Holiday Chaos Starts for the List

Happy Sunday! Kind of feels like it’s already Christmas with the shopping madness and house decorations up, I guess the weeks between Thanksgiving and actual Christmas is the new Christmas. The pups sheltered themselves from the chaos all snug in their warm beds this weekend.

And Miko made sure he’s ready at the table to share food.

It’s been oddly warmer in the 60s and 70s here, but still foggy, overcast, and gorgeous with the fall leaves for a festive, wintery feeling.

I always try to make a fun breakfast too on holidays and we tried our new Cuisinart Griddler to make pancakes using the simple recipe on the Egg Replacer box.

They came out okay, but didn’t golden as much and were a little dense. I will be experimenting with more pancake recipes instead of trying that one again.

Then it was into a storm of food prep for Thanksgiving where we made too much food for just 3 people and are still eating leftovers. I prepared this raw vegan pumpkin pie recipe and did some food prep for the rest of the recipes and hubby did the rest of the cooking!

Can you believe it was nearly impossible to find a vegan “turkey” roast in this area a few days before Thanksgiving? A couple of weeks before, hubby and I saw tons of the Trader Joe’s vegan roast in stock and figured we’d wait to buy until closer to Thanksgiving, but they were all gone by the Sunday before Thanksgiving! Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Raley’s were picked through as well and that was the same story in the regional Sacramento area. I was a little bummed, but also thrilled that there is such a huge demand for them now! Because there were just three of us, we grabbed two packages of the Gardein Savory Stuffed Turk’y and topped with Tofurky gravy.

For only 290 calories per stuffed turk’y loaf, these were very satisfying and hearty and delicious with a stuffing center and breaded outside. Thumbs up and glad we got them instead.

Hubby also found a new product to try at Sprouts – Lightlife Vegan Mushroom Ravioli.

He is a fan of ravioli, but we’ve never seen a ready made vegan option before this. Cooking was simple and fast and they paired perfectly with Trader Joe’s Organic Mushroom pasta sauce. Mostly thumbs up on the flavor, they’re a little plain and maybe a tofu “ricotta” version would be great. But would buy again and exciting to see more of these options.

Last weekend I found a great deal for frozen Beyond Meat burgers at Grocery Outlet and grabbed one of each flavor for hubby. He is a huge fan of them!

For being frozen, he says the flavor and texture is a lot like the much pricier Beyond Meat Beyond Burger and we ended up buying 4 more boxes at Grocery Outlet yesterday.

After days of rich eating, I tried to balance it out a bit with a simple collard greens and potato saute for dinner Friday.

And a huge salad with hummus dressing for dinner last night.

The long holiday weekend has been great with a few leisurely trips to the gym, playing games, shopping, and we got the house lights up and Christmas tree yesterday. Maybe I’ll actually get the tree decorated today – we’ll see. Tonight we’re having Thanksgiving 2 with family we could not get together with, but changing the menu up with a Forks Over Knives sweet potato chili recipe to continue getting to a healthier place. A little sad about going back to work tomorrow, but getting back to that routine will be nice too. And back to the good news, or short list this week!

Is Tyler Perry going vegan?

Lewis Hamilton discuses veganism on CNN.

The most shocking side-effects of a vegan diet.

Think I’ll try to visit the best vegan restaurants in the USA in 2018.

17 vegan stocking stuffers.