Thanksgiving+Vacation

It's been 3 or 4 years since I've traveled home to Fort Myers, Florida, for Thanksgiving. This year, I booked a week off from work so I could fly home and spend time with my mom. Kevin came too, and we celebrated his birthday while we were there.

Because all three of us (Mom, Kevin, me) are vegan, we did a totally Vegan Thanksgiving. (OK, my brother did make a turkey for himself, but we was totally down with all-vegan sides and dessert.)

Here's the menu:

Green Bean Casserole from PPK, per K's request.
Cornbread dressing, made with PPK cornbread and and my Grammy's recipe.
Homemade cranberry-orange relish
Sweet potato casserole
Mushroom gravy, from V'con.
Pumpkin pie, hybrid recipe from VegWeb and the Libby's can.
Apple Crisp, PPK again.
So Delicious Coconut Milk Vanilla ice cream to top it all off!

It was just the four of us for dinner, but several of my mom's neighbors joined us for dessert and coffee. Everyone seemed to enjoy the vegan desserts, which made me happy!

For Kevin's birthday we went to Pizza Fusion, which has vegan pizza options. I was skeptical of the soy cheese, since the much-applauded vegan pizza at Brick Oven Pizza here in Bmore doesn't really float my boat. Pizza Fusion's soy cheese (which I think is Follow Your Heart mozzarella, after internet researching,) is SO yummy. It behaved more like cheese, and I actually liked it. I made some vegan brownies from scratch since I didn't think PF would have vegan desserts, but to my surprise they actually DID have vegan brownies on the menu. I'll be damned! But I think my brownies, made with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder, were probably better. Plus, we had Mint Chocolate chip coconut milk ice cream to go on top!

On K's birthday, he was kind enough to shoot some photos of the fam, per Mom's request. They turned out well, and now she'll finally have some non-high school era photos framed in the house.

After Kevin flew back, Mom and I had some time to putz around, shop, drink wine on the porch, etc. On my last night in town I made YumYum's vegan alfredo and we dined on the porch. I tried to enjoy my last moments of warm Florida weather before flying back to Baltimore! Now that I'm back, it's frigid and even snowed yesterday. Oh well. Florida will always be there to revisit, whenever I manage to get time off again.