For the second year in a row it was totally and completely orphans' thanksgiving. I mean, I called my parents, but you know. That was it.

John and I had tasty business in the form of roasted cauliflower/potato/black bean soup and unveganized veganomicon cornbread and zinfandel from our friend Joann, who sent us wine for thanksgiving because she is awesome. She's also my new boss. How many bosses do you know who send their employees delicious thanksgiving edibles? Continually awesome!

Roasty cauliflower/potato/black bean soup

head of cauliflower
olive oil
onion
garlic
a potato or two
black bean broth
salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika
is that really all I put in it? I think so!

You guys, it's totally easy. Roast cauliflower, soften onion, boil broth with onion and potato, add now-roasted cauliflower, blend.

To roast the cauliflower: clean it and break/cut it into small florets. Toss them in olive oil, salt, pepper, a little cayenne, and a relatively large amount of paprika, then spread them on a baking sheet or two and roast at 425F until golden brown and nice. This should take something like ten minutes, but it can be pretty variable. Smaller florets mean smaller roasting time.

In the meantime, dice up an onion and soften it in olive oil in a big soup pan. Maybe add a couple cloves of garlic if you feel like it. Maybe even add some diced hot pepper if you want. It's all good.

I had originally wanted to make this soup with actual black beans, but lo, we were out of them. We did have a container of frozen black bean broth, though, so I chucked it into the pot instead. Excellent idea!

When the broth comes to a boil, add a peeled, cubed potato and simmer until tender and delicious. If you cut it into small cubes this actually won't take very long at all, maybe 15 minutes. Add in your finished-roasting cauliflower, simmer for a few more minutes, and whip everything off the heat.

Pulverize the business with an immersion blender (or I guess a regular blender, but who wants to deal with that?). My concoction resembled chestnut puree in texture.

Rewarm if needed, season with salt and pepper, and eat it!

I had green onions on one bowl and crumbly cornbread on another bowl. I'm just saying.


I also made the veganomicon skillet cornbread, except I used milk and butter for the soymilk and oil. Also I used wheat flour instead of all purpose, because all purpose flour is pretty much nonexistent at our house. Also I minced up a jalapeño and threw that in the batter as opposed to making it a topping. You know what? IT WAS AWESOME. Now I want to try a version with honey in place of the sugar, eliminating the probability of getting honey all over everything when eating said cornbread.

Then later (like, several hours later) in my quest to eat all the cornbread in the house before John, I crumbled a piece of cornbread into a bowl, threw some delicious delicious salsa on top of it, and put the whole business in the toaster oven to warm for a few minutes. OH YEAH. that is the stuff. If I had any more cornbread or salsa I would be making myself another bowl of this business right now, but I don't. I ate it all.