Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Thanksgiving

Okay, so I know it's been over a month since I last posted, but I've been so dang busy with school and moving back home. I can't wait for the semester to be over... Anyways, I figured I'd take a study break and do a super quick post relating to Thanksgiving. As you can imagine, this was an interesting one for me, but I think we made it work. My grandma asked me a couple weeks beforehand what Thanksgiving foods I can have, and I told her the turkey, gravy if I can get a little of the drippings and use my gluten-free flour to make some, mashed potatoes if she'll set some aside for me before adding milk and butter (which in the chaos of the day she forgot to do, but I didn't bring it up because I didn't want her to feel bad and honestly there was still so much food I could eat it wasn't a big deal), her rice and giblets dish (a family Thanksgiving recipe passed down from I think her grandmother), and the pickle and olive tray. But I told her I'd make some things that I could have.

I made my cornbread that I wrote about in the post before (still just as amazing as the first time); a grain-free stuffing (if you can call it stuffing, it was never stuffed into anything since there was real stuffing there too), which was really good, though we had to halve the recipe and it seemed to me it could have used an extra sweet potato; a vegan/paleo green bean casserole (my favorite Thanksgiving dish), which I have to admit was disappointing, and I think would have been better with coconut cream instead of parsnip as the base of the sauce, but it was worth a try anyways; and, of course, a crustless vegan pumpkin pie (I chose to go crustless for ease, to avoid that gluten-free taste that my family might not appreciate, and because honestly the crust is my least favorite part anyways). It was my second time making the pie, as Kirby and I had decided last minute to celebrate all the holidays he'd miss on deployment in our last 2 weeks together :)

I made enough to share (there were 12 of us), I didn't want it to be viewed as my food. Honestly, I was excited for people to try some of it, I think it's too easy to not realize that even with dietary restrictions you can still eat some tasty things! Sadly I was a bit disappointed in this regard. Aside from my dad, my brother, and my grandma, nobody really touched my food, like they just assumed it'd be crap. One of my cousins did try a scoop of the stuffing, but everyone else just ignored it, even though I made it clear I had made plenty and everyone was welcome to have it (and I avoided using the word "vegan", that seems to turn some people off). But actually, the whole thing kinda bugged me. My aunt, who had acted like she was excited to try the cornbread, never had any. My sister didn't touch any of my food, which hurt a bit more than extended family ignoring it all. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as I said, people tend to assume if it's made with substitutions it must not be as good. And a good bit of that part of my family isn't exactly known for eating healthy (though my sister and aunt try, I did expect them to at least taste something). Needless to say, we had a lot more leftovers than we can eat.

On a more positive note, a couple days after Thanksgiving my grandma had me take a few slices of pecan pie to my dad because it wasn't getting eaten at her house. Dishing it up I got to thinking how good pecan pie sounded, and I wondered what it would be like to squish some pecans into my pumpkin pie. I tried it when I got home and OH MY GOSH, it is SO GOOD!!! My brother also loved it. He's trying to watch what he eats and working out more to get into firefighter shape (he's at the local volunteer fire department and will be graduating in May, same day as me, with his degree in fire sciences), so the fact that this pie is supposed to have less calories in the whole pie than your average slice of pumpkin pie meant he and I have been enjoying it relatively guilt-free, and nuts are healthy so why not? Pecan-pumpkin pie is easily right up there with cornbread and brownie oatmeal as one of my favorite food discoveries since I started this whole thing :)

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