Thanksgiving food

(I know this is late for Thanksgiving, but wanted to post in advance of any Christmas or New Year's meals people might need ideas for!)

Thanksgiving has its drawbacks--it's based on a misleading story and it has turned into a tradition of killing and eating turkeys and then watching the news about people duking it out over stuff on sale (I know of more people who make fun of black Friday shoppers than who actually go shopping, which is kind of just as bad?)

I will take any excuse to cook a big meal once or twice a year, though. But our family Thanksgiving tradition, if we ever have kids, will be to explain what actually happened when Europeans came to the 'new world' here, and also how life was much better for turkeys before that time.

This year, we ordered a few vegan smoked goose packages from May Wah and cooked those along with a ton of other dishes:

Too much for one photo!

I'll try to list the dishes from top to bottom: We've got cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, store-bought rolls off to the side there, gravy, brussels sprouts, smoked non-goose, stuffing, and green bean casserole. And lots of wine, of course!

Birthday food!

Last Saturday was my birthday, and I got to have some spectacular food...

Tiramisu cake

Vegan ramen in DC (part two, kind of)

We previously posted a comparison of a vegan ramen shop in Tokyo (T's Tan Tan) compared to vegan ramen from Daikaya, which is in Chinatown, DC. We've also visited Sakuramen in Adam's Morgan, which has a vegan ramen. Both Daikaya and Sakuramen have pretty good vegan ramens, which are tasty in large part because of the awesome mushrooms included in the soup (if you like that kind of thing.) But today we tried out the vegan ramen from Taan Noodles, also in Adam's Morgan, and it's definitely my favorite of the three DC options we've tried.　本当においしいよ！

I'll lay out my reasons for giving Taan Noodles top place in vegan ramen below: