Baked apples stuffed with snausage

I conceived and made this dish a while ago, but never got around to posting.  It seems like a good Thanksgiving dish to me, so I'm putting it up now for the benefit of any last-minute types who are looking for a vegan protein to add to the plate.

I love baked apples and have always made them as a sweet dish.  My favorite way used to be to stuff them with chopped dried fruit and nuts.  This time around, it occurred to me that baked apples could be a savory dish.  I stumbled on a meatful recipe for baked apples stuffed with something disgusting like ground up pig muscle, and it occurred to me that I could stuff mine with vegan sausage.

The easy and peaceful way to do this would be to buy some vegan sausage, stuff it into the cavities left when you core the apples, and bake.  But I had to make my own sausage.  I looked at recipes calling for textured soy protein, tofu, tempeh (I don't actually like tempeh, but periodically think I should try to learn to like it), and seitan, and settled on one using frozen tofu.

I cored the apples, stuffed the cavities with snausage mixture, and baked as usual until the apples were done.  The snausage started to get brown too quickly, and so I covered the apples with foil for a while.  I would recommend starting out with them covered, and then uncover for the last 10-15 minutes of cooking.

They look cool when you slice them open:

Verdict:  this was fun, but I wouldn't make it the same way again.  I ended up with way too much snausage for the number of apples I had, and ended up nuking the rest and just eating it for breakfast one morning.  I also didn't think the snausage was tasty enough for the amount of trouble that went into making it.  The dried herbs didn't integrate with the frozen tofu very well; you could kind of distinguish them in your mouth.  If I were going to do this again, it would be because I wanted snausage for some other purpose, or had some leftover snausage lying around.  Maybe when I finally attempt the bean and seitan sausage that has taken the internets by storm, I'll seek out a few baking apples and give it another try.  I wouldn't use Italian snausage, though -- I'd recommend something more like a breakfast snausage flavor.  If you want to try this with store-bought snausage, I would try either the Tofurky snausage links (because I like all the Tofurky snausage products I've tried), or splurge on Field Roast sage-and-apple snausages, which I've never tried but don't they sound good?

Cranberry Applesauce for Thanksgiving!

I wanted to be sure to get this one up before Thanksgiving in case anyone else is experimenting with cranberries.

The apples this year have been disappointing.  A few weeks ago, my girlfriend bought a bag of Honeycrisp apples, of all things, and found them too tart for eating raw.  Honeycrisp!  Go figure.  I said no worries, I'll make them into applesauce.  I was going to do something really simple, just the apples and some Trader Joe's pumpkin pie spice (I love their pumpkin pie spice because it has cardamom and lemon zest in it).  Then I got to thinking about all the cranberries I have in the bottom of my freezer.

Acorn Squash and Apple Soup

We don't have a garden.  We live in an apartment, and our cats are such fearsome predators we can't even have houseplants.   We know people who have gardens, though, and sometimes they share.

Most of the time, receiving a gift of fresh produce from someone who gardens is unmitigated wonderfulness. Once in a while, though, you think "This is so great.  Now what am I going to do with it?" That's how I responded when I received this acorn squash:

Cat:  "This squash is so great . . . ." 

". . . now what are we going to do with it?"

My Farmer's Market Haul

I am very fortunate in that my house, my office, and the farmer's market are each about a five minute walk from the others.  Every Thursday from June through November, I try to make it to the farmer's market at lunch time.  I haul my fruits and veggies home, eat lunch, and go back to work.  It's a great setup.

Here's what I bought yesterday:

  

Kitten included for scale.  Actually, kitten included because there was no way he wasn't going to be included.

 That savoy cabbage weighs almost 7 pounds!  That's a lot of cruciferous goodness for just $3.00.  I don't know what I'm making with it yet -- probably several different things.  It's a good thing cabbage keeps well.

All these poblanos for $5.00!

Looks like I'll be roasting poblanos again this weekend.  There are probably more refried beans in my future, or I may get decadent and make a cream of poblano soup.  Or both.

Empire, Liberty, Nittany -- from left to right.

 Finally, I bought about 9 pounds of apples.  Empire is my favorite eating apple.  I asked the apple man if he would be selling any Rome apples this fall, and he said most of those go for juice, but that if I like Rome I should try Liberty.  So I bought six big Liberty apples for baking.  At first I was thinking dessert, but then it occurred to me that I could stuff them with something savory and have them be an entree.  I found a bunch of meatful recipes that involve stuffing apples with sausage, so I'm thinking I'll be making some sausage crumbles this weekend, either with frozen tofu or with TSP.  Still not sure what I'll be doing with the Nittany apples.  In the past I've baked them.  Mostly I just thought they were pretty.

These ingredients will be appearing in blog posts for the next week or so.  I also have a big bag of potatoes from a previous week's market, so expect some potato dishes.