Goodies!

Oh, how I love fall! Too bad it's winter here according to the weather... :( Oh well, I guess I'm ready for it. Today was sort of an unofficial "X-Mas" celebration for my family. You see, my Dad's side always has a big brunch about three weeks before Christmas, since we're usually not all together for the actual day. It's really fun, actually; my grandma takes pictures of each of family (for example, my Mom, Dad, brother, sister and I take one picture and all of my cousins take a picture with their parents) and then we get presents! Usually I don't want much around the holidays so my parents just kind of guess what I want, so I'm never super excited. This year I made my first X-Mas list and I was anxious all week! I got sooo many great gifts! Some that really stuck out were: a new winter coat (I kinda needed it...), some adorable mini-cake pans in the shape of ladybugs and butterflies, my own silicone rolling pin, and biscuit-cutters! I'm gonna have to do some serous baking these next couple weeks!

Anyways, onto the food!

Made some yummy pancakes this morning! These with a nice glass of vanilla soymilk and an apple make an AWESOME breakfast! I love to do this on weekends since, because of school, my breakfasts tend to be toast or cream of wheat/oatmeal. I sometimes like to make a normal-sized batch and freeze the leftovers, but I was in a hurry this morning, so i just used my regular recipe. I just mix 1/4 cup of flour (can be whole what, all-purpose, or a mix), 1/4 t. each of baking soda and powder, pinch of salt, 1 t. sugar, 1/4 t. vanilla extract and 1/4 cup of soymilk. I usually use whole what and add some cinnamon, but I just stuck with all-purpose this morning since I figured they'd be fluffier. As you can see, it didn't work- gr.... They were pretty tough and dense, so I guess I'm sticking with wholewheat flour from now on.


Lunch was nothing special today, but I made this delicious soup you see above for dinner. It's a vegan take on my Mom's sausage soup that she would always make on a cool night when I was a kid. I used some seitan in place of the sausage, added some carrot, celery, corn, water, tomato sauce, and spices. When there's only about 20 minutes left of cooking, I added some rice so it can cook in all of the yummy broth. Sorry, but I was so hungry I ate about half of the bowl before bothering to get my camera. This tastes delicious with some "buttered" bread or biscuits, but all I had was a piece of sourdough (not that I'm complaining.)

And finally, the dessert I had been looking forward to all day:

Pumpkin cake with caramel sauce!!! YUM. I absolutely love anything related to a squash/sweet potato, so I was excited to make this! Now, let me begin by saying that I almost never, EVER bake from a box, however, my mom found an all natural pumpkin cake mix at a local market as was so excited to buy it for me after seeing that it was vegan. I'm so glad she did, though. This cake was easy, delicious and moist. All I had to do was add a 15 oz. can of pumpkin and two egg replacers (I also added 1 T. of oil to make up for the fat that two eggs would have provided.) I served this with the caramel sauce from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise, which is SOOO good! Thankfully, about half of the cake and sauce was leftover, so I'll be having this again soon.

One last picture to leave you with (the money shot):