Monday, 22 December 2008

Holiday Dinner Wrap Up

It's taken me a bit to get to this post. My camera cable was MIA.

So the dinner went through some last minute changes and ended up being at my tiny apartment. This meant that we had to dis invite some people and buy more glasses and plates. I also cut out a few of the planned dishes since there wouldn't be as many people to eat them.

See I wasn't kidding when I said it was tiny. I only have this tiny coffee table, so some of the dishes had to go on the floor. I also didn't have enough bowls for everything.

This is Bryanna's tenderloin. I also used the rosemary milk marinade she suggests. It took a lot of work. If you plan on making this, make the tenderloin ahead of time and freeze, then the day of will be minimal work.

Here are vegan dad's roasts. These were amazing!


The green been casserole, delicious as always.


My plate! Clockwise from the pumpkin dinner rolls, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with sage and onion gravy, stuffing, seitan roast, tenderloin with the cranberries above it and the carrots in the middle.

And of course dessert. We had three kinds of dessert. This is the pumpkin brownies, which were awesome! Mine came out more like a chocolate pumpkin cheese cake, I don't know if that's because I used a slightly smaller pan or that's just the way they are, but I'd definitely make them again. We also had fudge, which was good and pumpkin pie. The pie was our friend's first attempt at vegan baking. It was really tasty, he even made his own pumpkin filling. Sorry, I didn't get a good picture of it.


Also, if you have any doubt as to how awesome this meal was, check out an old post where I show you how small my kitchen is. I made all of this with 1 mini oven and a counter top the size of a few books. It took a lot of time management skills on my part. I'll update the previous post crossing out the things I ended up not making.


Happy Holidays everyone! I'm off to the udon capital of Japan, Kagawa in Shikoku for Christmas.


--Pamela



Thursday, 4 December 2008

Our Holiday Dinner

I will once again be hosting a vegan holiday feast (along with my boyfriend since it's at his house). Last year, we had a Thanksgiving party. But this year the date is a little later, so I guess it's more like a Christmas party. Basically, the food is all the same to me and that's what's important. This year we are planning for about 10-15 people for dinner. Most of the guests are Japanese so they are just chipping in 1000 yen and then I'll be making most of the food with some contributions from Sarah and our friend Jason. Jason's not vegan, but is working out a vegan pumpkin pie for the party. I'm really appreciative he took on such a scary one for his first vegan cooking experience. He could have just said mashed potatoes (which he's also bringing) or something, but he didn't and that's cool. Maybe he'll see how easy it can be to make vegan food.

Last year, all the guests were amazed that all of the food was vegan and everyone ate themselves silly. I like doing this dinner because it shows how awesome vegan food can be, but it also shows a little bit about western culture. Most of our guests wouldn't have any other opportunity to eat Christmas dinner.

It's going to be next weekend, just before Sarah leaves to go back to Scotland for the holidays. I'll be stuck here...

So I've finished up the menu. Here it is:

Appetizers (last year people filled up on these too much, so I cut them down)
  • pickles
  • olives
  • chips
  • onion dip (La Dolce Vegan)

Bread

Sides

Main

  • Seitan Roast (with the stuffing from above, probably)
  • Seitan Tenderloin (from the Vegan Feast Newsletters Holiday 2007)

Desserts

I can't wait!

Pamela