Vegan Thanksgiving: Brussels Sprouts

My friend Jenna and I were supposed to teach a vegan Thanksgiving cooking class yesterday, but unfortunately we had to cancel it. My cat Schroeder hasn't been feeling well lately, and the vet just discovered a tumor in his intestines. The stress of having a sick cat and preparing for a class at the same time is too much for me, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to have 15 people in my house with a sick kitty.

Schroeder had surgery on Wednesday. The vet was supposed to remove the tumor, but he found that it's in a bad spot it would be too risky to remove. Schroeder's been recovering from the surgery and he rested all weekend. Hopefully we'll get biopsy results tonight and find out if there's anything we can do for him. I'll be sure to post updates.

Before we found out about the tumor, I had been preparing for the cooking class and I had bought a lot of the groceries needed in order to test the recipes one last time before showing other people how to make them. So I decided to make it all for dinner over the weekend. Since it's almost Thanksgiving, I thought I'd share the dishes with you this week.

Let's start with brussels sprouts. I used to totally hate brussels sprouts. My mom used to buy frozen ones and microwave them with butter. Blech. But Dennis likes them, so years ago I decided to give them a try and find a way to cook them that we would both like. Over the years my taste buds have changed, and I really like them now. My favorite way to make them is to roast them with olive oil, salt and pepper. I really love the crispy edges. Chef Chloe recently did a blog post with vegan Thanksgiving recipes, and she has a recipe for maple roasted brussels sprouts that looked really good. It's starts out pretty much the same way I make roasted sprouts, but maple syrup is added towards the end of roasting. I used almonds instead of hazelnuts, because hazelnuts make my mouth itch. The end result was really, really tasty, and I think I'm going to make this dish for my friends on Thanksgiving.

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