T-giving.

Happy black Friday/day after Thanksgiving/day of recovery after large amounts of eatin'!

I apologize for my lack of blog updates. I've been too busy working out, sleeping, and eating for the past few days.

Yesterday, at around 3pm, I decided I wanted to cook something.

I whipped together the following:

Creamy Whole Wheat Pasta Casserole
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Crustless Pumpkin Pie
Vegan Carrot Cake

I started with the carrot cake, since that had the longest baking time. This is similar to the vegan chocolate cake I made a while back.

Ingredients:

• 1 box carrot cake mix
• 1 block tofu (soft works best)
• 1 cup water

The store was out of soft tofu and my only choices were extra firm and super firm. (Of course, that's what happens the only time I don't want firm tofu!)

So I blended the tofu and started adding the cake mix little by little along with some water.

The mixture started becoming too thick for the blender. So I went with the old fashioned whisk.

The mixture went into a lightly greased baking pan.

And into the oven at 350F for 31 minutes.

In the meantime...

The batter is 100% safe--no raw eggs! And delish!

31 minutes later- complete!

Next up: casserole.

Ingredients:

• 1 can cream of broccoli soup
• 1 cup skim milk
• 2 cups water
• fresh spinach
• frozen edamame
• whole wheat penne pasta

First I made the pasta.

For the sauce, I mixed the soup and milk over medium heat.

Then I added the fresh spinach, frozen edamame, and one cup of water.

I tore up the spinach so there wouldn't be large leaves in the sauce.

I added the rest of the water, and let the sauce simmer for a bit. Then I added black pepper.

After the sauce was ready, I placed the cooked pasta on a lightly greased pan and poured the sauce on top.

I placed this and the sweet potatoes in the oven.

The casserole was in the oven for about 15 minutes.

The sweet potatoes actually cooked a lot quicker in the microwave-- note to self for next time!

So I peeled the sweet potatoes and then mashed them. Nothing too complicated-- just added some salt, pepper, and lemon juice for seasoning.

Lastly, the quickest dessert ever: crustless pumpkin pie. I tweaked this recipe a little bit and only used 1 teaspoon of egg whites (because that's all I had left) and added one teaspoon of baking powder.

Unfortunately, I didn't get after pictures of the desserts. But I've made similar ones before so just check out the above links. :)

24 hours later, the carrot cake (to which I added cream cheese frosting...which makes it quite un-vegan, but quite a bit tastier!) is 3/4 finished. The casserole was almost completely gone 20 minutes after its completion.

Successful? I think so! Hooray for holidays!