Thanksgiving 2012

This year's tofu turkey was a little weird, I thought, and not as good as last year's. It neither looked nor tasted the way I expected, and the texture was off. The only thing I can think of was that last year I used very fresh, just-made tofu from a local Vietnamese tofu shop, and this year I purchased super-firm packaged Wildwood tofu. The Wildwood tofu works great when used for usual preparations like stir-fries, baked or sautéed slices, and I thought the extra-firm texture would be good for the tofu turkey, where pressing out excess water is an overnight process. I wanted it to be great, but it wasn't. It was stuffed with a tasty "meaty" wild rice stuffing made with cauliflower and walnuts, and served with mushroom gravy. I think I'm going to abandon the tofu turkey next year and choose a different centerpiece.

I wasn't good about photographing the food — partly because it's so hard to get good photos at night, and partly because I got caught up in the party — but I did get a few shots, notably the fresh and delicious kale salad brought by one of our sons. Behind the salad you can (barely) see the pan of yummy potato stuffing brought by another son. The potato stuffing, or kugel, is a traditional holiday food in our family.

Of course there was cranberry sauce — this year's version contained cranberries, apples and pineapple.

Not pictured is a glorious appetizer platter made by our daughter-in-law, a cheese spread made from smoked provalone from Artisan Vegan Cheese, a platter of roasted vegetables, and probably other things I'm forgetting.

The pumpkin pie filling was from a recipe by Gena Hamshaw of the blog, Choosing Raw. I made it with butternut squash instead of pumpkin, because I prefer the texture, and the extra sweet flavor of the squash means I can use less sugar. I like to add a chocolate chip garnish during the last few minutes of baking. The plan was to make whipped coconut cream to garnish the pie but I completely forgot! The crust I made was  gluten-free — not the crust from the recipe. We also had oatmeal-almond chocolate chip cookies. And fruit salad.

The day after Thanksgiving, my son took me on a tour of the building where he works. I was surprised and pleased to see this poster on the wall outside the cafeteria.

Here you see two of our sons "posing" in one of the conversation areas.

A view of the Space Needle through a rain decorated window.

Hope everyone who celebrates had a pleasant Thanksgiving and made good use of the leftovers — the subject of my next post.