don't forget to read...

... Renee at Feed Me/Drink Me - She's got mega-pre-Thanksgiving coverage happening. And, really, you should be there.

... Heidi at 101 Cookbooks - With more than vegetarian and vegan recipes than you could possibly cook in the next two days, you can find some lovely and new dishes here for your table.

... Martha (and her minions) Stewart's Thanksgiving page - In case you'd like more to do between now and Thanksgiving, Martha has recipes, craft and decorating ideas.

when the vegetarian came to Thanksgiving, part 2

Now that we've covered the basics on how to be a gracious vegetarian guest at a non-vegetarian feast, let's talk a little bit about what it takes to graciously host a vegetarian guest at your non-vegetarian feast. It is the policy at my home that, when I invite someone over, they are welcomed in spirit and in food and drink. Sharing nourishing foods with everyone truly makes me happy, and I imagine that you are just the same.

Thanksgiving Everyday Cake from The Small Object

How to be a gracious host to your vegetarian guests
In case you are hosting someone with more limited eating options than yourself, here are a few hints on making the experience happy for everyone.

• If you know about their eating restrictions, clarify them through the invitation process, to be sure you are aware of their needs.
  
• Make as many side dishes that are vegetarian/vegan/nut-free/etc. as possible. Using vegetable stock in dressing/stuffing and baking some in a separate pan, if you otherwise stuff your bird, is a special treat. If you have a vegan guest, you can whip sweet potatoes with coconut milk, add in some spices and create a yummy autumnal side dish without butter.
  
• Invite the vegetarian guest to bring and/or suggest a good main dish option. Many guests will probably indicate that they are happy to contribute OR that they are happy with the many side dishes available at Thanksgiving.
  
• Be aware that the following items are not strictly vegetarian: marshmallows (gelatin), many frozen vegetables with sauce (gelatin, again), Worcestershire sauce (anchovies), many brands of sour cream (darned gelatin), Caeser salad dressing (anchovies), some pre-packaged pie crusts (lard) and many cheeses (rennet and pepsin are animal products used in production). For a more complete listing, this "hidden animal products in foods" list is helpful, especially if you are hosting a vegan.

Any other tips or questions? Please share below!

when the vegetarian came to Thanksgiving, part 1

Holidays should involve a welcoming, kind and courteous spirit. But we all know that they can devolve into something not entirely gracious. The vegetarian at Thanksgiving is an almost too-easy example of one situation in which your Thanksgiving can become uncomfortable, confused and, in the worst of cases, spiteful.

Eddie Ross's pumpkin seeds - good for all guests!
Link through for pumpkin centerpieces.

To prevent that from happening, I've come up with a few hints for the non-vegetarian host of a vegetarian and the vegetarian guest at a non-vegetarian celebration. These hints are not necessarily specific to Thanksgiving, so please feel free to utilize them at other celebrations throughout the year.

First: How to be a delightful vegetarian guest at a non-vegetarian celebration

• Let the host now, well in advance, about your dietary restrictions. Immediately offer to be of assistance by bringing a dish or two.
  
• If the host sounds concerned about meeting your needs, be considerate and supportive. Do not give orders or assume that it is your hosts' duty to accommodate your every need.
• At the meal, make no mention of your reasons for your dietary restriction, unless asked. This is not the time to try to convert your cousin's daughter to the vegetarian camp. Nice vegetarians are much more convincing than strident vegetarians.
• If the host has made any accommodations for your restrictions, thank them, ideally more than once. Remark on how sweet they've been, how delicious their cooking is or how welcome you've felt in their home. Every host enjoys hearing what they've done well.
• If you allow for any flexibility or ambiguity in your diet, now is the time to embrace it. If you don't, now is the time to be interested in someone's recipe and to ask nicely about its contents.
• The best guests at any celebration are those that are fun, interested in others, grateful for the host's work and full of happiness. Whatever you do, do not be the dour meat-abstainer. Even if your plate holds only mashed potatoes and green bean casserole, enjoy the experience!
  

cheddar risotto with glazed acorn squash

Choosing a vegetarian main dish for Thanksgiving can be tricky. With traditional side dishes like mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, green beans and dressing and the regular desserts like pecan, apple and pumpkin pies, you want to find something with a new texture, flavor and presentation. The dishes that I suggested last week all accomplish that mission, but I've got one more for you - cheddar risotto with glazed acorn squash.

Feel free to separate the two elements of this dish; each stands well on its own. The squash would be a natural addition to the Thanksgiving table, the risotto less so. But both dishes are warm and satisfying. This would also be a great meal for the night before Thanksgiving, hinting at the meal to come and offering a warm welcome to overnight guests. The squash glaze can also be happily used for other vegetables or lighter meats (fish or chicken would probably work well).

Recipe: Cheddar Risotto with Glazed Acorn Squash
Serves four

Ingredients
2 small acorn squash
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce (Tamari is best)
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
Black pepper

3 cups vegetable stock
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely diced
4 scallions, sliced once lengthwise and then in little half-circles
1 cup arborio or carnaroli rice
1/2 cup good beer - stouts work well for this (or more veg stock)
1/2 cup extra sharp cheddar
Nutmeg
Black pepper and salt


Make the squash!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a jellyroll pan with aluminum foil and lightly oil the foil. Slice each acorn squash in half, from stem end to the bottom. Remove seeds and fiber around the seeds. Place each half, peel side up and bake for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the balsamic, soy sauce, brown sugar and black pepper to taste (about 1/4 teaspoon to start).

[At about 25 minutes into the squash baking time, you'll want to begin your risotto.]

Remove from the squash from the oven, flip the halves so they are upright and lightly pierce or score the squash halves. Brush the halves with the glaze - you're likely to have some glaze left over - and put back in the oven. Bake for 20 more minutes, covered with foil. Remove foil and cook about 10 more minutes, checking for done-ness.

Make the risotto!
Bring the vegetable stock to a light simmer in a small pot. Keep to the side of your risotto pan.

Heat the butter and oil together in a low, wide pan, ideally with straight sides, over medium heat. When all the foam is gone and the fats are well-combined, add the onion, cooking until it is just translucent. Add the scallions and cook for 2 more minutes. Add the rice, cooking until the rice turns opaque - this should take around 5 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium low. Add the beer, stirring regularly until it is absorbed. Then, add the stock by the ladle-full, allowing the stock to fully absorb before adding your next ladle. Repeat this process over and over, until the rice is al dente and creamy. The whole process should take between 20 and 25 minutes (though I've had carnaroli especially that took a bit longer).

Stir in the cheese, grate a little bit of nutmeg in and add salt and pepper, to taste. To make it all a bit prettier, you can also add a bit of sliced scallion to the top.

Serve it up!
For party presentation: Place the acorn squash in a circle on a large platter and either spoon the risotto in each half or place it in the center of the platter.

pumpkin gelato

What do you do on a lazy, cold Saturday? If you're like me, you pick up some gelato to let the chill sink in more deeply. And you happily take the passenger seat as your husband drives you underneath overarching branches of golds, reds and burnt orange.


Several gelatos (chestnut, anyone?) lend themselves and their considerable flavor to this sort of weekend drive, but the heavenly spiced pumpkin gelato from Goose the Market may be most ideal.

Tonic Gallery & Ball Tonight!

To my darling Indianapolis readers,

I really, really hope to see you tonight at the Tonic Gallery. I'm on the committee this year and will be sharing some goodies from 6 to 8 pm at Big Car Gallery in Fountain Square. Of course, you'll probably want to head over to the Tonic Ball, too, so you can listen to local artists perform songs made famous by Elvis and Queen.


In addition to the art that you can bid on - to benefit one of my nonprofit favorites, Second Helpings - you can also snack on goat cheese with fig-walnut tapenade, brie with pomegranate drizzle, lemon-thyme dipping sauce, and rosemary-garlic white bean spread. Of course, there will be crackers and veggies to go along with that...

Hope to see you there!

Finding your vegetarian main.

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Instead of being about stuff or sometimes exclusive religious beliefs, Thanksgiving is about family and community. Of course, Thanksgiving is also about food and parades. In other words, it is the best holiday that anyone can imagine.

In my family, the addition of a vegetarian main dish to the Thanksgiving table is part of what makes it my favorite holiday. There's a healthy contingent of non-meat-eaters in my family and my mom, bless her heart, pulls us together to make a main vegetarian dish at each Thanksgiving. Though there are plenty of vegetarian sides in the traditional Thanksgiving spread, I believe that the main dish contributes to a feeling of complete inclusion and would recommend it to anyone hosting a Thanksgiving that includes vegetarians. (That said, I would urge vegetarian guests to offer to bring said main dish - that's the most gracious way to be a veggie guest.)

A smattering of delicious-sounding vegetarian main dishes to choose from:

• Smitten Kitchen's Mushroom-Barley Pie

• Baked Pumpkin with Root Vegetable Stew from NPR
• Golden Lentil Roulade with Chestnut Stuffing (My mama-la approves!)
  
• Delicata Squash and Roasted Mushrooms with Thyme

If you have another great vegetarian main, please share! I'll be posting new and exciting Thanksgiving sides sometime very soon, as well as a main dish or two from my own kitchen.

white (bean) chicken chili

By popular request, here is the recipe for the white chicken chili I made for the Election Night Party. Of course, I didn't get a picture of the chili, but there's a blurry picture of our soup bowls (vintage Fire King - gotta love the King) to pique your visual interest. Before you read on, a heads up: I did not taste the final product, as I don't eat chicken. But everyone said it was good...


The approach I use for this chili can be applied to many flavor profiles. The basic plan:

• Saute some veggies in plentiful fat - onions, carrots, celery and/or garlic.
• Stir in some flour to make a roux.
• Add milk, whisk it until it all gets thick and soupy.
• Puree. (If you'd like a chunkier soup, remove the veggies before you roux it up and add a bit more fat.)
• Add the chunky bits: beans, sauteed greens, corn, peas or, if you do the whole meat thing, shredded meat.
• If it seems a little thick, add some stock.

But on to this recipe. Recipe: White (Bean) Chicken Chili
Serves: 6

Ingredients
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
2 yellow carrots, cut in a small dice
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons cumin seed, finely chopped or ground
4 Tablespoons flour
2 roasted, chopped chilies (pick one to suit your heat preference - poblanos are safe) or 1 little can of chopped, cooked chilies, drained
2 cups milk
3 cups home-cooked white beans or 2 14-ounce cans of white beans
2-3 cups shredded cooked chicken (Ben shredded some purchased roasted chicken)
Salt, pepper and cayenne

Make it up!
Heat the olive oil and butter together in stockpot over medium heat. Add the onion and carrots and saute until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cumin, saute for one more minute. Stir in the flour, cooking it all together and adding extra butter if any of the flour stays white and/or dry. Cook for a couple of minutes, but do not let the mixture brown. Add the chilies and milk, whisking until combined and lower the heat to medium-low.

When the mixture is thick enough to lightly coat the back of a spoon, blend it all up with an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion blender, blend it in a traditional blender in small batches and return the soup to the original pot.

Add the beans and chicken. Keep the pot over medium-low heat until it is heated through. If the mixture seems too thick, you can add chicken or vegetable stock. Flavor with a healthy amount of salt, pepper and, if you're feeling kicky, cayenne.

election day recap & tomato-corn chowder

I love voting. I love elections. I am wonky. It should come as no surprise that I enjoy coming up with reason to have people over. These reasons and many more led to what some may regard as over-committing myself this past election day. But it's also why, the night before election day, it felt like Christmas Eve - that powerful combination of anticipation, nervousness and excitement.


The narrative of overcommitment:

• Night before: workday, quick soup cooking, Master Gardener class until 9 pm, followed by more soup preparations.
  
• Waiting to vote until Election Day, wanting to make sure there was no shady business happening around my polling place.
• Signing up to volunteer for canvassing for the candidate of my choice.
• Deciding to add apple struesel cupcakes into the food mix and to run out to pick up chips, bread and drinks as the guest list had grown throughout the day. The more the merrier!
  
• Party kick-off at 7 pm. And hosting duties until the final announcement and speeches had been made.

No election night party is complete without an astounding number of add-ins brought by guests. There were so many snacky bits - sweet and savory - that I hesitate to list them for fear of forgetting anyone's additions. Fear be damned! Here are some highlights: homemade apple pie, "it's been a rocky election road" brownies, fudge you can believe in, salsas, spinach artichoke dip, a giant election-themed cookie, a dense and rich almond cake with blueberry sauce and summer slaw from the grocery deli - so surprising good. There was plenty more, but a girl can only sample so much!

But on to the educational moment of this entry: my recipe for tomato-corn chowder. This stuff is so, so good, based on a recipe from an old, tattered Horn of the Moon ccokbook that got me and my mom through the first several years of my vegetarianism.


Recipe: Tomato-Corn Chowder
Serves about 4-6

Ingredients
1-2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 Tablespoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 28 ounce can whole tomatoes, whirled in a blender or in the can with a hand-blender
3 large fresh tomatoes, chopped
2 cups water or light (not garlicky!) vegetable stock
1 cup half & half (or heavy cream if you're feeling decadent)
1/4 cup flour, ideally Wondra ultra-fine flour
2 1/2 cups corn kernels
2/3 cup parsley, chopped
salt and pepper (white pepper is ideal) to taste
sharp cheddar, shredded (optional)

Make it up!
Heat the oil over medium heat in a stock pot. Add the onions and herbs, stirring frequently. You want the onions translucent and, after a little bit and possibly turning your heat up a bit, slightly brown at the edges. Add in the tomatoes, fresh and canned, and the water or broth. Bring to a low simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

Make a slurry by combining the half & half and the flour until smooth. Add in a ladle of the soup, stir. Add in another ladle and stir again. (This tempers the slurry well enough to add back into the soup.) Combine the slurry and soup in the stockpot and stir.

Turn down the heat to very low. Add the corn, parsley, salt and pepper. Simmer over low heat, covered, for 15 minutes. Serve with the optional white cheddar for the best experience.

If anyone's interested, I'm also happy to post recipes for the white chicken chili and black bean & poblano soups - just holler!

Locally Grown Gardens - the restaurant

Quick little happy note - Locally Grown Gardens will be opening nightly, Monday through Friday, for pulled pork, assorted sides and other yummy bits. Check out the details the good news at the LLG blog!

Circle City Sweets

Community makes me so happy. The last week offered me bountiful reminders of the value of community. A small but special example: how I met Cindy Hawkins from Circle City Sweets.


Step one: Reading Renee's post about roasting chestnuts at Feed Me/Drink Me, I decided to comment about my favorite frozen treat - chestnut gelato. Cindy had left a comment about using chestnuts in pastries - something that we should all rally behind - and that led me to explore her website.

Step two: I saw that she makes madeleines. Maybe it's the Proustian melancholy in me, but I had an immediate need to find those madeleines and eat them. Circle City Sweets doesn't have a storefront quite yet, but Cindy does supply goodies to a variety of stores and restaurants around town. I sent her a quick email, asking who among those outlets might carry the madeleines. And, you know what? Nobody does! The horror. The outrage.

Step three: Cindy offers to make a batch of the delicious, lemon-infused shells. Of course, I accepted her generous offer with positive glee. When Cindy dropped them by my house last week, the cellophane surrounding the madeleines was warm with oven-fresh heat. Home for lunch, Ben and I each gobbled one up. On the way back to work, I called Ben just to talk about how good they were.


I've eaten a few madeleines in my life. They've usually come in individually-wrapped plastic packages that have been on the shelf for God-knows-how-long and they've usually been just okay. These were something so much better - little buttery, lemon-infused cakes with a golden exterior and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. Cindy also dropped by chocolatey and salt-touched caramels - delicious!

Cindy's got a host of made-to-order Thanksgiving specials including persimmon bread pudding, chocolate-pomegranate cake (drooling here!) and bourbon pecan tarts. Visit her Circle City Sweets website to see all the possibilities!

Two other posts-to-come about community and its value: election party coverage and the impeccable atmosphere at Maxine's Chicken and Waffles.

free food for voting, the legal way

The Queen of Free is sharing some great information about free food & coffee that you can get today just because you have done your civic duty and voted.

Surely, you've seen the Starbucks commercials, but she's also got tips on free Ben & Jerry's and Crispy Cremes!!! So, as long as you have visited the polls, you might want to take advantage of these generous offers.

Indy Winter Farmer's Market Begins November 15

Have you been down in the dumps about the end of Farmer's Market season? Are you already longing for the hustle and bustle of a Saturday morning trip to the market?
Well, put that sadness to rest! The Indy Winter Farmer's Market begins November 15th and will offer yummy produce and local products throughout the season on Saturdays. To keep track of this exciting venture, check out the dedicated market blog.

Another winter idea: if you're looking for a fun host/hostess gift for parties, these pretty little snowflake coasters from greenchairpress on etsy would likely please anybody who opens their doors to company.


Can you tell that this Indian Summer is not my preferred early-November weather?

election watch party!

Tomorrow is Election Day, and there is much excitement at our house. We'll be having a little election watch party tomorrow night, complete with red (tomato-corn chowder), white (chicken chili - the rare meaty dish) and blue-black (black bean soup) food and Electoral College coloring maps.

Of course, I'll fill you in on the nitty-gritty details after the party, but I thought it might be a good idea to post a quick little reminder to vote and a few fun ideas about what you can do to celebrate election night with food.

American classics, like Elana's apple crisp, make excellent election food!

Here goes (and please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments!)...

• Black bean dip (buy some or just saute onions, garlic and cumin and blend them up with black beans, adding a bit of reserved black bean liquid - add salt and pepper to taste) with corn chips and red pepper strips
• Cupcakes - like Martha's (thanks, Kelly) or decorated your own way (or your children's way) with sprinkles, powdered sugar or colored frosting
• Foods that celebrate our country's diversity - make up some chowder (clam or vegetarian) to represent the Northeast, grill a California-style pizza with fun and innovative toppings, throw in some collared greens or fried green tomatoes to represent the South and pick from a dish or two from your family's cultural heritage
• The "official" all-American foods are a great way to celebrate, too. Chicago-style hot dogs (we make them with Smart dogs at our house), apple pie or crisp, fried chicken, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese and ding-dongs could probably unite any politically-divided family.

Either way, I hope that you have a great Election Day. I'll be volunteering the whole day and can't wait to kick back and watch the returns come in!