Natural Gingerbread House

I wanted to create a Gingerbread House without all of the fake colored hard candies...I never liked those anyway. The red and green everywhere reminds me of the red and green colored cherries in fruitcake, one of humankind's worst culinary creations.
Anyway, the mix comes from Dancing Deer. Since I never made the dough from scratch before, I thought we'd leave it to the professionals for the recipe and ingredients.
-After baking and assembling the house with the icing (not vegan, had some egg whites - oh well).
it was time to decorate. My 3 year old daughter helped and didn't even eat too many of the roof shingles (almonds).
The colors come from the India Tree natural food coloring kit. I still think it is too expensive, but worked nicely.
Here's what is on it:
Roof shingles:almonds
Star: Fennel Seeds
Door Frame: Panda Licorice stick
House Border: 365 White Chocolate chunks
Path: Sunflower seeds
Window and side of house: Raisins
Chimney: Goji Berries
Stones along bottom of house: Dates
Various gingerbread cookies decorated with colored icing

Next year I will probably attempt to make something else and get a correct icing recipe.

Vegetarians & World of Warcraft

Of all the things a mom could be doing....some of us like to waste a few hours playing the largest MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) in history, the very violent and very addictive, World Of Warcraft.
Fortunately, my cooking skill is way better in real life than in game. As a vegetarian, all those recipes are geared toward cooking kills, meaning wild boar, wolf meat, spider legs etc, were a turn off. I have to admit that my character, Shakuntala, has not been a good vegetarian druid and has eaten an occasional ham shank for health. I do know someone who is veg in game which is quite noble actually.

Blizzard does have a holiday cookie contest and last year I won an honorable mention for my
Exodar ship cookie creation. It was a Cherrybrook Kitchen vegan sugar cookie mix with SeeLect blue (blueberry) natural food coloring along with various icings and gels (vegan but not natural). I was pleasantly surprised I was mentioned and also in awe of the 5 foot 3 Paladin someone spent hours making!
Will I enter this year? Probably not because we have just too many cookies and I still plan on making a natural gingerbread cookie house.
And I think I will try to get as many goodies from the Winter Veil festival on WoW.

2013 Update:  The link to my honorable mention no longer works :( so I had to upload my picture again manually.  I'm just remembering how fun it was to make this!

veganmoussaka

veganmoussaka, originally uploaded by veggiebytes.

This isn't traditional I know, but it was so fun to make.
My husband had his company Xmas party held at the Barr Mansion here in Austin. The nice chefs there thought about the veggie people out there and came up with this dish-- Vegan Moussaka. Traditional moussaka is made with ground lamb, eggplant, and a tomato based sauce and sometime either a custard or mashed potatoes on top.
This version is sliced delicata squash, eggplant rounds, and a lentil tomato stuffing. The top is lightly herbed mashed potatoes with scallions and nutmeg. The sauce is a vegan bechamel sauce.

It turned out nicely, except I might need a new bechamel sauce, I'm still very partial to the dairy/butter variety.

Tofurkey Sausage

If you want the best tasting vegetarian sausage, Turtle Island Food's Tofurkey Sausages are the best. They aren't made with soy protein isolates, just tofu and wheat gluten.
We like to use them in pasta dishes, especially the Italian style that has sundried tomatoes and basil.
Here's just a simple penne pasta dish that has the sausages cut on the diagonal, artichoke hearts, kale, light tomato sauce, and Italian parsley.

Very Veggie Omelette

On a beautiful, balmy Texas winter Saturday morning, or more like brunch time, we made a breakfast favorite - Omelets!
These aren't your standard egg variety, but made with chickpea flour or besan.
Cooks in India have been using besan for centuries to create crepe-like batters.
The addition of turmeric adds the yellowish color and also helps in the digestion of the chickpea protein.
After making an egg-like liquid of besan, spices, salt and water, you pour it into a nonstick skillet or our favorite, a lightly oiled, well seasoned, cast iron one on medium heat. Cook until bubbles appear, then flip and then add your veggies. We like roasted red peppers, mushrooms, zucchini etc. We also added some organic white cheddar. Italian parsley makes a nice garnish.
It's served with tater pups and a Valencia orange slice.
A nice way to end your morning :)