Entrance to the festival is $10, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit for the Animals Sanctuary. Be sure to stop by the Sanctuary’s table to say hi and purchase some beautiful jewelry handmade by our founder, Debbie Kowalski! More information can also be found on the festival’s Facebook event page.

Hope to see you there!

But first, Thanksgiving. There are a lot of negative associations with Thanksgiving, in regards to both its cultural history and the turkey slaughter that takes place for many people’s meals. I acknowledge that, but I’m going to keep this post positive. I’m thankful to have such a vegan-friendly family who, although they still eat a turkey on Thanksgiving (boo), are willing to make the mashed potatoes vegan and enjoy most of the food I make–I’m thankful to be able to share it with them. I’m also thankful for all the amazing vegans in my life, even though I wasn’t able to spend the holiday with any of them.

So, what does a vegan eat for thanksgiving? I’ve included links to most of the recipes.

Cranberry Orange muffins from Veganomicon for breakfast:

Tofurkey (always done in the slow cooker), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes (my mom made them vegan!), roasted brussels sprouts, corn, root veggies, brown gravy. I had two full plates like this. Overeating, it’s the American way don’cha know?

And good ol’ pumpkin pie for dessert! I think it was a little underdone this year, but still tasty.

There’s this amazing tumblr that’s all about vegan pizza (fuck yeah vegan pizza!), and they made an out-of-this-world thanksliving pizza. I told my boyfriend that if we move in together, we are SO doing this for Thanksgiving.

Bonus pictures of Mia! Being a cat: yur doin’ it rite.

LOOK AT THAT FAT FACE. Just look at it.

I’m getting all geared up (and a bit teared up) for the movie premiere tomorrow night… I made a Slytherin bracelet, a Deathly Hallows shirt, and it’s 1 in the morning but I’m about to watch DH part 1 which just came in the mail today. Tomorrow I hope to make chocolate covered pretzel wands before running off to the theatre. THE TICKETS ARE IN MY WALLET OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE IT ALL ENDS TOMORROW.

I had some tofu in the fridge and not much else, so this dish was born. It looks super fancy and tastes awesome, but is actually pretty easy to make!

Ingredients:

For the Lemon-Pepper Tofu (based off this recipe):
1 block extra firm tofu
5 TBSP lemon juice
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 TBSP Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (or tamari sauce, or soy sauce)
1 1/2 tsp lemon pepper seasoning
1 TBSP olive oil

 For the Cabernet Marinara (based off VWAV pizza sauce)*:
2 tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
few grinds fresh black pepper
1/4 C cabernet sauvignon
1 (15-oz) cans tomato (I used canned chopped tomato)

1 medium zucchini – don’t get one that’s too fat or it’ll be hard to peel the slices once you get close to the middle of the squash.

DIRECTIONS

Press the tofu. Cut into eight 1/2-inch slices, and cut each slice in half to make 16 squares. Place side by side in a wide, shallow dish (I use a 9×9 glass baking pan).

Mix together the marinade ingredients and pour evenly over the tofu. Let marinade for at least an hour and up to overnight, turning once.

Preheat oven to 400F. Remove tofu from marinade and set on a baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Now is a good time to slice your zucchini and start the marinara sauce.

Take a vegetable peeler and shave thin slices down the length of the zucchini. Set aside.**

For the marinara sauce: in a medium-large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat. Saute the garlic for about 2 minutes, being careful not to burn. Stir in the oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper, crushing the dried herbs between your fingers as you add them. Add the red wine and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and let cook until liquid has reduced by 1/2. Stir in the tomatoes. Let simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender.

After the tofu has been baking for 20 minutes, remove from oven, flip, and let cool for about 5 minutes. Wrap each square with a strip of zucchini, making sure it overlaps a bit on the bottom. If your strips are too long, you can rip them down to the length needed as you wrap the tofu. Bake for 10 more minutes.

To serve, plate the tofu and top with a spoonful of sauce. Enjoy!

*This recipe makes way more than you need for this dish. Save the rest and use over pasta with vegan meatballs (recommend: wheatballs from Vegan on the Cheap) or whatever else you might want to do with it!

**Don’t throw out any zucchini scraps you mess up or don’t use! You can use it later in a green smoothie, zucchini pesto, or make some sort of veggie dip. Zucchini is high in protein, so it makes things creamy when pureed.

In a letter to the editor appearing in The Daily Pennsylvanian, he writes:

Apparently the Zeta Psi fraternity members decided to spend some of Daddy’s money and rent a bunch of animals for a zoo-like Spring Fling party. What fun! Except for the handling of the camel they rented. It was, at the very least, exploitative and thoughtless treatment, if not animal cruelty.

I can’t help but wonder, did the Zeta Psi brothers really think that a camel would like being stepped on by drunk sorority sisters or enjoy having beer spilled on its head? Or maybe they just don’t care about anyone but themselves? Regardless, it is embarrassing for this University to sanction such self-absorbed and pathetic behavior. I pray that in future Flings we don’t continue to throw Penn’s reputation — and the rights of animals to be treated with respect — out a window.

Well said, sir! I mean seriously, nonhuman animals don’t belong at frat parties*.

Apparently, the fraternity has been hiring the Peaceable Kingdom petting zoo for use at its parties for the past five years, though this will be the last–Charis Matey, co-owner of the Bucks County zoo, doesn’t want to get a bad name from continuing to do business with them.

Although the fraternity won’t be doing business with this particular zoo anymore, who’s to say they won’t just find another place to provide animals who will entertain the drunken, rowdy students? One article mentioned that Scott Reikofski, director of fraternity and sorority affairs at the university, hoped to have a resolution soon, but then another said the controversy was resolved and Zeta Psi was “cleared of any wrongdoing.”

I’m not necessarily saying the fraternity should be punished for mistreatment of animals (though they should), but I hope some sort of resolution gets passed to ban this sort of thing from ever happening again. I have emailed Scott Reikofski (reikofsk@upenn.edu) stating my opinion, and am currently awaiting his response.

*unless they’re PARTY ANIMALS! What what!

I’m super excited because I’m organizing a cooking demo by the lovely Jaime K of Save the Kales that’ll be going down next Monday at KU. She’s a super woman and I’m excited to get to not only meet her but learn a thing or two. You should do it too!!

Vegan Cooking Demo
Monday, March 21st
6:00 PM
Old Main rm. 21

I’m also in the running for a Best of Blogs contest in my local paper under the food blog category. How great would it be for a vegan to win? Okay, there’s currently a vegan in the lead (the aforementioned STK!)  and I would be honored to lose to to her, but it would be awesome to win. There are some pretty amazing people and groups overall in the running! My top picks are:

Art: HEART OF STEELcity (also by Jaime K)

Fitness & Health: Save the Kales

Food: Louzilla Lovegood Letters

Misfits: Lehigh Valley Transplant

Neighborhood: No Kill Lehigh Valley

Vote!!

Also, stay tuned later in the week because I definitely have something in my head for St. Patrick’s day, and hopefully I’ll have a chance to actually make and post it!

SO. What does a meat-loving omnivore eat when she tries out veganism for a week?

Breakfasts: 2 cups of coffee (black) every morning. Then, after exercising, oatmeal with chopped walnuts and a cup of OJ, or occasionally some peanut butter spread on toast.

Lunches: Usually leftovers from dinner, or a peanut butter sandwich–no jelly for this fruit-hater.

The Dinners:
Saturday, February 19th: I made spaghetti with “wheatballs” from Robin Robertson’s Vegan on the Cheap. Topped with Newman’s Own marinara sauce and rounded out with a side of steamed kale.

Sunday, February 20th: We went to the grocery store and picked up some rosemary artisan bread and veggies. I sliced and panfried onions, red bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, and eggplant and tossed it all with a dash of balsamic vinaigrette. Spread some homemade hummus on each slice of bread and put it all together while Mom made a side of oven-baked sweet potato fries with sea salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. mmm!

Monday, February 21st-Tuesday, February 22nd: I wasn’t home for dinner these days, so no pictures, but Mom made and ate cabbage and leek soup from 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes.

Wednesday, February 23rd: Puttanesca. This picture is deceiving, because there are really more veggies than that but it wasn’t mixed well and they all ended up at the bottom topped with the spaghetti! I would totally link you to the recipe for this meal that we can both always agree on (and is super easy to make) if only my mom could remember where she found it!

Thursday, February 24th: Again, I wasn’t home, but Mom had the rest of the leftover spaghetti & wheatballs. She just finished heating them up when our microwave of 28 years died!!

Friday, February 25th: Stir fry made with leftover veggies from Sunday’s sandwiches and seitan based off this recipe, served over quinoa and with a big salad.

My two biggest celebrations from this week are that I got my mom to try hummus (which she’s always said she didn’t like) and seitan (which she’s always been leery of) and both were successful! What does she have to say about the week? She found herself craving meat, doesn’t want to give it up for good, but is still trying to decrease her consumption of it. Overall, a huge leap forward from when I first went vegetarian 5 years ago!

Oprah’s doing it, my mom’s doing it… who’s next??

Since I am also against violence to nonhuman animals (particularly the females whose reproductive systems get totally exploited just so people can have their eggs and dairy), I bring to you today an awesome recipe for vegan black forest brownies. It’s a new spin on chocolate covered cherries, since there is a cherry layer sandwiched between layers of brownie!

I was going for a cakey-fudgy brownie, but these turned out really fudgy with an intense chocolate flavor. Since the rum gets cooked with the cherries as well as baked in the brownie, most of the alcohol burns off, but if you are sXe you can feel free to leave it out. For an even more intense flavor, substitute black cocoa powder for 1 TBSP of regular cocoa powder!

Black Forest Brownies

For the cherries:
1 cup cherries (fresh or frozen)
1 TBSP sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1 TBSP rum

For the brownies:
2 oz unsweetened baker’s chocolate, chopped
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup nondairy milk
1 TBSP ground flax mixed with 3 TBSP water
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
4 TBSP cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease an 8×8 pan.

Mix all the ingredients for the cherry filling in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until thickened.

In a large glass mixing bowl, microwave the chocolate in 1-2 minute intervals until melted. Mix in the oil, nondairy milk, flax “egg,” sugar, and vanilla.

Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt and mix until just combined.

Spread about half the batter in the prepared pan. Top with the cherry mixture, and then spoon the rest of the brownie batter on top trying to spread it as evenly as you can.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for about 1/2 hour before eating. If you don’t plan on eating within the next two days, store brownies in the refrigerator (but bring back to room temp before serving).

It was a little hard finding things I hadn’t made before, since I was a tester for the book, so I started off with chickpea cutlets, a recipe I’d only made once and didn’t love but everyone always raves over so I decided to give them another try. I made them for dinner for my mom and I with sauteed collards.

I remembered not loving the mustard sauce when I tested it, so I decided to go sans sauce but next time I will definitely try them with the mushroom gravy as they were a little dry on their own but otherwise amazing. They were especially awesome the next day stuffed into a sandwich with spinach, tomato, onion, and dijon mustard! I will definitely be making this recipe more often now. I like them baked rather than fried.

The next day I made use of my leftover cranberries in cranberry-orange-nut bread. This was really good, and had a nice balance of sweet complementing tangy, though next time I think I’ll try it out with whole wheat pastry flour instead of white to have a little more of a healthy taste (I’ve been into that recently, oddly enough).

Word of advice for those of you who might make this: either eat it within 2 days or keep it in the refrigerator, because if left out on the counter it will mold quickly due to the fruit in it. Yeah, that happened to me.

I decided to end the challenge week with a big shebang: vanilla ice cream! I’ve been eager to make this ever since it entered testing, but at first it called for soymilk powder which I couldn’t find and then when the recipe was changed I just never got around to it. Until yesterday, that is!

I doubled this recipe… mostly because I really like ice cream, but also because by doubling the recipe I would be able to use a whole block of silken tofu instead of trying to figure out what to do with the other half. I was going for a cookies ‘n cream ice cream (my favorite!), but apparently I should’ve waited until I was ready to firm it up in the freezer to put the crumbled Oreos in because they all got totally incorporated into the ice cream, turning it greyish brown. Oh well, at least it still tastes awesome! I was really happy with the way this recipe came out, very smooth and creamy with a slight but not overpowering coconut taste.

I had fun cooking recipes I’ve been meaning to get around to this week, and look forward to sporadically jumping in on some of the other challenges from now til the end of March!

• On the Pepsi Refresh website: signing up is really quick, then you can bookmark the page to go back every day and vote again!
• Via text message: simply text the number 104593 to PEPSI (73774)
• Pepsi Refresh’s Facebook voting app

Or, you could do all 3! With your help the organization can get back in the top 10 and receive the funding they need to make the Lehigh Valley a better place for companion animals.

The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them
Wayne Pacelle has written a new book which “examines our contradictory attitudes towards animals and points to a better way forward.” The book comes out on April 12, and I can’t wait to read it! Wayne is such a great, well-spoken (and handsome!) leader for HSUS, and I’m interested to see what he has to say about the movement in his book. You can read more and see his introductory video about it here.

Wintery Tofu Scramble
Usually I like my scrambles warm and spicy, but I really liked the sweetness of this one for a little something different. Cooked it up and put it in a wrap with some fresh spinach, and toasted it on my cast-iron. Best breakfast I’ve had in a while! I should definitely toast my wraps more often.

Ingredients of the scramble are: olive oil, onion, garlic, red & green bell pepper, sweet potato, cranberries, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, red wine, Bragg’s, tofu, and nutritional yeast.