for thanksgiving this year, we here at quarrygirl.com threw a non-traditional dinner party and invited the parents. sure, my parents will still have their slaughtered carcass tomorrow…but today, their holiday feast was all vegan.

everyone seems to be blogging about their thanksgiving menu, so i thought i may as well do the same. i’m no cook, and i didn’t spend tons of time in the kitchen. but we did manage to throw together a mix of store-bought and homemade dishes that pleased our omnivore guests. here is the rundown:

suds: we celebrated nonturkey day this year by opening up our first bottle of homemade beer. it’s been brewing downstairs in our guest room for two weeks, and today it had finally reached a very drinkable and alcoholic point. full disclosure, we made our wort beer from a kit. we didn’t go all mad scientist, boiling hops or anything. that’s for next time. thankfully, the beer came out quite well. a strong, delicious, fruity dry-hopped lager.

appetizers: we really, really know how to class it up for thanksgiving. that’s why for a pre-meal snack we served a bag of doritos spicy sweet chili nachos with terra potpourri potato chips, along with fritos hot bean dip and calavo guacamole. super fancy, eh? in our defense, this dish was super last minute. (duh.) we stupidly headed out to go grocery shopping on thanksgiving morning in search of horderves and ended up abandoning ralphs because the parking lot was too crowded and bristol farms because it was a fucking zoo in there. (i did see pauly shore though, and had to explain who he was to my husband, yay!) we ended up at the closest place to our house by far to purchase food, the canyon country store. i don’t know if you’ve ever been to this little hippie shack, but they don’t have much selection. hence the truck stop appetizers we ended up serving. it’s all good though. tasty as fuck, and no prep time.

salad: mr. meaner took care of the salad this year, because he kicks ass at that. he made the previously blogged about “best salad in the world”, although this time he toasted the pine nuts and whipped up his own batch of zesty lemon balsamic vinaigrette. total hit.

stuffing: this is actually the first year i’ve ever cooked homemade stuffing. usually i just grab a box from whole foods, add a few ingredients and call it a day. this year, i decided to try a really healthy and simple stuffing from happy herbivore’s cookbook, pudge-free holidays. she’s compiled a list of tasty-sounding holiday recipes without all the fat and calories that usually come along with this time of year. i made a batch of the traditional thanksgiving stuffing with mushrooms and vegan sausage. the only change i made was i added some garlic, because i can never have enough of that. i can tell you this is much tastier and much healthier than the store-bought box crap i’m used to making.

sides: we outsourced the cooking of our side dishes to the awesome vegan soul food restaurant, a taste of life. i could never make food this good, so why even try? we ordered two sides of mac and cheese and two sides of kale. both were delicious and impressed the hell out of my omnivore parents. if i could cook this well, i’d never eat out. but i can’t…so i get take-out on thanksgiving day. yay.

vegetables: mr. meaner took it upon himself to toss some thickly sliced potatoes and carrots in olive oil and oregano, then bake them to perfection. we also had some steamed broccoli and cauliflower to round it all off.

roast: since our favorite thanksgiving centerpiece, the unturkey, is no longer available, we have been looking for a worthy replacement. we spent the last two years with the tofurky, which is good but not great. this year we opted for the very scrumptious celebration roast. field roast is a company up in seattle who makes tons of great faux meats, from sausages, to slices, to several different flavors of roasts. their products are kind of hard to find in los angeles, so if you ever see them, buy ’em up. follow your heart consistently stocks the celebration roasts, and a handful of whole foods carry the sausages. while the celebration roast is no unturkey, it’s pretty damn incredible. the body, crust and middle stuffing are all magnificent. (please note, some folks have made a website and posted a recipe for the original unturky. i’m way to much of a cooking n00b to try it, but others have. and i am jealous). the celebration roast will totally do for now.

dessert: i actually did some baking some baking this thanksgiving! when i bake, things usually go wrong…but luckily, this holiday my shit came out pretty nice. i went through several recipes online and adapted my own from many to make a chocolate-chip vegan cheesecake. a total crowd-pleaser, this cheesecake made me so proud. plus it satisfied my sweet tooth for the day.

here’s the recipe i “came up with,” standing on the shoulders of giants:

vegan chocolate-chip cheesecake

ingredients:
1-14 oz package firm silken tofu
1-8 oz package tofutti better than cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
splash of lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp cornstarch
about 1/2 a 12oz bag of chocolate chips
1-9 inch vegan pie crust

method:
preheat oven to 350F.
put silken tofu and tofutti better than cream cheese in the blender and blend until smooth.
add the sugar and blend until no granules remain.
add a splash of lemon juice, the vanilla and the corn starch, then blend until smooth.
add 1/2 a 12oz bag of vegan chocolate chips and stir it up with a spoon.
pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake for 40 minutes.
refrigerate before serving for at least 4 hours.

result:
yum.

all around, we had an epically delicious thanksgiving. good to know we could gorge ourselves on all kinds of dishes—healthy stuff, junk food, salty appetizers, sweet deserts, salads, roasts and vegetables—all without killing any animals. what a fucking concept, right?

here’s to hoping the rest of the world will catch on. hope you had a great thanksgiving!

back to restaurant reviews now for quarrygirl…

in the midst of a los angeles heat wave, and a very inconvenient power outage on my block, i found myself in santa monica trying to pass the time and keep cool. i had dinner plans in the area at 8:30, but had to head out much earlier, because sitting around in a sweltering house just wasn’t cutting it for me. i started drinking at around noon, and at around 3pm, the alcohol and heat started to get the best of me. i knew i needed a light snack to hold me over until dinner, so i grabbed my trusty blackberry and searched for the nearest vegan spot. it lead me to the doorstep of juliano’s raw.

spring rolls: pasta, shredded veggies & thai herbs wrapped in a scrumptious coconut curry wrapper served with a no-peanut thai sauce $8.31

greenomole & chips: best guac ever, groovin’ salsa & flax cracks $6.47

now, i’d read good things about juliano’s raw before…and i gotta say, it really hit the spot. don’t get me wrong, the portions were tiny, the service was slow, and it was overpriced—but on a scorching hot day, it was exactly the light, fresh, tasty food i needed.

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at quarrygirl.com, we are always looking for new vegetarian restaurants to hit up, and last weekend we got lucky with the spot.

savory garden burrito: with garden veggies, cheese and savory sauce (all non-dairy): $8.95

guacamole burger: a homemade burger patty served on a wheat bun with guacamole and a side of almond rice: $8.95

as many of my fellow imbibers know, the hermosa/redondo/manhattan/whatever beach areas are great places to find breweries and specialty beers. what i DIDN’T know until last weekend, is they are also great places to find uncharted vegan fare.

after planning a day of drinking in hermosa beach, i decided to research some food options on the internet. one spot, a vegetarian restaurant, kept gaining my attention and outshining all the other restaurants with its glowing reviews. so of course, we had to give it a try…
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