Leftovers from Café Parizäde Thanksgiving - Risotto, Pasta, Cornbread, Seitan; Grilled "Sheese" Sandwich

What a great Thanksgiving we (Triangle Vegetarian Society) had on Thursday! It seems for the third year in a row we had the country's largest vegetarian (in fact all plant-based vegan!) Thanksgiving dinner with close to 400 diners. Today meal preparation was easy - it was mainly just reheating leftovers from Chef Robert Adams of Durham's Café Parizäde, where we hold our Thanksgiving.

What I brought home and served as leftovers today were a wild mushroom and French green lentil risotto with seared tempeh (very good); organic conchiglie pasta with vegan Bolognese sauce (came out great! I prefer the larger conchiglie pasta that I use, but this was also very good - and Robert's sauce was chunkily delicious); lime-marinated seared seitan with peppercorns and fig glaze (wow! my recipe - Robert made this the best dish of the feast); and cornbread. I also sliced a little bit of vegan mozzarella "Sheese" and when my appetite demanded more, also made a grilled "Sheese" sandwich.

"Sheese"! Originally called "Scheese", I discovered this when I was in London in January and quickly dubbed it my favorite vegan cheese. I contacted the Scottish manufacturer, Bute Island Foods, asking if I could help them bring their product to the U.S. Shortly before Thanksgiving, they contacted me to let me know that they had started a relationship with a domestic distributor, Black Duck Imports!! They sent me samples to arrive in time to be part of our Thanksgiving raffle so that I could promote them, and I was able to keep to try blue, cheshire, edam, cheddar with chives, and mozzarella flavors. The mozzarella is good and melts reasonably well, but not as good as the cheddar or cheddar with chives. I can't wait to try the other flavors!

Thanksgiving! You can peek at the menu on our Thanksgiving site - it included over 25-30 items, many of which don't even appear on the menu! We left to take my aunt and parents to the Blue Ridge Mountains on Friday for the weekend. On Friday, we ate at one of our favorite restaurants, the Laughing Seed Café in Asheville. On Saturday, friends of ours (whose wedding we had attended in September) had us all over to their home for a lovely vegan dinner of many items including butternut squash soup; spaghetti squash with "cheese and sausage" sauce; sweet potatoes; greens; and a nice tempeh dish with Indian spices. I was excited that my Mom enjoyed the food, including the tempeh; my Mom is very particular and doesn't readily stray from her own cooking, but now I know a hook to get my Mom to try my tempeh - make it with Indian spices. Yesterday, we ate at the very nice buffet at Earth Fare - the Asheville stores are much better than their local ones.