Jody did a post all about cranberry sauce earlier in the week and ‘cheated’ and just submitted that, and i’m letting her because everyone knows I appreciate laziness and recycling!

Seglare made White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies AND shared an amazing looking Cranberry Toffee Cake recipe!  Seriously, look at this:

Kate made Cranberry Dosas – two kinds, one sweet and one savory!

Megan made Cranberry Walnut Nog Fudge – a great way to use up Silk nog, which you will buy too much of and inevitably get sick of.  If you’re like me, anyway.  And now you know what to do with the rest of the carton!

Funnily enough, when I posted this challenge I didn’t have a single cranberry of any kind in the house.  I didn’t even go out and buy cranberries until I got off of work today.  Earlier today I was lamenting that I had half a pumpkin pie left and Brian broke my can of Soyatoo (I kept telling him that the 30 second high wasn’t worth it, but he wouldn’t listen*), so I didn’t want to eat it as is.  How do you recycle a pumpkin pie?

Answer:  you make pudding.

And how do you incorporate cranberries into that?

Answer:  you make a parfait.

I had a busy evening ahead of me, so I was happy that I was able to think of something that came together quickly.  I made the cranberry sauce first, just following the instructions on the bag with slightly less sugar so it would be more tart.  I took half of a pumpkin pie, cookie crust and all, and tossed it in the food processor with 1/4 a cup of oat milk, blending and adding a few splashes of milk at a time until it was a pudding-like consistency.  I didn’t want it to be runny but I wanted to be able to spoon it into the glasses easily.

I had granola already made, I just sifted out the raisins and big chunks.  So when the sauce had cooled I just layered everything in the glass and was done!  The pumpkin pie pudding was obviously plenty sweet and a nice contrast to the cranberry sauce.  Half of a pumpkin pie made enough pudding for a little more than two of these glasses, and I had plenty of cranberry sauce to spare.  Shit, now i’m going to have to recycle that too!

*I’m just kidding about Brian huffing the whipped cream air, he doesn’t do drugs!  I wasn’t kidding about the 30 second high not being worth it, though.  I’d rather get my whipped cream out of the can!

I know everyone is tired from Thanksgiving and eating leftovers, so because of that and the fact that this is the last Iron Chef of the year, the deadline is going to be Monday at 9 pm CST instead of Sunday afternoon.  Hopefully that extra time will allow more of you to participate!

I decided that the last ingredient should be something common for Thanksgiving, but I didn’t want to do pumpkin because that seemed a little too obvious, and vegans are not hurting for pumpkin recipes.  So I went with something that is common, but I know a lot of people who don’t incorporate this ingredient into their holidays at all, so I think we can get some interesting and fun recipes out of this.  With that…

CRANBERRIES!!!

Dried, fresh, juiced, hell, that stuff out of the can.  It doesn’t matter, use any form you wish.  I really like cranberries, but I usually limit them to granola and stuffing so I look forward to the challenge.  This is also a good opportunity to repurpose some of your Thanksgiving leftovers if you want!

Allez Végétalien Cuisine!

P.S.  I do have Thanksgiving stuff to post, but I just ate a leftover sandwich so i’m naturally nodding off as I type this so i’ll post that stuff laterzzzzzzzzzzzz….

I don’t know if everyone is busy, or secretly hates quinoa, but there were hardly any entries this week!  Or maybe quinoa is boring and obvious?  Oh well, all is not lost because we have…

Cookies from Kelly!

Quinoa Caviar from Mo!

Autumn-inspired Tamales from Kate!

Quinoa and Cornmeal Crusted Sweet Potatoes from Joe!

Pancakes from Christina!

Apple-Onion Quinoa Stuffing from Danni!

So what did I make?  Like Mo, I originally wanted to do something sweet but I could only think of muffins (i’ve made quinoa muffins from one of Isa’s books) or something like oatmeal.  So I decided to go with stuffing, like Danni.  I haven’t really grocery shopped in two weeks, minus buying some items on clearance from the ‘natural’ area of County Market (everything was ninety!  Nine!  Cents!), so even though stuffing isn’t much of a challenge, I did have to dig around a bit and I got to clean some stuff out of the pantry.

I ended up throwing in the end of a bag of mixed cranberries and raisins, cashews, and dried mushrooms in.  And I even wrote down the recipe for you guys for once!  Not that it’s special in any way, but it’s the thought that counts, right?  Also:  I did not hate the quinoa stuffing.  I repeat, I did NOT hate it.

I also took this opportunity to stuff the stuffing into something that was waiting to be stuffed.  I still had leftover chickpea cutlet dough, and I was able to get some much better pictures this time.  Also for everyone who asked, the first ones were stuffed with a simple bread stuffing.  There was a difference this time, and it might’ve been from the moisture in the quinoa, but the insides of my stuffed cutlets seemed kind of soft, like they weren’t cooked (but they were).  I did add the quinoa to the pan with the rest of the ingredients for a little bit before making the cutlets, but next time i’d probably try to cook the water out for a few minutes to avoid this in the future.  Since I wasn’t rushing to get this on the table before the sun went down this time, I took some process photos and even remembered to add some color to my plate.  The recipe follows the photos!

(I should note that one half of the cutlet is the size of my hand.)

Cranberry Cashew Mushroom Quinoa Stuffing

• 1/2 oz dried oyster mushrooms
• 1 tsp oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 oregano
• 2 tsp thyme
• black pepper to taste
• 1/2 c cashew pieces
• 1/3 c cranberries
• 2 c quinoa, cooked (in vegetable broth for more flavor)

(Note:  I made the quinoa amount as already cooked because I started with 1 1/2 cups of dry thinking it would double and ended up with four cups.  So I just added what looked like the right amount of quinoa to the rest of the ingredients and saved the rest for later.)

Put your dried mushrooms in a bowl of hot water and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat your oil and then saute your onion over medium heat.  Add the salt and let the onion cook for a few minutes until they’ve sweated a little bit.  Add the herbs, pepper, and cashew pieces and continue to cook for about five minutes.  While that’s happening, drain your mushrooms and chop them up, then add them to the pan.  Add the cranberries and the quinoa and stir.  If you’re going to stuff this into chickpea cutlets, I recommend cooking and stirring it for a few moments to try and dry the quinoa out a little bit.  If you’re going to bake it or eat it on the side, that’s not necessary.