(BELATED) TOFURKEY DAY - PART TWO

I'm a little late on this post ... let's just say I was on such a high that I kept opening and closing my fridge to smile at my left overs. Oh, also I had a 13 hour travel day and am moving apartments so am currently surrounded by boxes. What better way to procrastinate than to put on Breaking Bad and blog.

Run down of my first time ever cooking vegan thanksgiving. It also coincides with my first time ever cooking thanksgiving. Shocker, I know.

Mile One: Decided to tackle vegan thanksgiving. It wasn't much of a decision since if I didn't, I'd be eating the jarred cranberry sauce all night while everyone else feasted. And I hate cranberry sauce.

Mile Two: See post below. Onions aren't my best friend. My mom looked over my shoulder with a lot of comments like "ohhh, that looks interesting."

Mile Three: I'm not sure how many miles I'm running today. I just started with this mile one thing and now I'm off ... half regretting it. Side note on miles: sister and fiance ran five miles this morning. Nature versus nurture strikes again.

Mile Six: Let's skip ahead a little. Things I never realized about cooking:

- there's a shitload to chop if you want it to taste good. I guess that's why my food never tastes good ... I don't put anything in it. I just kind of heat a skillet and throw one (maybe two) ingredients in.

- Recipes. They're not so bad if you don't feel dumb rereading them sixteen times. Why haven't I used them before?

- MUCH easier to cook when you have a stocked kitchen. Why the hell does my mom have all this stuff?! Oh right ... adults.

Mile Ten: Ooops. Forgot to time the cooking of dishes. My method for madness was to start with the one I wanted to eat while cooking the others - stuffing. Forgot that I still had three dishes after that and was sharing the kitchen with my very hyper sister cooking loads and loads of caramel-chocolate popcorn. Totally cute DYI project for hostess gift that I would never ever try to tackle. Way too sticky. Realized my timing mistake so had to jump in shower and finish cooking while trying to get ready for dinner.

Mile Eleven: This is a random ending number. I DID IT!
My menu for myself:

- Herb roasted seitan with a mushroom gravy (vegan gravy?!)

- apple and walnut stuffing (you can see it all mashed together on my plate)

- cornbread (photo of this is before cook ing)

Didn't have time to make the pumpkin bundt cakes but was saved by no desert from my awesome bro who bought me a vegan pie home from work!

Reactions to my dinner ... we were in a food competition with three families. And I must say (and so did several others) my stuffing was pretty effing good. Best reaction of the night - woman from Philly trying to hide her disgust with my food choices . She wouldn't let me take a photo of her super disgusted face ... "oh. you don't eat meat?" She also looked at the cashews in the stuffing and asked if they were "bloated tics." Ahhhh red wine. Ahhhh gluttony.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving ... 500% thankful for my first thanksgiving in a long time that I didn't have to call home from a bad job whispering "mom? are you there? get me out of here ..."