Vegan Mofo day 7: get your orange on.

It's getting to be that time of year when I get super excited about all things orange and sweet and fabulous. Pumpkins and winter squash, my friends. This past weekend I attended the Pumpkin Festival in Milton, WV with Michael and our friends Becca and Max. If you remember from last year, we mostly go in order to buy locally made foodstuffs like cornmeal and pumpkin butter and salad dressings and whatnot. This year there were pumpkin milkshakes...everywhere. Michael and I got a little sad that we couldn't have one, so a couple days ago I got the fixings to make them ourselves!

punkin.

Also showcased is some lovely pumpkin butter from the festival. The milkshakes were super easy to make...I didn't measure (of course), but it's just vanilla soy ice cream, pumpkin puree, some soymilk, and a little bit of pumpkin pie spice. Yum! They were especially yummy paired with some vegan gingersnaps we found at the store. Next time I want to make a blizzard-style thing with a thicker mixture and some crumbled gingersnaps added to the whole shebang. This was a perfect treat on an evening where my throat was feeling crappy and sore. And probably healthy too - I mean you never know.

punkin's favorite cousin, butternut squash

I am a huge butternut squash fan. The eating of them, that is. I really hate dealing with the preparation, but luckily, Michael made this dinner for me on the first evening that I was feeling sick. He roasted the squash with some olive oil and just a pinch of cinnamon sprinkled on top. It was perfectly cooked...tender and sweet. Mmmm! He also whipped up the lemony roasted potatoes from Veganomicon and a felafel loaf from a box mix to which he added some chickpeas, peppers, onions, and tomatillos. Luckily, my cold is mostly in my chest (luckily?) so that I can still taste stuff. This was an excellent and filling meal. Those potatoes are spectacular. If you haven't tried them yet, you should!

super sick meal

Another night when I was still feeling icky and Michael wasn't feeling too hot either, we just had a simple supper of storeboughts. That's butternut squash soup from Imagine, some roasted pine nut hummus, and Triscuits. Super easy to make and to eat. Sometimes we just don't feel like cooking. It happens, people.

almost as good as winter squash - sweet potatoes

This is something I made before we got sick, but it is completely worth mentioning and also falls under the category of wonderful orange foods. This is the cumin-lime tofu from VegNews. You guys should totally sign up for their newsletters and join the recipe club, because they send you all these awesome recipes straight to your inbox and they rule! This tofu was out of this world delicious. They suggested pairing it with sweet potatoes, so I made a mash of sweet potatoes and a regular potato or two. That's lightly steamed broccoli with lemon zest in the back. I can't wait to make this one again. So good! I can't link to the recipe because it's only in my email and not on their site, but that's just another reason why you should sign up yourself!

Feel like making something orange for dinner? What are some of your favorite ways to cook these squashes? I need suggestions, so I don't get sick of them by January!

weekend edition of my life

It's been a hectic weekend, friends.  I'm finally at a stopping point, so it's time for a post.  I thought it was going to be tough to break the habit of posting everyday, but...apparently not, haha...  I am still going to be posting a lot though...  Vegan Mofo made me learn that I really enjoy the blogosphere.  Or whatever.

Anyway, I have something disappointing to announce:  I did not dress up for Halloween.  I was way too exhausted by the time I got home from work to bother with it, honestly.  I'm such a killjoy, I know.  However, I am still picking a winner for the Halloween Costume Idea Contest.  This person clearly wanted to win very badly, because she gave me like 3 comments worth of multiple ideas, most of which were actually really good.  Virginia of Bananas and Soymilk, you get a box of cookies from me!  Gimme a day or so to get myself together (you don't want sick cookies, right?) and a package will be on its way.

  I did go out to the bar for like an hour (because Michael really wanted me to).  We came home early and made...  a giant sammich.

small bits of huge sammich action

This is one of our lazy specialties.  Get a big loaf of ciabatta bread, layer with stuff.  We usually do: chickn strips, hummus, italian dressing, roasted red peppers, artichokes, basil, spinach, lettuce, avocado, olives, and tomato.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  These lack artichokes and lettuce because we forgot to put them on.  Still, a huge sammich of total awesomeness.  The trick is this:  after you make the thing, wrap it in plastic wrap and put a book on top to press it for about 20 minutes.  That way all the flavors combine and it gets even more rad.  Try it sometime.

Anyway, I woke up the next morning with a present:  no voice.  Yeah!  I spent all day Saturday squeaking around, forgetting I had no voice and trying to sing along to my ipod.  It was kind of funny, actually.  I got a lot done, regardless...  I voted (go Obama!), talked to my mom, went to the store, washed dishes, made dinner, and....

boo!

Carved a pumpkin!  All pumpkins are $1 at Kroger right now, so I bought a couple.  Dare I say that this one looks suspiciously like...my mug?  I did that on purpose.  The carving kit my dad got me works really, really well and made carving this pumpkin surprisingly easy.  The scraper for cleaning out the insides is lightyears beyond the days of scraping for hours with a metal spoon.  And the little saw is so COOL!  Easy to manipulate and sharp as hell.  The patterns, though, are really hard to transfer to the pumpkin (for me..I'm not coordinated) so I had to wing it.  I think I did pretty darned good.  Darnit.

not so scary now, are ya?

And out of my little pumpkin came a nice harvest of seeds, which I toasted and then forgot about, and incidentally burned, but they still tasted totally great.

really...only the curry powder on them burned...i swear it!

And then I made a simple dinner with a big salad, followed by some of the mini quiches from Susan V's blog and a mound of wild rice.

yum.

Actually, I'm taking Michael's word that it was yum, because my tastebuds might be screwed up from being sick.  I normally LOVE those quiches, but for some reason they tasted really bitter to me last night.  Apparently they didn't really.  It was just me.  I love that recipe though, it's so versatile.  This time I added some peppers (from my frozen stash), garlic, scallions, spinach, and basil.  The rice was ok, but I added some dried tomatoes while it was cooking and neither of us liked them that much.  Oh well.  The flavor of the rice was good though.  I cheated and used an old packet from a box of wild rice that I used without the flavor packet like 3 months ago.  

Today I went to a memorial service for the painting professor from my university, who passed away last week.  He was a really interesting and inspiring man, and he will be missed...  The whole thing is quite sad.  

So I'm celebrating life by watching football and baking bread.  Enjoy your Sunday, live your life to the fullest, and remember to GO VOTE.