We had a very large bowl of leftover mashed potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce from our Thanksgiving (or, should I say, Thanksgivingukkah) feast and I like a little variety in my life so when I stumbled onto this recipe for Cheesy Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes I smartly suggested to Ryan that it might be a great thing to try. What better way to celebrate the marriage of both Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, after all?

Instead of using scallions, we used shallots – because that’s what we had in the fridge. And instead of using sour cream to top them with, we used our leftover homemade cranberry sauce. It was delicious! In fact, to be honest, I actually liked the potatoes better in this form than I did in their original mashed potato form…shhh…don’t tell the mashed potatoes I said that.

It’s been a cool (high of only 65 in July?), overcast morning and looking like it’ll rain at any moment most of the day so far. Yesterday, I picked blueberries so I suggested we have fresh blueberry crepes for brunch this morning and that’s exactly what we did. Ryan whipped up a batch of delicious crepes, using this recipe, with a blueberry filling. Speaking of crepes, this never fails to make me laugh.

I do enjoy lazy Sundays. With the cloudy, cool weather it feels extra nice to sit around the house and do a whole lot of nothing much at all. Melody seems like she’s got being lazy down to a science. I did step out to our backyard and pick some of the largest tomatoes we’ve ever grown in our garden as well as some jalapenos, bell pepper, and I cut some nasturtium to make this sweet little arrangement. Here’s to lazy Sundays!

Val woke up this morning and had a hankering for some biscuits and gravy. So that is what we had.

The biscuits are just vegweb’s Savory Biscuits recipe with a bit of extra flour and basil for the dried herbs. The gravy was a modified version of this gravy recipe. So here is the modified recipe, it makes enough to top about 10 biscuits:

• 1 package Upton’s Chorizo Seitan chopped
• 1 jalapeño minced
• 1/2 yellow onion diced
• 1 shallot
• 3 cloves of garlic minced
• 5 tablespoons margarine
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 heaping teaspoon butcher’s cut pepper
• 1 1/2 cups + 2 tbsp veggie stock
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• salt (this one is up to you)

You could probably do this all in one pot but I used a small pot and a pan and cooked the saucy part of the gravy separately from the meaty part.

Heat a pan to medium heat. Add in 2 tbsp of margarine. Add the seitan and the jalapeño and cooked until it browns a bit. About 5-7 minutes at most. Turn heat off.

In a small pot heated to medium heat add 2 tbsp of margarine. Add the onion, garlic, pepper, and shallot. Cook until translucent. Add the flour and remaining butter. Cook for an additional few minutes. Add the veggie stock and the cornstarch stir to make sure that there are no clumps from the cornstarch. Bring to boil, then add the soy sauce and nu-yeast and cook for a minute or so more. Once done combine and pour into pan with the seitan and mix well – add salt to taste. Serve over top of some delicious biscuits.

One quick note about the biscuits: cook the biscuits directly on a pizza stone, don’t put in a pan. If you don’t have a pizza stone go buy one, you need it because it makes for perfectly cooked biscuits. Our stone, which should really be called a biscuit stone, permanently stays in our oven even if using a pan and always seems to help distribute the heat well.

Melody likes to keep a close watch for quality control while we cook. She takes her job very seriously.

This is loosely based on the Mexican soup pozole (it is important to note that no humans were harmed in the making of this soup). Ryan grew up going to friends’ houses where this would be on the stove all day long and after a night of drinking this spicy soup, much like menudo, would serve as a perfect hangover cure. I was never much the fan of hominy, but Ryan always liked the taste of it because it reminds him of tortillas. We struck a deal that I would try hominy again so this soup was a compromise between the two of us, a bit of hominy and a bit of yellow corn in a spicy tomato broth.

Ingredients:

• 20 tomatoes on the vine, roasted and cored
• 3 serrano peppers, roasted (note these died in the roasting, but their “juice” mixed with the tomatoes)
• approximately 3 tbsp chipotle infused olive oil
• 1 purple onion
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 tbsp dark chili powder
• 1 oz package pozole spice mix
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1 15.25 oz can yellow corn
• 1 29 oz can hominy
• salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 425. Lightly coat the tomatoes and serrano peppers in some of the olive oil (about 1-1 1/2 tbsp). Place in oven to roast for about 30-45 minutes or until they begin to split open and brown. One quick thing to note, this killed our serrano peppers; that said, the mixture of tomato juices and slightly disintegrated serrano did add flavor to the tomatoes with just a hint of a kick. Remove from oven to cool. Once cooled core the tomatoes and place in a blender to puree. Set aside.

Heat a large pot over medium heat. Add in the remaining olive oil. Add in the onion, garlic, and pozole mix, cook onion until it begins to be slightly translucent. Add the bell peppers and chili powder. Cook until bell peppers are tender, enough for a fork to easily go into them. Add the tomato puree and the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes. Add in the hominy and corn. Let cook for a little while longer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pozole mix is meant traditionally for pork and most pre-made mixes make for a decently spicy pork rub long before it is added to the soup pot. So depending on what type of pozole spice mix you purchased or made for yourself it can make for a soup with quite the kick. If you are afraid of spicy things I’d check the mix or reduce the amount of spice mix you use. You can also let the mix soak and simmer in hot water for a little bit before adding  it to the pot and it might reconstitute some of the dried chiles in the mix.

Ryan bought me a Zoku Quick Pop™ Maker for Christmas & I love it! It’s easy to use & I love that you can create your own recipes that are both healthy & dairy-free – it’s also nice to know exactly what’s going into your frozen treats…with the right ingredients,  you can be sure there are no artificial sweeteners, color, etc. Last night we decided to give it a whirl & made some delicious eggnog popsicles by combining soy eggnog, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, & sprinkling in some crushed cereal bits for crunch – yum!

The Zoku blog has recipes & there is a recipe book available for purchase as well. We decided to wing it for our first try & it turned out good; after all, Ryan is a master at winging it & having things turn out great.

I am enjoying every minute of this joyous holiday season – holiday parties & get-togethers, delicious food & drink, & happy memories! We put together this “Christmas fettuccine” for a potluck & it was easy with only a few ingredients; I think it looks very festive with its red & green ingredients. We used al dente fiesta fettuccine, shallots, garlic, 2 packages of frozen spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, & salt & pepper to taste. Happy holidays!

Behold the new holiday drink: THE RUMMY TUM TUM. We had a whole bunch of rum we inherited from bygone parties and we are not really rum drinkers so Ryan decided he wanted to use some of it. Hot buttered rum didn’t sound appealing to him and he had the idea of only using ingredients we had on hand, or “McGyver-ing,” to make the drink.  With what was in our fridge and pantry he came up with this nifty little cocktail for your holiday needs.

Pictured above is the beautiful Mrs. Reedy enjoying a rummy tum tum and looking festive and fabulous as usual!

Ingredients:

• 1 egg white
• 1/2 cup cider
• 1 tbsp dark rum
• 1 tbsp light rum
• 1 tbsp 151 (rum)
• 1 1/2 tbsp rye whiskey
• the juice of 3-4 slices from a mandarin orange
• a dash of cinnamon
• a little fresh grated nutmeg
• a dash of ginger
• twist of orange peel and cinnamon stick for garnish, and maybe another little bit of nutmeg

In a shaker add all of the ingredients (except the garnish of course). Shake well without any ice. Add a few cubes of ice and shake again. Pour into a glass. Garnish and enjoy.

Thanks to the mix masters at Bar at Braun Court for the suggestion of adding citrus and dry shaking the ingredients before adding ice and shaking again.

Months ago, our friend Michael shared a dream with us…to make & eat a dessert version of a Turducken which he named a Coopieke. A Coopieke is a cookie inside of a pie inside of a cake. Michael celebrated his birthday with us last weekend and thus the dream was realized – we made him a Coopieke & it really was delicious!

We started with a large chocolate chip cookie, then we baked the pie crust separately and put together a no-bake chocolate pie which we layered the cookie inside of, then we baked a chocolate cake, cut the cake into layers, topped each layer with chocolate frosting, cut out the center to place the pie (or coo-pie, I guess I should say) inside, inserted the pie into the cake, & then frosted the whole thing with vanilla frosting. If you can’t decide if you’d rather have a cookie, pie, or cake, then just have all three!

We’ve made some version of this many times before, but last weekend Ryan threw together a delicious version of this – adding his own variations of course – with a variety of tomatoes that came fresh from our garden & our friends’ Amanda & Andy’s garden as well. He added some fresh herbs from our garden, spices, & capers as well & we had one hell of a tasty sauce on our hands! I brought this to my fabulous friend Abigail’s baby shower last Sunday & enjoyed all the yummy eats that others brought to share as well.

We were planning on what to make for brunch recently and as I was pouring through cookbooks and looking online for inspiration I came across a frittata recipe which sounded promising. As we’ve never made a frittata before, and Ryan does love a challenge, that’s exactly what we decided to do. We took ideas from several online sources, but in the end he made it up as he went along and made it his own and it was delicious! We thought, with all the Mexican flavors and ingredients in the dish, naming it Hola! Frittata was a perfect fit. We served ours with breakfast potatoes – yum!

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 poblano peppers
• 3/4 lb chorizo sausage
• 1/2 red onion, cut into thin slices
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 eggs
• 1 splash milk (about 1 tbsp+)
• 1 tsp Mexican oregano
• 1 cup cilantro, chopped after measuring
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup monterrey jack cheese, shredded

Pre-heat an oven to 375. Lightly coat the peppers in olive oil and place in the oven to roast. You’ll roast them until the skin starts to brown and gets puffy. Be sure to flip them at some point in time. It usually takes me 15-20 minutes in our oven to get them nicely roasted. Once roasted, put them in a brown paper bag to steam. Steam for about 10-15 minutes. Remove from the bag, remove the skins, and then core and deseed.

In a bowl, whisk eggs, milk, and cilantro together. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 450. Heat an oven-safe skillet to medium heat and add butter. Add garlic and onions and cook until translucent. Add chorizo and Mexican oregano then cook until chorizo is cooked through to your liking (we cooked ours medium-rare and it’s important to keep in mind that it will continue cooking in the oven). Add in egg mixture and cook until egg starts to set on edges and bottom of pan. Place in oven and cook until egg is cooked through. We cooked ours for about 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let set for about 5 minutes. Turn skillet over onto cutting board or platter and then slice and serve.