Leftovers & Being Lazy

I am still decompressing from all the Thanksgiving preparations and festivities, we’ve spent most of today cleaning a trashed kitchen and lounging around the house. My cats have this art mastered on what’s essentially become their personal couch. Rough life.

And joining me for a lazy TV snack.

Then we crammed in a little shopping in the afternoon. I’m not a huge supporter of Black Friday, but I kind of like being out in the madness and seeing the crowds as long as I’m not stressing about finding a parking spot or getting a deal. We just ventured to Nordstrom Rack to use my $50 Groupon to snag some warmer running gear and the checkout line was wrapped around the store. Waiting in it got a lot more entertaining when the guy in front of me went off on the girl in front of him for changing her mind on clothes and stuffing them in random racks, reminding her she could take stuff she didn’t want to checkout for the employees to put back in the proper location. She just awkwardly ignored it and left the line. I agreed with him, but not sure I’d have the guts to go off on a complete stranger. In my days of working at a grocery store, finding frozen foods defrosted in the cereal isle or refrigerated meat with the toilet paper was an irritating waste.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, we had a laid back gathering at my dad’s casually watching Christmas movies, eating and drinking. I brought my pup since she gets along with my dad’s dog and is always up for a car ride.

Because I’m the only vegan in my family, the pickings were slim … or limited to pumpkin chili I brought and bread dressing.

For the chili, I just simmered kidney beans, black beans, tomato puree, onions, garlic and the leftover shredded fresh pumpkin from the raw pumpkin pie with seasonings. I actually started off with a recipe, but deviated from it adding the pumpkin and more veggies. Luckily the end result was very good and I have plenty of leftovers from it. Between snacking on kale chips, nuts and not one, but two raw desserts – I wasn’t hurting for food though. :-)

To go with my raw pumpkin pie, my mom also made this raw persimmon cashew “cheese” cake that came out wonderfully. She pureed ripe persimmons into the cashew mixture creating something that almost tasted like a vegan pumpkin cheese cake. Very yum!

Then there was my raw pumpkin pie that was also a big hit, every piece served was fully consumed and no one believed it was actual raw pumpkin.

As good as it was, it was also messy to serve with a gooey center and crumbly crust, the cut pieces were hardly neat-edged perfection. But that’s okay, it rocked the organic look. :-) It was a wonderful Thanksgiving that I left feeling very full and tired. I felt so full that I was happy to have a green monster smoothie for both breakfast and lunch today.

For dinner I tried to get creative with leftovers. I had a chunk of steamed spaghetti squash in the fridge and plenty of Kristen Suzanne’s nacho hemp sauce from the kale chip adventure. I decided to pan fry the squash with the nacho sauce and chopped cilantro.

The end result was interesting and tasty, kind of like a spicy cheesy mac that was hot and comforting – perfect for this cold night. So found another great use for Kristen’s awesome dip!