I spent aalll day cooking yesterday:

Clockwise from top left: Green Bean Casserole, Whole Wheat and Teff Chive Mini-Biscuits, Crustless Pumpkin Pie, Potato-Spinach Crustless Knishes, Roasted Root Vegetables, and Gardein Stuffed Turkey Roasts (which I did not make, of course).

The green bean casserole is an old standby that I make every year in a slow-cooker, and I’ll be posting the recipe shortly.

The mini-biscuits were the only real indulgence, as they have a small amount of vegetable shortening (NON hydrogenated)…and they were probably my favorite part of the meal. The teff flour gave them a nice toasty flavor.

The knish-like potato and spinach wedges were a close second, though – my favorite sort of food ever is the savory pastry, from empanadas, to pierogies, to knishes. My concession in this case is the crustless-ness.

Finally, the pie. We love pie, and Derek can tell you of a time when I’d bake him a pie at least once a week. In Washington one of the upsides to the constant rainy weather is the insane profusion of produce – we could go outside and pick all the cherries or plums we wanted. And then make pie.

And, as desserts go, pies don’t HAVE to be too unhealthy…it’s really the crust and excess sugar. I happened to find an awesome CRUSTLESS pumpkin pie recipe here that has the texture of pie, cake, and custard rolled into one.

My only alterations to the recipe were: I used 2 x (1 tsp Baking Powder, 1/2 tsp Baking Soda, 2 Tbsp Flour, 2 Tbsp Water) as egg replacer, 1 1/4 cups soymilk instead of 1 1/2 cups, brown rice flour instead of white rice flour, and, in order to avoid the granulated sugar, a can of Whole Foods organic pumpkin pie mix with evaporated cane juice + 1/4 cup agave nectar instead of the pumpkin, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

I’ll post a few of the recipes later today…don’t forget to vote for Derek, he was 27th out of 200 or so competitors for the BodySpace Spokesmodel competition last time they posted rankings…and he only needs top 20 to be a finalist!!!