Hey ya’ll! (Yes “ya’ll”, I’m from Georgia after all.)

Here’s more of what I was up to over the weekend: Thanksgiving preparations and activities!

Jeff and I were invited to his parents’ house on Sunday for an early Thanksgiving. They live in Chickamauga which is just barely inside the Georgia border near Chattanooga, TN.

I thought I’d try to bring a vegan desert and see how it went over with everyone since I’ve still got about a week left of Vegan MoFo to contribute to. I was inspired by a 5 ingredient pumpkin pie recipe I found on Healthy Happy Life.

I purchased a pre-made crust because I am notoriously bad at making pie crusts.

He got stabbed repeatedly with a fork before I stuck him in the oven for about 12 minutes to partially bake him. (Gruesome!)

Meanwhile, I mixed up the filling…

…as Lucas inspected my kabocha squash.

I think it passed whatever test he was waging against it because he left it alone after that.

Anyway, I poured the filling into two partially baked pie crusts and stuck them in the oven for 30 minutes. (I’ll show you a finished shot later!)

Jeff and I then finished getting ourselves ready for the nearly 2 hour drive up to Chickamauga. Jeff has been sick for the last few days so he sipped on my cold cure drink the whole way up and all through dinner. Poor baby!

We made it there by about 12:15pm and were both starving by that point. Luckily Jeff’s mom, Nancy, always has something out to snack on before the real meal.

She made butterscotch oatmeal cookies and white chocolate cranberry candies…

…as well as an apple strudel cake and a plate of fresh grapes!

Isn’t she wonderful?!

And the actual Thanksgiving spread was fantastic too.

My two favorite things are always the stuffing…

…and the sweet potato souffle.  Love that sweet crunchy topping!

Everything was fantastic.  Jeff’s mother really knows how to keep the classics classy, no bright orange cheese or overly salted casseroles, just plain good comfort food. (Hey Mike and Nancy, love you!)

We were all pretty full so we let the boys watch some football before we started in on dessert. Jeff has two younger brothers; being that I grew up with just a sister I can’t imagine growing up in a house with that many boys!

Well anyway, here it is…my vegan pumpkin cheezecake pie.

Gorgeous, right? I thought so too, that is until I cut into it.

The filling seemed underbaked, nearly raw actually. We passed it out and sampled it anyway though.

Verdict: It was weird.

It tasted like straight cashews and nothing else. I had even added maple syrup and powdered sugar to the filling although the recipe didn’t call for any sweeteners, and yet it came out very savory. It wasn’t disgusting, it just wasn’t very dessert-like. I think the problem was that the recipe author used canned pumpkin pie mix for hers whereas I used plain homemade pumpkin puree. The canned stuff would’ve been much sweeter and less vegetal tasting. My fault for not following the recipe!

No matter, it wasn’t about the pie anyway. It was about spending time with our family and enjoying a meal together.

I am so lucky to truly adore my in-laws and feel loved by them in return. It was a great day with great food and great people.

I realize that I’ve been kind of absent for a moment (or two days!) Lots of things have been happening in this past week, particularly over the weekend, and I’ve finally got the time to fill you in on all the goings-on.

The first item up for discussion can be found in my breakfast….

Wassat!?! Is that…yogurt?! Why yes, yes it is.

If you’ve been keeping up you know that I haven’t been feeling very well lately. I’ve been wondering for quite some time if I might have Celiac Disease or an allergy to either gluten, wheat, or yeast.

I’ve been feeling especially gross after eating breads or drinking beer, which led me to assuming that I had problems with gluten. The other day though I wondered if perhaps it was the yeast, not the gluten, in these items that was getting to me. I did some research and read that yeast allergies can often be helped with an acidophilus supplement. I didn’t have acidophilus pills just lying around the house though so I ate a yogurt instead. Bingo! I felt great really quickly after. Also, drinking that bacteria-laden kombucha the other day helped to calm my tummy too. I don’t know if I actually have a yeast allergy, but the acidophilus has done something good for me.

So, the point of this story is…I’m gonna try consuming dairy infrequently to help keep my tummy happy. Sure, I could take a supplement, but I truly prefer the whole foods approach to deficiencies. Why take vitamin C pills when you could just eat onions and oranges? It’s my opinion that the only situation in which a supplement is the better choice is when you are ethically opposed to eating the whole food. Of course you should take a B-12 supplement if you’re not into eating red meat, but if you have no ethical opposition to eating bananas, by all means get your potassium from those rather than in pill form!

I realize that the dairy industry is ripe with plenty of inhumane practices of its’ own, so I need to be careful in choosing humane dairy products. That’s why I’ve gravitated toward purchasing locally from Atlanta Fresh.

I love that this company is making local, small batch dairy from happy cows that graze on grass. Hooray, indeed.

I’m not gonna be eating this stuff every day either, I still believe that cow’s milk is intended to grow calves into giant cows and is not best suited to human consumption. I also know that it creates an acidic environment in our bodies that can deplete calcium from our bones. However, if my tummy is this happy after eating it, I don’t think it’s gonna kill me to have some form of dairy once or twice a week.

I haven’t been feeling so hot lately. It’s a long story that I’ll go into another time.

In an effort to calm my literal and figurative belly-achin’, I picked up one of these little guys today…

I tried kombucha for the first time several years ago and spit it right back out.  I couldn’t understand how anyone could stomach drinking something that tasted like straight vinegar. But, I’ve been hearing about it all over the blog world again recently and figured that if so many people were truly enjoying it, that maybe it was worth another shot.

Here goes nothin’…

Huh!?! Well, wouldn’t you know, I like kombucha! There’s definitely still a vinegary edge to it, but it kind of reminds me of a sour Flemish beer or a hard apple cider. Very tasty!

In fact the only thing bad about it is this…

Those are leftover strands of the live culture. They look like loogies or jellyfish bloorping around in my beverage!

I gulped them down like a champ though.

The kombucha really did help to settle my stomach, and now I have a somewhat expensive and esoteric health beverage to add to my list of weird crap I eat! Yay!

😉