When you’re a vegetarian at Thanksgiving, it’s really all about the sides and the bread. Sometimes they are one in the same, like with my mom’s ridiculously buttery and carbalicious stuffing. My plate usually fills up with that stuffing, green bean and artichoke casserole, and a big buttered roll. Carbs beside buttery cheesy vegetables beside carbs.
This year I’m going to hopefully add a little healthy goodness with a lentil loaf, which I’m already being made fun of incessantly for because “lentil loaf” sounds about as appealing as “nutritional yeast,” but I’m giving it a try anyway.
It’s almost that time, you know. CHRISTMAS TIME. It officially starts on Friday, and I can’t even stand the excitement.
Yes, I’m one of those Christmas people. Yikes.
BUT, at the same time, we need to mourn the loss of pumpkin season. It’s a short-lived and heavily-loved time of year. Caribou stopped carrying my pumpkin latte on Halloween, so I’ve been acclimating to a pumpkin-free world for a while now. Yes, on Halloween, the DAY OF PUMPKINS, they stopped offering pumpkin lattes. Doesn’t that seem wrong? Me thinks so.
When I think of donuts I always end up thinking about my grandpa. The only time I really ever ate donuts growing up, or enjoyed them enough to remember them, was on our annual family beach vacations. My Grandpa, no matter how slow he moved at his older age, would get up early and walk to the nearest donut shop to provide a sugary breakfast for our family. I’d throw on a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, curl up on a chair on the patio, and watch the waves crash in as I dug into a chocolate-frosted and liberally sprinkled cake donut.
Even now, decades later, my happy place would be on that patio, eating a donut with my grandpa and watching the waves come in. These days I’d also want a large cup of coffee on the side, but otherwise that situation would be perfect, Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and all.
I’ve always been a thick-cookie person. Make ’em fat and chewy and a little underbaked and we are rolling in the cookie happiness.
Then I discovered the joy that is thin and crispy cookies. Somehow my sister and I got on the subject this weekend, and she reminded me about these perfectly thin and crispy cookies from Trader Joe’s. They’re light, buttery, crispy, and just so darn pop-able. Should a cookie be pop-able? I think so.
To be clear, we’re talking intentionally thin cookies. None of those flat and burnt cookies that were meant to be fat. Those have no place here.
When Ryan and I meet new people, and they learn that I blog about food, they generally say to Ryan something along the lines of, “Lucky you! You must eat so much good food!”
Except he forgets to eat. Like, it’ll be 8:00 at night, I’ll ask what he ate during the day, and he’ll look super pensive for what feels like a LONG time, and then realize he ate NOTHING.
I would not be functional. Actually, I would never be in that situation.
