A merry little Christmas

I have been checking up with a few of you, but I know that blogging is not #1 priority right now. I hope to catch up with the rest of you as soon as life gets back to normal!

As for me, I had a great visit with my family, even though our Christmas was warm and stormy (even to the point of tornado weather). My sister and I have a tradition of making sugar cookies on Christmas eve, and this year was no different--except she was kind enough to let me veganize the recipe. I just made a quick glaze for mine, with powdered sugar and soy milk and vanilla and a little bit of Earth Balance, and I glazed them when they were hot out of the oven. I will share this recipe soon--it's one of my mom's, and I will have to get her to send it to me.



I don't have a whole lot of food to share--one night we just ate vegan Boca burgers, and one night Bob and I had our leftover lasagna which I had taken just in case. We did make stir-fry one night and I sautéed some tofu for me and Bob, but I didn't photograph it--you have all seen sautéed tofu before, I am sure. But for Christmas, my mom did make a nice meal, and she did everything in two pans--the vegan version for us, and the regular version for them. She cooked a turkey too, and I did not bring enough tofu to make a meatless entrée (and where are you going to find tofu on Christmas day?), so we just made a meal out of stuffing, squash, and green beans. I still have a Tofurky in the freezer, so I will probably cook it now that we're home, to have with the leftovers. But here is the vegan version of the stuffing:


It's just made with a wild rice mix, a sautéed onion, some mushrooms, vegetable broth, and seasoned stuffing mix--which was actually vegan, though I expected it not to be. My mom put sausage in hers, and if I had had the option I would have added Tempeh Sausage Crumbles from VWaV... but it was just fine without it. It was a nice meal, and it was fun to be in the kitchen with my mom again.



One of Bob's friends gave him a book called The New Vegan Cookbook by Lorna Sass as a Christmas gift, and I have flipped through it already. It looks like there are some interesting things in there to try. I received a lovely picture book called Vegetarian Sushi, which is exciting mostly because it has large color photographs displaying how attractive and artful even meatless sushi can be--and I am excited to try out some of the recipe suggestions. But on the cookbook front, my favorite gift by far was this one from Bob (which I think he picked out for selfish reasons, but that is fine with me):



But I am seriously going to have to wait to try it out until some of these cookies and everything else have worn off a little bit.

Funny story: Bob and I got each other one of the same gifts for Christmas. Have you seen the movie The Last Unicorn? It's a 1980s animated movie, and we both love it. Apparently we each picked it out for the other one for Christmas! We're so silly.



Tonight, Bob and I are going to Atlanta to see The Nutcracker at the Fox Theatre, and I am so excited because I have never seen it before and it is something I have wanted to do all my life! We are taking his brother and his two sisters along with us, as our Christmas gift to them. I just know it's going to be fun and special.

Everyone take care! If I do not catch up with you before then, be safe and have fun for the new year. Peace.