happy thanksgiving!

It’s Thanksgiving and beaver is hungry.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! We hope your turkey is easier to prepare than beaver’s.

ps. this is an overly dramatic cartoon. beaver doesn’t hurt other creatures.

the massacre of 2011

our turkey’s soul, and the souls of all other turkeys that have passed, were spinning in their little turkey graves during the event at our parent’s house this past thanksgiving.

the event started innocuously enough: our mom got up at 5am to stick the turkey in the oven. please see the turkey timer we’d given our dad the night before as a thanksgiving host present:

legs down = uncooked, legs up = cooked.

mom then went back to bed. the gorgeous 26 pound turkey roasted slowly over the next several hours, covered in foil until it was deemed appropriate to begin the basting process.

note the turkey timer's leg position, and refer to the diagram above. is this turkey cooked yet? no. <-- a fact our parents chose to ignore, and a fact which would return to haunt them.

our parents pulled the turkey out of the oven, and our greedy little eyes drank it all in – crispy skin, plump haunches, smothered in herbs – and blood pooling beneath its wings. the bird, it appeared, was not fully cooked.

the event

after a closer inspection, it was revealed the wings and legs were not fully cooked, while the rest of the bird was moist and succulent.

making the only decision they could at the time, our parents decided to hack the bird’s wings and legs off. the difficulty of this was exacerbated by our dad’s refusal to use a knife made for sawing through bone.

the images that follow are not for the faint of heart.

by the time they finished with it, it wasn’t even recognizable. we hope your turkey escaped the oven with a modicum of dignity. happy thanksgiving!

this post is dedicated to our wonderful parents, who know that doing fowl tasks together makes them much more fun.

blueberry pancakes!

vegetarian monday 1.24.11

usually i write our vegetarian monday posts on tuesday nights, but this week dani and i had appointments with a medium who works in the baltimore area (more on that in a future post). i then thought i’d sit down and post on wednesday, but as it turns out, it began snowing furiously and i spent the evening eating homemade chocolate chip cookies and drinking tea instead. oh, and staring enviously at steak sandwiches my brother made.

moby’s vegan blueberry pancakes

(adapted from moby’s recipe found here. all i know about moby is that he has been a practicing vegan for 20 years (thank you, google), and his pancakes are really tasty. we didn’t have all the ingredients necessary, so once again i find myself apologizing for bastardizing someone’s recipe.)

this is moby’s recipe:

1 1/2 cups whole-grain spelt flour
1/2 cup oat bran
1/2 cup wheat bran
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 cups plain full-fat soy milk or rice and soy milk blend*
vegetable oil for cooking
1 cup (1/2 pint) fresh blueberries or frozen, unthawed, plus 1/2 cup fresh blueberries or raspberries for serving
maple syrup for serving

yield: makes 4 servings (12 pancakes total)

*moby prefers edenblend, an organic rice and soy milk blend, because it has a neutral, not too sweet flavor.

this is our recipe:
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup wheat bran (i couldn’t find oat bran at the store)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 cups plain silk soy milk
vegetable oil for cooking
1 tablespoon sugar in the raw
1 package fresh blueberries,1 package fresh raspberries
maple syrup for serving

these berries are just so lovely!

1. stir together the flour, wheat bran, baking soda, sugar, and salt.

 

2. add the soy milk.

3. brush a griddle or non-stick pan with veggie oil and heat over medium heat until hot.

4. spoon batter onto the griddle – if you want bigger pancakes, use more batter. if you want small ones, use less.

* i would like to interject here and say that jess (who not only attended veggie monday this week as well as last, but was a main chef this evening) and i thought it was strange there was no sugar in the recipe. we decided to make a mini pancake and taste it first, and then we’d add sugar if necessary.

two things: one, this looks like some sort of goblin with enormous eyes. two, it was after eating this little guy that we decided sugar was a good idea. i didn’t measure – just sprinkled a bunch on the batter. i guessed it was about a tablespoon, but i really don’t know.

 

5. press blueberries into each pancake.

6. cook until bubbles appear, then flip. it’s hard to judge when they’re actually finished, as the blueberries keep the pancake a bit above the griddle, so you might have to smush them down. use your judgement here.

 

this is jess wielding the spatula. she was an excellent blueberry-placer and pancake flipper!

7. we cooked ours in batches, so we kept piling them onto a plate as we made them. once finished, we divvied them up and went to the toppings station.

okay, using butter makes these non-vegan. i can’t imagine living without butter, though. salted butter, that is. unsalted butter is like … i can’t think of anything worse than non-salted butter. if you’re vegan, use your buttery spread!

 

8. wonderful!

 

the dochee was decidedly uninterested in the pancakes, so he was given a dish of turkey, and he was happy.

bonus photo:

 

katie!