the next couple of days for that recipe!

Also, I have another link that I forgot to mention in an earlier post. I did an interview with Cathleen Woods of vegan-nutritionista.com. If you're interested to know more about me, and how I manage this vegan stuff as a mom, click through to have a little read.

(btw, the Chickpea Tart is pictured drizzled with Balsamic Maple Sauce from ed&bv. That sauce is also splendid with this tart, and so if you want to make this sauce to pair with this tart, you can get it here on Vegan.com (scroll down a wee bit).

I'll update this post soon with the dessert recipe I've mentioned! Until then, get working on your shopping list! :)

Comfort Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

This Pureed Squash and Sweet Potato Soup is a recipe from my early-vegan days, and remains one of my very favorite soups to this day. I always rely on it this time of year, it's a comforting soup perfectly suited to the colder months when winter squash and sweet potatoes are plentiful. Plus, it's simple to make, and yields fairly big batch, which means leftovers go into the freezer for another night - meaning an even easier meal to follow!

I adore soups and stews during the fall and winter. I don't know if there is a more cozy meal on cold days than a warm soup with crusty bread. As I said, this was an early recipe for me, from The Everyday Vegan. I don't post recipes from TEV often, simply because I don't have the electronic version of the final manuscript, and so posting recipes from this book requires retyping. When I made this soup again last week, though, I decided I'd take on the typing task to share it with you (ah, the sacrifices I make for you lovelies). :) So, please link through to find the recipe for this Pureed Squash and Sweet Potato Soup from TEV.

Here's a few extra tidbits about the recipe:

• First off, the original title uses "yam" instead of "sweet potato". Oh boy, I've talked about this before in my posts... essentially in the US use what you know as sweet potatoes - the orange-fleshed tubers. In Canada, our 'sweet potatoes' are labelled as yams - either garnet or jewel yams. I know that yams mean something different in the US, but in Canada, this is what we find in our grocery stores, and then sweet potatoes are the yellow-fleshed tubers much like a garnet or jewel yam, but with a yellow (and drier) flesh. So, the short of this explanation is use the orange-fleshed tubers, whether you know them as sweet potatoes, or yams. Got that? Okay. whew. On to the next tip...

• For this recipe, I prefer to first bake the butternut squash and sweet potatoes whole. Yep, stick 'em on a baking sheet lined with parchment and bake the suckers at 4oo for about an hour or until they can all be easily pierced with a skewer. Now, depending on the sizes of squash and sweet potatoes you use, one may bake more quickly than the other. I typically find the squash bakes quicker because I use fairly large sweet potatoes. If this is the case, you can either leave them baking together (if you estimate there's not much time left in the baking for both)... or remove whichever is baked throughout, and place on a plate to start cooling. Why do I use this method? First, I find it easier to use the softened squash/potatoes than to peel and cut through so much very hard veg. Second, I like the taste roasting gives the vegetables, and also the smell it brings to the kitchen. Whenever I make it, hubby says "it smells like Christmas in here"! And it does, because I roast squash for an entirely different dish that I make for our Christmas dinner.

• After roasting, you let the vegetables cool enough to handle, and then scoop the flesh away from the peel to add to the soup. (Bonus tip: use butternut squash - the flesh separates easily from the skin, and there are very few seeds to scrape away!) With that, you simply puree your soup with an immersion blender and you're done! (Anyone that has followed my blog knows my affection for the ever-handy immersion blender. Really, it's a must in your kitchen for pureeing soups, making salad dressings, sauces, and even smoothies. Get yourself one! You know, Santa is listening!) :)
  

I love this soup also for its flavors and texture. The sweet potatoes add a thick, velvety smoothness that you cannot get from the butternut squash alone. The spices are not heavy, instead they give enough of a savory balance to the sweetness of the squash and potatoes, and with notes of cinnamon and fresh ginger that are natural matches for these winter vegetables. Here it is again, with a piece of fig and fennel bread from a local bakery. Simplicity and comfort all in one. Yes, life is good with a great bowl of soup.

Pumpkin Spice Cake with (no butter/no margarine) Buttercream Frosting

I'm hooked on making new dessert recipes. This is a new recipe for a Pumpkin Spice Cake with a Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.


The catch is... this buttercream does not have any butter, or any margarine! Yet, it is thick, rich, and buttery tasting just as you'd expect in a buttercream frosting. How is this so, you say? Well, I got the idea after someone e-mailed me for a soy-free frosting recipe (because of allergies), and as we know vegan buttercream frostings use Earth Balance margarine, which contains soy. Plus, some other creamy frostings (many of my own recipes) use silken tofu, which obviously isn't an option if you have a soy allergy.

So, I put on the thinking baking cap, got out my new and beloved KitchenAid mixer, and here you see the thick, creamy frosting coming together.
Some of you know that a buttercream frosting is not normally one of my preferred things to make and eat. But, hallelujah, this frosting has changed my mind! Not that I still don't love the more generous, creamy frosting (as with my Triple Layer Chocolate Cream Cake)... oh, I do!... but this new recipe has joined my fave list, and I will be working on some variations on this frosting idea. Can't reveal the secret just yet, but hopefully will do so soon!

Pomegranate, meet Living Caesar

Recently I introduced a pomegranate to my Living Caesar dressing.

The two became great friends immediately, agreeing that their flavors nicely complemented one another. The sour, salty nutty caesar dressing enjoyed the pop of sweet, tangy juice from the fresh crimson-colored pomegranate seeds.

Go make some new friends with your food too. :)

(p.s. don't forget to enter the November Salba giveaway if you haven't already)

November Salba Contest!

Here we go again, a chance to win the Source Salba giveaway for November!

To remind you, one Canadian reader (excluding province of Quebec) has the chance to win:
- one bag of Source Salba Ground Organic Salba®
- three Source Salba REAL Whole Food bars
- one box of Source Salba Cinnamon and Apple Krispy Rice bars

So, here are the two questions you need to correctly answer (enter your name or blogger profile in the comments of this post; one entry per person):

1. How much omega-3 do the Source Salba REAL Whole Food bars (flavours original, apple/cinnamon, blueberry, peach, raspberry) contain?

2. Name a town in New Brunswick which carries Source Salba products.

(fyi, You'll notice in question 1 that there are other flavors of the "REAL" bar other than original. For some reason, all of the entrants in the October contest answered that the REAL bar came in just the original flavor, however it is offered in those other flavors as well!)

The winner will be notified on this blog at the beginning of December and we will then arrange to have the prize mailed to you. Please link through for the full contest rules.

Go look for the answers!

Back real soon with a foodie post!

Monkey Hear, Monkey Do

My sister commented on my Salba pancake post from last week, mentioning how she makes my Salba Banana Muffin recipe all the time, and that her morning is just not complete without them. xo sis! Well, I haven't made those muffins in quite a while, probably six months or more. But, as soon as she mentioned them, I had a hankering to make them. So, here you see my Salba Banana Muffins (from my group of foodtv.ca recipes). (reminder, if you make any of these foodtv.ca recipes, be sure to refer to my edits page here)

Do you see the background pumpkin in the pic? It's one of our Hallowe'en pumpkins that we carved. We decided to carve a few, decorate a couple others with buttons and pipe cleaners, and also saved a small pumpkin to be the special annual 'Mr. Pumpkin Head', as you see here. Here is the full shot of our big carved pumpkin. Our older girl asked to have this be the "happy mommy pumpkin" since we already had two smaller 'spooky' pumpkins. I've gotten used to all of their toys/stuffies/figurines having family units, but I wasn't expecting it for our jack o' lanterns! Funny. Kidlets love Hallowe'en. Okay, so do us big kids. :)

Back to the muffins, I decided to make them with spelt flour instead of w/w pastry flour. I made two batches, and the first batch I used almost 2 1/2 cups of spelt flour. The muffins were good, but the batter was just a little dense. The second batch I used 2 1/4 cups of spelt flour, and the muffins were perfect! Tender and moist and magically delicious! As you know from my recipes, when you substitute spelt flour in a recipe where wheat flour has been used, you typically need a touch extra spelt flour for the wheat flour measurement. It varies with a given recipe, so some trial and error is sometimes required. So, my wheat-free followers, if you decide to make these muffins wheat-free and are using spelt flour, be sure to use 2 1/4 cups of spelt flour, and not much more.

After reading my sister's comments, and almost immediately needing to bake those muffins again, I was reminded how powerful our thoughts and suggestions are... and even more, how greatly influenced we are by an image and by advertising. We all know this, but I think we forget how impressionable folks are watching an ad for a burger or ice-cream sundae. If only some of our collective food blogging photos could reach tv, huh?!

Anyhow, thanks sis for the reminder... got any other food ideas for me? :)

October Salba WINNER...

...is Mathilde! Congratulations, you have won the Salba prize for October!

Please e-mail me within 4 days at dreena@everydayvegan.com so we can arrange for you to claim your prize. (if I don't hear from you within 4 days, another winner will be randomly selected)

Salba has generously offered to run the contest again for November and December, so look out for another chance to win very soon!

(and I'll be back with food even sooner!)