Pee Wee's Veg Adventure, Holiday Treats, & a birthday!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

Happy New Year! It seems 2009 is here & the resolutions are flying. While I didn't make any myself, I hope those of you who did are able to stick with them. Hopefully some of you decided to give veganism a try & will see how easy, fun, & rewarding it is!

I brought in the New Year at my home with a group of friends from the PPK. We decided to have a themed potluck, "Pee Wee's Veg Adventure" & I can safely say it was the most beautiful potluck in puppetland! All of the dishes were crafted up beforehand to keep the Pee Wee Herman theme & we all chowed down on dishes like "Jambi-Laya", "Connect the Dots Quinoa", "Copper Penny Salad", "King of Stuffed Mushrooms", & "Dinosaur Family Kale". Erin from Vegan Homemade brought two delicious dishes, "Simone's French Toast Bites" & "Footlongs for Mickey", which you can check out on her post. For dessert, we had even more themed options like "Cowboy Curtis' Cookie Sandwiches", "Chairry Pie", & "Whacky Tapi-oca Pudding Shooters".

My contributions were one savory & one sweet. I made "Pterri's BBQ Not Wings" which were seitan kabobs on skewers, smothered in sweet & spicy barbecue sauce & "Globey's International Speculaas Brownies", which were a gluten free brownie recipe from the upcoming 500 Vegan Recipes book by Celine & Joni. I'm considering posting the wings recipe, which is inspired by Vegan Dad's Wingz, let me know if it's something you might want to try & I'll post it!

A package arrived on my doorstep on New Years Eve bearing gifts from a cross country vegan bakery. In the recent VegNews contests, I was the lucky winner of one dozen Cowvin Cookies from Sticky Fingers Bakery. I can't think of a more serendipitous surprise! I was thrilled to be able to cut these giant cream filled oatmeal cookie sandwiches in to bite sized pieces to share with a room full of vegans! They're downright delicious & I found myself going back for far too many!

Back to the party; when the clock struck midnight, "Tequila" started playing over the speakers & we did a little dance in Pee Wee's honor! Overall, it was a fun & fabulous night. Good food & good friends are a wonderful way to ring in the new year & create optimism for the year to come. I truly hope 2009 is a prosperous year for each & every one of us!

My holidays were a bit uneventful this year. I had two meals with my family & made a large portion of the food from polenta cakes & roasted veggies to black eyed pea quinoa croquettes & golden gravy, but it all went by so quickly, I didn't do much in the way of photo taking. I did manage to snap a photo of the sweets I made. Mini Mint filled Chocolate Whoopie Pies were a hit, as were Peanut Butter Blondies from the upcoming cookie book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. For Christmas Day, I made the Gingerbread Apple Pie from Vegan with a Vengeance, putting little sakura cut outs on top & serving it with homemade caramel sauce & vanilla bean ice cream. I was certainly stuffed from the sweets by the end of the night!

I love a good surprise, so I was thrilled when a little green box showed up on my doorstep right before Christmas. The always adorable Hannah of My Sweet Vegan & Bittersweet blog fame sent a sweet & chocolatey treat, chock full of cookie chunks, & perfect for adding to my Christmas platter of vegan goodies!

Hannah's surprise & the Cowvin cookies, plus the amazing birthday package I received from Marijke & opened for my birthday today have made for some seriously fabulous mail in the past few weeks. Rumor has it, there's belated birthday gifts on the way as well. I am very thankful & I truly appreciate all the birthday love I've been feeling today! Tonight I'll be having dinner with some friends at ubuntu in Napa. Ryan made me this little widget, so you can hear what I like to listen to on my birthday. Make sure you save it to torture people on your special day, hehe!

Next time I'll start my New York City series (finally), so look out for delicious dining & sweet treats in the near future!