Cookbook Week: The Vegan Table

The Chef: Colleen

The Menu: Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Soup alongside olive oil-brushed, toasted ciabatta and a healthy helping of fresh salad greens. If I do say so myself, our vegan table was lookin' and tastin' pretty snazzy, thanks to Ms. Colleen's immaculate culinary creation. Crunchy bread dipped in a smooth pumpkin-purée, seasoned with a medley of sweet and savory spices made a perfect pair. Yum.

The Goods: With half of the VN staff out at the WIPP Women's Leadership Conference, the office is feeling a wee bit empty this afternoon, which made us extra excited to fill up with this hearty meal inspired by Collen Patrick-Goudreau's soon-to-be-available cookbook. Yes, from the author of the celebrated The Joy of Vegan Baking comes a second and equally magnificent roster of recipes. With more than 200 to choose from, Ms. Colleen did an excellent job. Her version of this autumn-inspired soup made for a perfect cookbook week finale. Although MIA here in the VN kitchen, she was kind enough to whip up this batch of made-from-scratch soup and have it hand-delivered. Thanks, Colleen!

Pumpkin Pasta Bake

The Chef: Elizabeth

The Menu: A savory, scrumptious curried-pumpkin pasta. With some sautéed garlic, onions, sage, and curry powder, this simple pumpkin sauce was thick and velvety. Topped with Corn Flake crumbs, this dish might have been a mac 'n' cheese variation, just maybe. It's not like we know anyone in this office who is obsessed with mac 'n' cheese, of course. For a salad, Elizabeth grated some fresh zucchini, chopped a little Swiss chard, and tossed some tomato over butter lettuce. Oh, and is that a slice of bread slathered with garlic dipping sauce? Yes, yes it is. That is what happens when there are conversations in the office about garlic sauces shortly before lunch.

The Goods: Today we got another dose of gorgeous sunshine, which was made all the more enjoyable by our guest, Mr. Gene Baur, whom some of you may know from a little operation called Farm Sanctuary. (In fact, we know that many of you are already fans of Farm Sanctuary, since you voted them Favorite Animal Sanctuary in the 2008 Veggie Awards, which were just announced today!) Congrats to Gene, the rest of the Farm Sanctuary team, and all the other Veggie Award winners! Be sure to keep an eye out for the November+December issue of VegNews, which should be hitting newsstands this week to see who all won.

Vegan à Go-Go! Week: Day One

The Chef: Jenny

The Menu: Punk-kin Pasta, which is a delicious amalgam of pasta, pumpkin purée, and vegan sausage. Um, yum. Savory, hearty, and rich, this main course filled us up, which is just the way we like to start off the week. Jenny paired the dense dish with a nice, light salad, which kept some of us from totally exploding.

The Goods: This week, we're all about Vegan à Go-Go! We'll be making recipes from Sarah Kramer's latest work all this week, which is good news for those of you who want recipes for the meals you see on this blog—they'll all be neatly contained in the book! Since we're pretty sure everybody already knows about our party, we'll just go ahead and mention that there is literally one ticket left. Literally. One. Feel free to freak out with excitement (as we all are) since this is sure to be a blast of a book launch.