Fa La La La Latkes

I know I already did the Fa La La gag this year, but hey, I'm Jewish. It's the only Christmas carol I know.*

ANYWAY, I made not-quite potato latkes for my family's not-quite Chanukkah party. Actually, they were Zucchini Parmesan Latkes, veganized from a recipe in some Jewish magazine I found in my mother's room and used as a coaster. I was lazy and used Galaxy Nutritional Foods' Vegan Grated Topping, but these would probably be even better using nutritional yeast or a homemade parmeseanish topping (I like the one from Yellow Rose Recipes - but I also don't like Parmesean).

The zucchini makes these a little lighter than regular potato latkes, and the parmesean makes them...stinky. Just for shits and giggles, I fried them in peanut oil, but if you're going to serve them on real live Channukkah, you'd probably want to do the whole olive oil thing.

Alas, I have no photos; the family inhaled them before I got to. I guess that's a good thing, yes?

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'Tis the Season to Be Baking

Fa la la...etc.

I did so much baking last week that I forgot to take pictures of most of it. Whoops.

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Oopsie

One thing I forgot to mention about my trip to Barbados is that I missed my flight. Oops. That was my first time missing a flight, ever. I'm usually there ridiculously early. I once even got there before the ticket counters opened and slept on the floor. Thankfully, I was able to fly standby and get there the next day without having to pay a load of fees. This was yet another day with nothing to do but cook, so I checked out the tester forum for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming healthy/low fat/whole foods book and got to work.

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Sunday. Sunday! SUNDAY!

This is where I was Sunday, December 20:

This is where I was Sunday, December 27:

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This is a Post...

...In which I prattle about my Caribbean vacation and what I ate there.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: Barbados is beautiful.

Moving on!

Their system of agriculture is VERY different from that of the US. I had a whole list of fruits I wanted to try, but only got to some because my host's friends and family didn't have any at the time. And we couldn't just go to the store and buy some. According to my friend, if you want breadfruit, soursopp, etc. you don't go to the store. You go to your neighbor, who cuts some off the tree for you. One person seemed offended we went to the coconut guy (below) instead of getting our coconut water from him.

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Quiche Me, You Fool!

I love quiche. Now. I don't know if I ever had quiche, pregan. If I did, it would have been about sixteen years ago, and I probably didn't like it at all because I didn't like eggs. Tofu quiche, on the other hand is the stuff dreams are made of. In fact, the quiche section is one of the most awesome parts of Vegan Brunch (which has lots of awesome parts). So when a quiche recipe was posted to test for Vegan in the Sun, my excitement was palpable (to me).

In my excitement, I may have overcooked it a bit, but hell, no one's perfect.

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Looking Forward to Leftovers

One thing the veg-friendly of NYC look forward to this time of year is the Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich from 'SNice (which now has two locations). This year, I was inspired to make my own.

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The Morning After

What do you do after you've spent days in the kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner for your whole family? If you're me, you get up early (relatively) and make brunch.

Back when I first learned to cook (and had stopped eating all animal products, though I still thought of myself as a vegetarian, not vegan) and my family was still eating turkey during Thanksgiving dinner, we came up with Flesh Free Friday: the day after Thanksgiving, I make brunch and dinner and the whole family goes vegan for the day. This year, the main attraction was the Coconut Orange Dessert Pancakes with Candied Spiced Coconut and chocolate ganche from Vegan in the Sun:

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Just Desserts

Throughout Thanksgiving dinner, I warned everyone to save room for dessert and they were all very glad they listened. So glad, in fact, that I didn't get to take a picture of the whole table full of sweets before we all started digging in and I forgot to take pictures of the insides of the desserts (the best part) because once they were cut, they went straight into our faces.

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Thanksthieving

Oh, holidays! Hope everyone had a lovely day.

This was my first time trying to do a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving (apparently, chili and a cornbread boat aren't traditional for Thanksgiving. Who knew?). My family doesn't really have many traditions (the only thing that seems to happen with any regularity in my house around Thanksgiving is the basement flooding), so I stole some from my friends and the Internet (and my friends on the Internet). Here's what I came up with:

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