Holiday Planning Yumminess

Getting ready for the holidays....generating a list of things to make for our 3 holiday meals (not all three are the usual heavy Christmas meal though). We've also been busy in the kitchen! We love baking, but if we're in there too long, we get tired of standing and just plain pooped!

This is what we are planning:

• spiced nuts - do any of you have a great recipe?

• homemade yeasty cornbread sticks (not the typical cornbread; more like Pillsbury cornbread sticks)

• homemade hummus with pita chips, Mary's Gone Crackers, and raw vegetables

• broccoli wild rice stuffing (we've made this many times)

• a vegetable side dish

• White bean vegetable mix (white beans, green beans, red bell pepper, and other veggies) with pumpkin vinaigrette

• Cookies of course! - Double chocolate cookies, Gingerbread cutouts, and Almond shortbread with jam thumbprint cookies

Now onto this week's goodies:

We love Susan's Mexican Casserole, which we've made before, and decided to change it up a bit by using sweet potato puree instead of refried beans. It was a nice combination, with the sweetness and creaminess of sweet potatoes and the black beans and spices. Also nice, because it was not nearly as filling as the refried beans version.


Eat'nveg'n posted about making a lima bean casserole. We didn't have the exact recipe, so we tried to guess what would be in it and made our own delicious dish. We used 2 cans of butter beans; 1 can of lima beans; 1 can diced tomatoes; 1 1/2 cup quinoa, cooked; some onion, bell pepper, garlic, and mushrooms sauteed; lots of dried oregano and basil; and shredded carrots. It came out delicious! We really enjoyed it, because we could eat leftovers as a wrap or in pitas. We think that next time it will be even better with some tomato sauce poured over the top.
To accompany our bean quinoa casserole, we made oatmeal rolls. This was our first time to use wheat gluten, and it improved the texture and gluteniness of the rolls! They turned out very soft, with a hint of maple.


Our freezer is stock full of goodies, especially cookies and breads. We made two kinds of scones this week - one was a zucchini pineapple scone, which turned out more like a muffin in texture but still good. The other was our Graham scones with apple butter and currants! These were awesome! We like our scones dry, not like a soft biscuit, and the apple butter added a great flavor.


Another sweet treat we made was lemon tofu pudding pie, over graham cracker crust. It was very yummy, refreshing, and rich, but it turned out more runny than we thought. In the end, we just put them in small bowls and added sliced bananas, like a layered banana pudding or yogurt cup.


Start drooling now! haha....we made this fabulous pasta dish with creamy spinach asparagus sauce. It was very easy and flavorful. With garlic, onions, mushrooms, basil, oregano, and nutritional yeast, too!
Another great recipe from Susan - Carrot Hummus.

It was so simple and fresh, and much better than high-sodium, store-bought hummus. The cayenne pepper added a nice kick to the sweetness of the carrots. We used 1 tsp cashew butter instead of tahini, ginger powder instead of fresh, and no paprika. We will officially make homemade hummus from now on! This was actually good served with pineapple chunks on the side. And of course baby carrots and Mary's Gone Crackers.

Besides cooking/baking, we've been enjoying our time off from school. We forgot how wonderful pleasurable reading is, and now we are reading at any moment we can! We currently are finishing up Anne of Green Gables series (not entirely grown up books, but still beautifully written - one of our favorites!), and even borrowed the movie from the library.

We also went to Hobby Lobby and have some crafts planned. We found these fabric aprons and we are going to fabric paint them with a quote, such as "Veg Bakers", or "Meat Free Chef", etc. We've never stenciled paint onto fabric before, so it will be a lot of messy fun! We also got some fabric to re-fabricate our favorite slippers. I know you're probably laughing, but we've had these slippers since who knows when, and the Winnie the Pooh fabric and the foam cushion inside is torn and worn. We love them to death since they are not bulky slippers or too warm. We thought it would be fun (and cheaper) to pick out a new fabric pattern and repair them!

We won't post for a while, since we will be going home for the holidays on Saturday and won't be back till Thursday evening. We pray that your Christmas gatherings are filled with joy and peace, and lots of great veg-friendly food!
Celebrating Jesus' Birthday,
LKSisters