This Week's Thanksgiving Photo Journal: Food, Friends, Family, Bread (Plus A Culinary Academy Chef's Vegan Treat for Me!)

This past month has been, well, NUTS! Seems my to-do, get-to, and re-do list keeps growing and growing. I've eaten my vegan Thanksgiving meal and have a ton of leftovers. (It was only Dr. Thyme and I for the festive, relaxing day.) Did that stop me from cooking for eight hours? NO!

As you might have guessed--I did not head out at two this morning to catch any bargains (or catch the flu for crying out loud--ewww, crowds) but rather slept in so the elves could work on my face. I predicted to Dr. Thyme this morning: Thanksgiving is going to become a day of shopping within the next two years--stores will not close. Hey, I'm not happy about it, but if one retailer opens, you can bet some bookkeeper in another White Ivory Tower is taking note and making the tally marks wondering how much of that "money pie" they missed out on by NOT opening on Thanksgiving. I paid my dues in retail for almost twenty years--I feel for every single retail sales person out there today: I'm sending you my love!

My sister arrived on Saturday! Now, I don't have pictures of my sister and I to share yet because we are both too busy catching up. We will do photos tomorrow when she returns from visiting her friends. Meantime, I have a whole slide show of other goings-on to share. I had a wonderful week filled with massive amounts of food. My sister woke up on Tuesday morning and said, Your house smells like a Panera Bread restaurant. The highest compliment I think I could ever ask for! I cooked non-stop for her. I loved every minute of it! She thinks I am a little "cooking obsessed" but I shared with her that I do need my days off--but how often do I get to cook for her? I wanted every single minute and morsel of food she had to be something I lovingly created just for her. She loved every bit of it!

Then, I had the divine pleasure of spending two days with one of my best friends. We've known each other now almost twenty-five years. We don't advertise this much because that would allow others to "do the math" and figure out how old we really might be. We'll leave it at Almost Fifty for now. Her husband is a former chef who graduated from the San Francisco Culinary Academy. He is my kitchen idol, while his wife remains my kitchen humorist. When we planned our gathering this week and I packed my overnight bag for the visit, I also packed a Trader Joe's cold storage bag of Match Meats Chicken, tofu sour cream and Silk Creamer plus some bananas. (I have to have a banana every morning.) I packed the creamer because I need it for my coffee--mandatory morning beverage. (Thank god they had the Keurig coffee maker--I heart Keurig!) I packed the sour cream because it tastes good on everything. I packed the Match because I just knew I'd catch "H" for bringing my vegan lifestyle into their neck of the woods--where, I will be honest, many-a-folk are cattle raising types and there ain't a whole lot of us vegans around. Let's just say I probably tipped the town over at my arrival increasing the vegan population by 100%. Nonetheless, the chef did NOT disappoint and I got to sit side saddle and be sous chef while he directed the entree. What a thrill!

I have recently fallen in love with a new bread book (well, new to me anyway): My Bread by Jim Lahey. Wow. That's all I can say is: Wow. Get this book if you even have a kernel of desire to be a spoiled rotten bread baker. I didn't think I'd ever step away from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes book recipes, then I met Jim. If I thought it would not be so crazy to do so, or be a "question the sanity of Kelly" issue--I'd take my frequent flyer miles right now and fly to New York to meet this man of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. I still might. Meantime, I have requested that Dr. Thyme visit said bakery on his next trip and pack a loaf away for me in his luggage and also--get an inscribed napkin or something from this Jim because I am a convert and now. . . sort of a bread gawker fan!

Dr. Thyme's photography. He thought the Jim Lahey Bread deserved a more "creative" picture and employed the "sepia" tone button to impress.

I then quikly took over the camera and zoomed in on the magnificent close up, and in true color of the book's main or "beginner" loaf finished shot. Mmmm. Bread.

The chef. The vegan entree for the vegan me. The look.

The best friend and me. Life is beautiful.

The vegan throwdown challenge met: Sundried Tomato, Garlic, Mushroom and Pepper Pasta with the Match Chicken to accompany. Yum! You can only get this in one restaurant in the country, trust me!

Extra spicey pumpkin cupcakes I made yesterday--Thankgiving finale!