Update: I’m super tired, so I’m putting this up without proof reading right now. I really wanted to get this up for the people who have been asking for it however (I put a picture of it on Instagram). So here you guys go. Spelling/grammar/run-on errors included!

I am a big fan of Thanksgiving, it’s no hidden secret. There’s something about laughing with a bunch of family and stuffing your face with delicious food that can’t be helped. I verge on saying Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I even wrote about previous years here, and here.

This year things are going to be a little different however. Within the last year I’ve stopped eating a lot of meat. This has become even more prevalent in the last few months. I’m not adverse to ever eating meat again, but I just feel better without it in my diet.

I want to make it clear, there is no high-horse, or pedastle. I hold nothing against anyone who eats meat, I honestly couldn’t care less. Quite frankly, if this salmon was around again I’d devour it with the vengeance of a seal.

When you picture someone who embraces country life, you think of someone like the Pioneer Woman who smothers everything in seven pounds of butter and beef. I totally understand the notion, it was my notion too. When I realized I felt pretty bad after eating eggs I quickly realized we weren’t likely going to raise chickens. When I started understanding the more I ate meat the worst I felt, I started having to come to terms with not having a cattle farm (unless I decide to raise some grass fed cattle for others). Sometimes plans change. It doesn’t mean we don’t still homestead; but as far as food goes it simply means we’ll be growing and canning a lot more vegetables and fruits.

This verbose yadda yaddaing simply bring us back around to this Thanksgiving. I can tell my preferences have changed, because last year I remember thinking “there’s no way I’m not eating turkey.” This year, I’m not planning on eating turkey and I don’t even care. I might change my mind when I smell it roasting, but at this point I have pretty much zero desire to eat any form of turkey. I realized I also have zero desire to eat any of the traditional sausage stuffing. Thankfully a lot of Andy’s family has also embraced a nearly vegan lifestyle, so I knew if I came with vegan friendly dishes they would be embraced to the fullest. The other day I gave a good old try and came up with what turned out to be a pretty darn tasty vegan stuffing.

As with everything I cook this can be made a large variety of ways and my version is by no means the end all. Use it verbatim, or use it as a starting point.

Vegan Apple Walnut Stuffing

{A quick note: I didn’t measure anything. Everything below is really a rough estimate/remembering of what I did.}

Ingredients:

• a loaf of focaccia bread
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 4 carrots
• an onion
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup chopped green olives
• an apple
• a vegan bullion cube
• dried/fresh fennel to taste
• dried/fresh thyme to taste
• dried/fresh parsley to taste
• 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon celery seed (or a couple stalks of actual celery).

Directions:

1. Put your oven on 300*

2. Cube up your bread and put on a cookie sheet. Do not add any oil, you’re dry toasting these. Place in the oven until slightly dried out and just crispy, I checked every 5 to 10  minutes. It took about 15-20.

Ready to go in the oven!

3. In a large pot add a little oil and saute your onions for a few minutes. Add the carrots (and celery if you’re using). 4. Mix your bullion cube with about a cup of water.5. Toss in your spices and add a little of the broth you mixed up.6. Add in your raisins, walnuts and olives to your mixture and take in the smells. So good.

7. Add your bread and diced apple to your mixture. Gently toss together and slowly drizzle the rest of the broth over the top. If you need to, add some more hot water. I kept a tea kettle of near boiling water available just in case I needed it to make it slightly more moist, it was fine however.

8. Place your mixture in the oven. Once the top is light-medium browned it’s cooked through. If you feel the inside could use a little more cooking, simply cover with tinfoil and keep slowly cooking it’s done to your preference. I believe mine was about 30 minutes or so.

9. Take out and om nom nom.

That’s it! A simple vegan stuffing. I personally love the fennel because it reminds me a little of the sausage flavor profile with none of the animal. Tasty tasty.  So despite it being high in carbs (and really, who cares on Thanksgiving) this is absolutely delightful. I love the mix between green olives and raisins. Then again, I put green olives and raisins in our homemade spaghetti sauce too. Maybe it’s just my thing, a very very delicious thing.

xo,

Heather

With the summer bounty in full swing, one of the greatest pleasures is watching the green tomatoes turn red. We’ve had a garden for four of the five years we’ve lived here, and each of the last three years our tomatoes have taken a hit. First it was early blight, then it was late blight, then it was the darn hornworms. This year, oh you bet not. The blight has all but *cross our fingers* been taken care of through careful cultivation, rotation crops and planting. The hornworms on the other hand met thuricide this year, also known as BT spray. For those concerned: It’s commonly used in organic gardening, it’s sprayed in the evening when only hornworms are active and it’s precisely sprayed on just the tomatoes. As well, thuricide deteriorates when exposed to sunshine so by the time it gets into our house we’re all set!

This year we’re growing quite a few different kinds of tomatoes including early girls, beefsteak, romas and cherry. The cherry’s are the star of this post.

Unfortunately as ripe as our tomatoes are quickly getting, they aren’t quite ready enough to make these poppers yet. So for this particular post I’ve used some organic store bought tomatoes we were given.  I also used these because most people don’t have tons of fresh cherry tomatoes laying around. You can easily make these with those from the grocery store, just as these are. They are exceptionally delicious and snack worthy anyway you make them. In one or two weeks these will be made with our fresh tomatoes—if they can make it out of the garden before I eat them all.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes Poppers

Step One. Turn your oven on 425. Yes, this is extremely high. We want to roast these fast so they brown up but still retain some “pop” to them. A lower temperature would cook them through before the outside got a yummy enough (technical term).

Step Two. Toss your tomatoes in olive oil, and then place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Step Three. Sprinkle salt generously, and some pepper, onto the tomatoes. Gently shake the cookie sheet so the tomatoes roll around in it.

Step Four. Place cookie sheet in the oven and roast for 15 minutes or so. Check in 5 minute increments after this and give the cookie pan a quick and gentle shake now and again. You want these to have a slight browning on them and the skin to be shrunk a little.

Once done to your liking, pull them out of the oven and let them slightly cool if you can. The heat brings out a sweetness in the tomatoes while the salty and slight crisp bring out a whole different profile. You can either eat these by themselves or in a variety of ways. My two favorite are:

1.) Puree them up with some goat cheese to make a roasted tomato goat cheese spread.

2.) Make some homemade pasta, toss with pesto and top with the tomatoes.

This time around I did the second one. We made up a batch of basil and garlic whole wheat pasta using basil and garlic from the garden, and tossed it with a batch of pesto Andy made. Oh, and you bet that’s my regular drying rack I’m using for the pasta. Dedicated pasta rack? Nonsense.

All I have to say is that anyway you cut it, these little toasty tomato poppers are absolutely scrumptulescent. I highly, highly, suggest them.

 xo,

Heather

Food to me is often more than food. It’s a memory, or a curiousness. It’s a “you’re welcome in my home”.  This is one of those recipes.

On Saturday I headed up the coast to Ellsworth to help organize my Memere and Pepere’s house so it could be sold, organize the decades of fabric my Memere had as a seamstress, and visit with family. I went to my Aunt Mary’s farmhouse, which happens to be one of the most wonderful love filled and creative places I’ve ever been, for dinner.

Dinner at my Aunt Mary’s is never dinner in anyone else’s home. We make meals from the garden to compliment other items, we laugh and talk and eat and talk and….Aunt Mary is Italian, enough said. On Saturday night she even made us homemade sorbetto and asked me, “why doesn’t everybody make things by hand? It’s so easy and tastes so much better.” I couldn’t have said it better myself as I stood there scooping sorbetto out with my finger and tasting the fresh airy and wildly frozen strawberry flavor all over my mouth.

As you walk around her house you see beautiful artwork. She or her husband made it.

You smell amazing scents. She’s baking/cooking it.

You see a beautiful hand woven basket. She wove it.

You see weeds. She teaches you which ones are edible and how to prepare them. Your mouth explodes with unknown flavors.

You see gorgeous flowers, and take photos to turn them into art on your wall. She teaches you what they are.

You feel love everywhere. It’s her.

During dinner in the screen house across the lawn, we got to talk about grapes. Andy and I want to grow grapes across our rock wall so we can add another wonderful fruit to our little acre. The talk turned to grape leaves. Stuffed, beautiful, succulent grape leaves. I remembered we had a wild grape vine in the woods right on the edge of the field. My Aunt’s husband went to their grape vine, picked one, and told me how to make these. Aunt Mary then said she normally makes the stuffing with rice, onion, raisins and “some other stuff”. Craig taught me how to roll them so they stay tight when cooking.

I was sold.

Tonight as I foraged through the hayfield my mission was grape leaves. I was going to make my version of curried grape leaves and there was no stopping me.

I have very very vivid loving wonderful memories in my Aunt Mary’s house. There isn’t a single memory that doesn’t make me radiate smiling from the inside. I wish everyone could know her because their lives would only increase ten fold, if not more. So whenever I make these now, I’ll always remember us talking about it. The laughter and love that filled the screen house and the perfect nature that are those moments in life that seem to be a split second but are in your mind forever.

Stuffed Grape Leaves

This recipe is not exact. I had plenty of filling left over, while I ended up being short by one grape leaf in my harvesting. I’ll give you approximates, but give or take for the number of people you’ll be feeding and maybe be prepared to use the filling for something else too (and it’s perfectly delicious on it’s own). Scroll below the recipe if you want to see some visuals of how to wrap the grape leaves. This is just my method I was taught, I’m not sure it’s the proper method but it worked!