Robin Robertson

I’m happy to report that I’m doing the final testing for my next book, 1,000 Vegan Recipes and also working on the one that follows. With all that testing to do, I’m hoping to recruit 4 or 5 new recipe testers.

I’m looking for detail-oriented people who love to cook (and eat!) vegan food, and and able to articulate their critiques and suggestions about the recipes.

If this sounds like you, and you can commit to testing 3 to 4 recipes a week between now and February 1st, please send me an e-mail expressing your interest. Experience in recipe testing is a definite plus, but not required. All I can promise as a thank you is that your name will be immortalized in the acknowledgments. (For e-mail, click on “view my complete profile,” then click on “e-mail” under “Contact.”)

I hope to begin the next round of recipe testing next week, so let me hear from you soon!

It’s not every day that a new book, much less two, crosses my path that actually makes me unbury myself from my own work and take notice. In the growing list of great books designed to enrich the lives of vegans (and those who want to be!) here are two gems:

In his new book, The Ultimate Vegan Guide, Erik Marcus distills and demystifies the many facets of “going vegan” in one easy-to-read and entertaining volume. In this thorough and fun guide, Erik offers advice and tips gleaned from his 20-years of personal experience as a vegan. The book covers virtually every aspect of a vegan lifestyle from nutrition and cooking, to dining out and grocery shopping, as well as a great section on activism and outreach.

Alisa Fleming, founder of GoDairyFree.org, wrote and published a terrific new book called Go Dairy Free. In addition to being an excellent resource for dairy-free living, Go Dairy Free provides nutrition tips, a guide to dairy alternatives, and 225 tempting recipes. This comprehensive book also contains an in-depth health section on dairy-related illnesses, food allergy and vegan-friendly resources, helpful shopping information and much more.

I had planned to take photos of my Thanksgiving dinner, but only managed to remember in time for dessert. So here is a photo of my Pumpkin Cheesecake. I was originally going to dust the top perimeter with crystallized ginger, but at the last minute decided on chopped pecans instead. It was very yummy, although there was so much food for dinner, we didn’t even want to think of dessert until several hours later.

For dinner, I basically made the menu as posted on Vegan.com (you can see a photo of the food there — and all the recipes, too). The seitan roulade has been the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving dinner for over 20 years. I sometimes make a different stuffing for it — this year it was a veganized version of my mother’s chestnut stuffing. It was so good. The roasted sweet potato sticks were a big hit — I sprinkled them with cranberries and some of the chopped pecans I had left from garnishing the cheesecake.

I hope everyone had a very happy vegan Thanksgiving!

This picture of my cat Gary hangs on a prominent wall in my house. Whenever I look at it, it makes me smile. I’ve been trying to come up with a reason to do a blog entry to accompany the photo (other than “isn’t my cat adorable?”). Then Gary himself provided one.

My husband and I occasionally take spirulina (blue-green algae) tablets as a supplement. Before I explain what happened, I have to emphasize that Gary doesn’t care about food much. To him, eating his dinner is secondary to cuddling. He is also indifferent to cat treats. But when he caught a whiff of the spirulina the other day, he got wide-eyed, reached up to the table where I’d placed the spirulina tablet (Gary has a long reach), and swiped it onto the floor. Before I could take it away from him, he munched it down like it was the best treat he ever had.

I quickly checked online to make sure spirulina is okay for cats, and everything I’ve found indicates that it is. We then offered a half a spirulina tablet to our other cat, Mitzi, so she wouldn’t feel left out. In a split second, she wolfed it down, too, frantically looking around for more. I don’t plan to make a habit of giving it to them until I find out more. Does anybody else out there have a cat who likes spirulina?

Am I the only one who can’t believe Thanksgiving is nearly here? If you’ve seen my Thanksgiving recipes on Vegan.com, you know my menu is pretty well set. I always make that seitan roulade, although I do change up the stuffing from year to year. My alternate main dish on the menu is a stuffed squash, which I guess is pretty much everyone’s go-to holiday meal main dish, especially for those who aren’t into seitan.

But I don’t need a holiday to stuff a squash. I do it all the time. I usually use buttercups or kabochas (when I can find them) because they have a terrific rich flavor and their shape and size are perfect for stuffing. I adore butternut squash, but there’s not much room for stuffing in their small cavity. And even though acorn squash are cute, they usually don’t have much flavor. So buttercup it is.

So that we don’t end up having “the same old stuffed squash”, I like to keep it interesting with different stuffing combinations. Sometimes I’ll make a traditional bread stuffing with celery and onion spiced with thyme, sage, and parsley. More often, I make a grain-based stuffing, usually with rice, but sometimes with millet, quinoa, or couscous. When I have some already cooked rice or another grain in the refrigerator, the stuffing comes together quickly.

To prevent the stuffing from drying out, I roast the squash first until it’s fairly soft (400 degrees F. for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the squash). Then I stuff it and put it back in the oven for about fifteen minutes, longer if the stuffing is cold.

The stuffing in the photo was super easy and quick. In a skillet, I combined sautéed onion, chopped fresh spinach, cooked brown basmati rice, toasted almonds, and dried cranberries. I seasoned it with some sage and salt and pepper.

Since the oven was on anyway, I roasted lots of sliced carrots and a few potatoes and dinner was served. Everything was so moist and flavorful, no sauce or gravy was needed.