A Very Foodie Christmas

My friends and family all know that I love to spend time in the kitchen, so I received a lot of really nice foodie-type gifts for Christmas. Here they are:

These are the gifts I received from my coworkers. Vanessa gave me Vegan Celebrations and a nice snack dish. Liz gave me a cute tea towel and a cake plate. Kelly gave me the newest David Sedaris book, which has nothing to do with food, but it's something I really wanted!

I'm not sure who had me in the Secret Santa gift exchange at work, but whoever it was, he or she knows that I like to cook! I got a nice oil and vinegar set.

Dennis got me a much-desired TofuXpress! I've wanted one of these for a while. I can see why so many people love them! It presses the water out of tofu in record time. I've used it for tofu several times already, and I've also used it to squeeze water out of thawed frozen spinach.

Dennis also bought me a nice shiny new food processor!! This will see lots of use in the very near future! Our previous food processor was very, very old and leaked when the contents where really wet. 

 Dennis also gave me Quick Fix Vegetarian and Party Vegan, both by Robin Robertson. As you can see, I immediately started marking the pages of things I want to make.

My friend Jessica gave me Clean Start by Terry Walters. I'm excited about cooking from this because I loved her first book Clean Food.

My friend Irina gave me this super cool clock! I love it! Of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with food, but I hung it in my kitchen, so I'm including it the "foodie" gift category.

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A Very Vegan Christmas

This year for Christmas, we had our friends Jen, Rachel and Brett over for a mini potluck. I love having potluck style holidays because it takes the pressure off of one person having to make lots of food, and we get to try things we might not normally make for our selves. It was a wonderful day, full of good food, amazing friends, great conversation and delicious food!

 Dennis and I started out the day with a super yummy zucchini mushroom frittata.

Before our guests arrived, I popped a fire onto the tellie...

and set the table.

For pre-dinner snacking, I made spinach artichoke dip. I found this recipe simply by Googling "vegan spinach artichoke dip". I was quite pleased with the results - this dip is delicious! 

We also had some gluten-free pretzel sticks and a veggie mix. Isn't the dish cute? My friend Vanessa gave it to me for Christmas. 

Field Roast en cruet, cranberry sauce and Tofurky gravy 

Maple roasted brussels sprouts with slivered almonds 

 Roasted green beans and carrots

 Stuffed portobello mushrooms

 Purple and white potatoes

 Asparagus with hollandaise sauce

My very full plate! 

 I made a key lime cheesecake for dessert. Key lime is one of Dennis's favorite things, so this was mainly made as a birthday cake for him. The strawberry sauce got messy, but it was delicious! The cake plate was a Christmas gift from my friend Liz.

My dessert plate! We also had Clementines with chocolate sauce and lemon cookies, courtesy of Veggie Heaven.

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