Friday, November 12, 2010

Vegan MoFo: Thanksgiving Beta 1.0

Few things are as good as coming home to a warm, home-cooked meal after a long day at work. There's a reason he's earned the blog nickname "Kitchen Kevin." After some gentle arm twisting, Kevin agreed to guest-post about the awesome stuffing he made a few nights ago. Without further adieu, Kitchen Kevin presents...

Chopped and seasoned.

Thanksgiving can be a challenging time for a vegan. I don't know about yours, but my family tends to give me a hard time about not eating the same things as they do. I try to be diplomatic, even when they don't... that's the hard part.

So this year, I've decided to show them how I do (rather than meekly eating double servings of side dishes). I'm going to whip up some kind of chickpea cutlet roast with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy, but these are posts for another day.

My favorite part of the traditional meal has and always shall be the stuffing (with gravy, of course). I had a look at the ingredients list of the old faithful (Stovetop) box and I was appalled, though not surprised. There's a lot of stuff in there! Obviously I needed to learn how to make it from scratch... but there are few things in this world that aren't better made from scratch. So, I put that box of crap back on the shelf, bought a loaf of seeded Jewish rye, and scurried home to give this recipe a try.

Yeah! Put me in the oven!

It was great! It didn't take very long to make, and it tasted just like I think it should! I used Megan's veggie broth, and I added some sauted mushrooms to the mix and extra sage. Generous application of sage is critical, IMHO, to this as well as the requisite gravy.

 I also added extra veggie broth and made sure the stuffing was on the moist side, so it wouldn't dry out when I put in in the oven at 325 for 15 minutes.

The only thing I'll do differently next time is let the bread air dry for longer (more than 45 minutes, which is as long as it took me to make the stuffing and gravy). Megan suggested that throwing the bread in the oven briefly will speed up the processe when you're pressed for time.

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