Well, we did it again. We stuffed our faces full of delicious food with family and fun!

Yesterday we headed to my maternal grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving lunch. Here’s a little sneak peak at what I brought….

When we got there my mom was finishing up some gravy and setting out all the pans of finished dishes.

Of course I zoomed right in on the stuffing.

There was so much food that we actually lost a few items in the kitchen!

I loaded up on all my favorites.

Notice the Christmas plates? It’s not just Macy’s that’s jumping the gun, we’re getting a head start on Christmas too!

Someone found the mac and cheese that was hiding under another dish, so it was time for seconds.

And my dish was a big hit, it was completely gone by the end of dinner. I made baked apples and pears with cinnamon, honey, pecans, and gorgonzola.

It was insane! Super easy to make too.

I just sliced up 4 Honeycrisp apples and 4 red Bartlett pears.

Then I squirted lemon juice all over and sprinkled on a bunch of cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg and stirred it all up.

Then I put a few dabs of Earth Balance on top to keep everything moist and to keep the sugars in the fruit from caramelizing and then burning on the dish.

That went in a 400 degree oven for about 50 minutes. I stirred everything about 3 times to keep it all moist. You have to be gentle because the fruit starts to get very soft and if you manhandle it you’ll just break everything up into mush.

As soon as it came out I sprinkled on pecan pieces, crumbled gorgonzola, and squeezed on the sweet tupelo honey.

It smelled glorious! I’m so glad everyone liked it so much.

I am really bad about taking pictures of people rather than just food. In fact, the only picture I managed to take of a living body was this one…

That’s Tripod, my grannys’ fat three-legged cat! The little bugger bit me too. He just got too excited with all the pettings he was getting from me.

It was a great meal and a great time with my crazy family. We had to cut it pretty short because Jeff was still really ill and needed to get home to rest. I’m not doing so great right now either; I really hope it doesn’t get as bad as what he’s had to go through.

Off to make some more tea and veg out for the rest of the day!

Thanks for all the sweet and helpful comments on yesterday’s post.  I’m feeling happier and ready to jump back into sharing more delicious vegan recipes with you! I’ll start with this one: gingery pear and apple sauce…

I never really cared for applesauce that much as a kid.  I realize now that it might have had something to do with all the corn syrup and preservatives in store-bought jarred applesauces.  Blech.

I’ve made my own a couple times now and I’ve been very impressed both with how much better it tastes when you make it yourself and with how difficult it is to screw it up! With such a simple process for basic applesauce, I was sure I could toy around with making a fancier sauce pretty easily.

For this slurpable sauce you will need:

• approx. 3 lbs. fruit (I used 4 large pears and 7 teeny tiny apples)
• about a 2-inch piece of ginger
• 1 lemon
• up to a 1/4 cup brown sugar (based on how sweet you want it to be)
• 2 tbsp. cinnamon
• 1 tbsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. ground clove

Start by running a peeler over the apples and pears.

Just look at all those peels! It took some time to get all that fruit naked!

Cut the fruit off the cores and into cubes and toss into the slow cooker. Add the zest and juice of half the lemon then add all your spices and sugar. If you don’t want it too sweet, don’t add the entire 1/4 cup of sugar, you can always add more later but you can’t subtract!

Cut the skin off the ginger and grate finely with a microplane directly into the pot. I used a piece of ginger this size, but of course, if you’re not that into ginger you can use less or none at all.

Toss with a spoon to distribute.

Cook on high for 6 hours or on low for 8 until everything is soft and sweet.

I then mashed mine with a potato masher and let it sit on the counter overnight to cool. You don’t have to wait though, you can skip straight to pureeing it while it’s still hot if you want.

Just spoon it into a food processor and blitz it until it’s your desired consistency. I like mine smooth so I blend it for about 10 seconds or so, but if you want it chunky just pulse it a few times.

So sweet and slightly spicy from the ginger. I really reminds me of the wintery flavors of gingerbread.

This is scrumptious on just about anything: yogurt, ice cream, oatmeal, even on a peanut butter sandwich!

And it’s gonna make a ton, so go ahead and do what I did and put half of it in the freezer.

Now all I need to do is try to make my own apple butter! Mmmmmm…..

My first recipe for Vegan MoFo!

These. Are. Awesome.

I started out thinking I was going to make an apple version of the date bites I made a while back, but it evolved into something else as I was doing my prep work and I couldn’t be happier with what I came up with instead.

What you’ll need for the bars:

• 1 cup raw almonds
• 1 cup shredded apple (liquid squeezed out)
• 1 cup pitted dates
• 2 tbsp. maple syrup
• 2 tbsp. cinnamon

And for the frosting:

• 4 oz. plain Tofutti “cream cheese”
• approx. 3-4 tbsp. agave nectar
• sprinkle of cinnamon to taste

Start by chopping the almonds.

My food processor wasn’t strong enough to handle this task by itself so I ended up having to pour the almonds out onto a cutting board, chop them by hand, and then return them to the food processor for a final blitzing.

This is the size I stopped at…

Pour that out and set aside.

Next I peeled and cored 2 largish honeycrisp apples.

I used the shredding attachment on my food processor to shred them evenly.  Make sure to remember to take the blade out before you do this or the blade will just annihilate all the shredded apples into applesauce.

Those get squeezed dry in a tea towel and set aside with the almonds.

Next, the dates. I chopped them a bit before adding them to the food processor along with the almonds and apple shreds.

Just add the maple syrup and cinnamon and process until it’s starting to clump together.

This mixture tasted amazing but I felt like it was going to be too wet to form into balls like I originally planned. I could have added more nuts to dry it up some but I really just didn’t want to have to clean the food processor and hand chop a bunch more almonds to make this happen.

Baked bars were going to be the way to go, but I realized that it didn’t have enough of the mixture to really fill even my smallest square baking dish. If you’re planning on making these, I would totally recommend doubling my recipe and baking in a 9×9 dish. I had to improvise though, so I chose to mold the mixture in a small plastic storage container lined with plastic wrap then turn it out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

It looked like this…

I baked it low and slow at 300 degrees.  20 minutes on one side, flipped it and baked for another 20 minutes.

I then cut it into bars and arranged them on the baking sheet for a last 20 minutes in the oven.

While they were finishing up, I made a quick frosting. I just stuck a bowl with the Toffuti, agave, and cinnamon in the microwave and let it heat on a low setting for just a few seconds to loosen it up.

With a whisking I had this…

I spread it generously on the cooled bars and bit into a delicious treat.

They are really special. I bet they would be insane with shredded carrots and pecans for carrot cake bars!

I think this recipe would work really well in a dehydrator too if you’re into that type of thing.

Awesome start to Vegan Mofo. It even got me to try Tofutti for the first time! I’m excited to see what other new things I’ll get to try as I learn how to further de-meat my eats!