Robin Robertson

Wow!  What a fabulous response to my 3-book giveaway.  Many thanks to everyone who entered.  It’s been great fun reading what you all would do with the books if you won.  All I can say is, thank goodness for the Random.org random number generator, because I never could pick just one winner on my own!

The winning number that was chosen is #31 – Beth Redwood!  Congratulations, Beth.  Please e-mail me your mailing address so that my publisher can send you my three books: 1,000 Vegan Recipes; Vegan on the Cheap; and Party Vegan!

But wait, there’s more…..I was personally touched by the comment left by Paris Harvey, who would use my cookbooks in conjunction with the Santa Clara County Activists for Animals group.  Paris, please send me your mailing address, as well.  I’d like to send you some books for this worthy cause.

Thanks again to everyone who entered this giveaway.  There will be more to come!

PLUS….I also have some exciting announcements to make, so stay tuned!

**12/3/12 UPDATE: This contest is now closed. Thank you to all who entered**

To celebrate “Giving Tuesday” I’m hosting another cookbook giveaway!  This time, it’s a three book giveaway!  The prize is one copy each of three of my cookbooks:

1,000 Vegan Recipes — The ultimate vegan cookbook:

Vegan on the Cheap— Great Recipes and Simple Strategies that Save you Time and Money:

and Party Vegan — Fabulous Fun Food for Every Occasion:

In keeping with the theme of “Giving Tuesday,” all you need to do to enter this giveaway is leave a comment telling me to whom you would give one or more of the books, if you win.

Maybe you already have all three titles and want to give them to various friends or family members to help them on their vegan journey. (they make great holiday gifts!)  Or maybe you want to keep one or two of the titles you don’t yet give and give away the others to someone you know, or maybe to the local library.  Then again, maybe you don’t have any of these books yet, and want to keep them all for yourself so you can have more ways to cook vegan food for yourself and your family.  That’s okay too!

Enter now:  Simply leave a comment telling me what you would do if you won these three cookbooks.  For additional chances to enter (and to help spread the word) simply link to this giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog, and leave additional comments saying what you did.

The giveaway closes on Sunday night at midnight.  A winner will be announced on Monday, December 3.  Good Luck!

**12/3/12 UPDATE: This contest is now closed. Thank you to all who entered**

Post-Thanksgiving Pizza

One of the only things I like better than Thanksgiving leftovers is pizza, so, hey, why not combine the two?  If you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you’ve seen me do some crazy stuff with Thanksgiving leftovers, like these spring rolls wrapped in yuba with cranberry dipping sauce:

And the infamous Leaning Tower of Thanksgiving:

And you’ve also seen some crazy pizza permutations as well! (Bahn-Mizza, anyone?)

For a post-Thanksgiving pizza (which sounds better than “Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza”) I actually had a few different ideas, so I tried them all. I guess you could say I’ve got Post-Thanksgiving Pizza Syndrome.

The photo receiving all the glory at the top of this post is my favorite, and it’s really easy to make.  I used a 9-inch springform pan, but you can make it using just about anything you like, from an actual pizza pan, to a pie plate.  Here’s what you do:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spray your pan with nonstick cooking spray. Spoon a cup or two of leftover stuffing into the pan and press it firmly and evenly into the pan to make the “crust.”  It can be as thick or thin as you like.  Mine was about 1/2-inch thick.  If you have an especially “loose” stuffing, you can pulse it in a food processor if you want to help it stay together better.

Spread a thin layer of gravy over the stuffing layer to keep it moist, then spread a layer of mashed potatoes (or mashed sweet potatoes, if that’s what you’ve got.) I then added a few pieces of green beans and fried onions leftover from my green bean casserole.  At this point, I put it in the oven to bake for about 20 minutes or until hot.  While it’s baking, chop up some of the leftover Tofurky (or Field Roast or seitan roast, etc.) and warm it on top of the stove with some gravy.  After the “pizza” comes out of the oven, spoon the Tofurky and gravy on top.  Dot with a few cranberries from your leftover cranberry sauce. Cut into wedges and serve.  This is definitely a “knife and fork” pizza.  It was really delicious!

The other pizza variations I made used regular pizza dough for the crust. Here’s what I did:  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. I seasoned the dough liberally with ground thyme, sage, and rosemary (you can use a “poultry seasoning” spice blend if you like).  After shaping the dough, transfer it to a pizza pan.  Here’s where you can get creative.  I made one pizza using a layer of garlic mashed  potatoes.  After baking the pizza, I added some chopped Tofurky slices and gravy, and then drizzled on a little cranberry sauce:

For the other one, I used a layer mashed sweet potatoes sprinkled with pistachios. While it was baking,  I cut out little rounds of this Tofurky slices (ala “pepperoni”) and sauteed them in gravy, then I arranged them on the pizza before serving (with a side of cranberry sauce):

While all three were very tasty, the top one with the stuffing was hands-down the best.  Maybe because it tasted the most like Thanksgiving!

Moving on to the reason you’re all here:  the announcement of the THANKS-GIVEAWAY WINNER!!!!  I’m very pleased to announce that the trusty “true random number generator” over at Random.org has picked as our winner:  #37 – Sandra Lee Childs.

Congratulations, Sandra!  Please e-mail me with your address so a copy of 1,000 Vegan Recipes can be mailed to you.

Thanks to everyone else who entered.  It was fun to ready everyone’s favorite holiday desserts and inspiring to read what you all are thankful for.  I want you to know that I am thankful for YOU!!!

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then I’ve got about 9,000 words worth for you. Here’s what we had for Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday. At top is a newcomer to our Thanksgiving table: Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pistachios and Capers. It was soooo good — I think it will be a regular from now on. Other side dishes included my vegan re-do of Jon’s family favorite, Green Bean Casserole:

The Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Chives from Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker:

Roasted Sweet Potato Mash with a ring Pistachio Struesel Topping:

Lime-Enhanced Cranberry Sauce and Chunky Applesauce:

We also had a trio of desserts. This is the Pumpkin Cheesecake with Maple-Rum Glaze garnished with Pecans and Cranberries:

Here’s Jon’s Apple Pie and Pumpkin-Chocolate Pudding-Cakes with chopped maple- rum-glazed pecans:

For the main event, I departed from my usual Seitan Wellington. I took the opportunity to address two of the most common problems people seem to have with Tofurky: 1) it’s not big enough to serve a crowd, and 2) there’s not enough stuffing (and it’s not very good stuffing at that). To solve both problems, I slice a Tofurky in half lengwise, scooped out the stuffing and re-stuffed it with my homemade stuffing, then pressed the two halves together again. I then packed more stuffing onto both ends of the re-stuffed Tofurky, essentially doubling its size. I then wrapped it in two sheets of yuba (bean curd skin) and seared it in a skillet to seal it up and lightly brown it and then put it in the oven, lightly tented with foil so it didn’t brown too much.  After baking, it rested for a few minutes.  I then used a serrated knife to slice it in half, and then cut the other half into slices. The end slices were basically yuba-wrapped stuffing, but to this stuffing-crazed crowd, that was the best part! (Of course I also made an extra casserole of stuffing — there’s never enough!)

Here’s what half of the “Double-Your-Tofurky” Roast looked like with a couple of the slices and my rich brown gravy:

And finally, here’s what Jon’s plate looked like:

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I’d like to thank all of you for your good wishes and kinds words about my work — I’m so thankful for all of you! It’s also been so fun to see all your photos of dishes you made from my cookbooks for Thanksgiving. Keep ’em coming!

In the meantime, be sure to check back soon to see what I do with all the Thanksgiving leftovers! 🙂

REMINDER: There’s still time to enter my “Thanks-Giveaway” to win a copy of 1,000 Vegan Recipes.

For most of last week’s Thanksgiving posts, the subjects were savory.  Today we get to the important stuff: dessert!

One of the great thing about traditional Thanksgiving desserts is that they are easy to veganize and they can be a wonderful way to introduce omnis to the wonders of vegan food.

The problem at my house is limiting the holiday dessert to just one, especially since we all have our favorites.  Jon loves apple pie, I’m crazy for pumpkin cheesecake, and I heard a rumor that one of our guests this year is craving pecan pie.

If I have time, I may end up doing mini-versions of each so that I can serve a variety.  We may just want to skip dinner and go right to dessert.  The Pumpkin Cheesecake with Cranberry Drizzle and the Pecan Pie are just two of the recipes that can be found in my book, 1,000 Vegan Recipes.  Here’s the pecan pie recipe in case you don’t have it handy:

Pecan Pie
This super-rich, nutty pie needs no embellishment, but adding a scoop of vanilla is hard to resist.  To save time, you can substitute a ready-made vegan pie shell instead of making it from scratch. This recipe is from 1,000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson.

For the crust:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegan margarine, cut into small pieces
3 tablespoons cold water
For the filling:
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 cup plus 1/4 cup water, divided
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegan margarine
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups pecan halves or pieces

For the crust: Preheat the oven to 400°F.  Place the flour and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine.  Add the margarine and process until crumbly.  Add enough of the water to form a soft dough.  Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and fit the dough into a pie plate.  Trim the dough and flute the edges. Prick holes in bottom of dough with a fork.  Bake until golden, about 10 minutes, then remove from the oven and set aside.  Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F.

For the filling:  In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch and the 1/4 cup water and set aside. In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining 3/4 cup water, maple syrup, and brown sugar, and bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 5 minutes then stir in the salt and the cornstarch mixture. Cook, stirring until the mixture thickens and becomes shiny. Remove from the heat and add the margarine and vanilla, stirring to melt the margarine.  Add the pecans, stirring to coat. Pour the pecan mixture into the prebaked crust, spreading evenly. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool on a rack for about 1 hour, then refrigerate until chilled.

 
THANKS-GIVEAWAY: To celebrate Thanksgiving and share the bounty of vegan recipes in my ultimate vegan cookbook, I’ve having a Cookbook Giveaway this week for a chance to win a copy of 1,000 Vegan Recipes.

To enter: just leave a comment at the end of this post — you can leave any comment you like, from your favorite Thanksgiving dessert to what you are thankful for this year.  A winner will be chosen at random on Sunday 11/25 at midnight and announced on Monday 11/26.  Even if you have a copy of 1,000 Vegan Recipes, you should enter.  It makes a great gift — or even a great prop: just hold it up whenever anyone asks “what’s left to eat if you don’t eat meat and dairy?”

For a second chance to win (and also to help spread the word) link to this giveaway on your own blog, or on Facebook, and/or Twitter, and then leave a second comment here.

Enter now!!   Good luck!