Vegan Wedding Party: Appetizers part 1

Dan and I had our vegan "wedding" (really reception) last weekend, with a welcome party on Friday night and the real deal on Saturday. We pulled off Friday night with some major successes and one minor failure... I forgot to take any photos of the food! I sent a photo of the wine to my friends, which happens to have food in the background, though, check it out:

Appetizer table --
The dishes of this post are in that blue/white dish and the out-of-sight dish on its left,

I can make up for some of them with photos from when we made the dishes at home, which is what I'll do here. For others, I don't know -- a drawing? Photos of the ingredients? Photos of the views of Lake Superior with mouthwatering descriptions of baked beans?? I'll try my best. 

Red Onion Jam

If you haven't gotten the cookbook Vegan Cooking for Carnivores yet, it's worth it just for this tiny recipe at the back of the book. It looks like you can find the recipe by searching, and I'm not really into sharing copyrighted stuff anyway -- so I won't share the recipe here. I will share my one diversion -- though I use safflower oil at home, I used canola for the party, and it worked fine. I also use dried rosemary instead of fresh because it's what I always have on hand (and it tastes amazing anyway.) I doubled the recipe and it still went perfectly. 

Here's what it looks like cooking -- the final product is more jamlike and somewhat spreadable

I can also tell you what to pair it with! The best, and most expensive, pairing is probably Punk Rawk Labs Nutmilk Cheese on a cracker... it has a tangy, sharp taste to compliment the sweet herby taste of the onion jam. If you can't find that (we found it in St. Paul, and it's made near there) or you don't want to splurge, Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese is a tasty match as well!

Spinach Artichoke Dip

This has to be one of the best things to dip bread in... I was super proud, because the best I've ever made this was Friday night. The recipe comes from Yup, It's Vegan! I recommend using unsweetened almond milk with this for taste. I also sub arrowroot for tapioca starch, depending on what I have in the pantry. But man!!! If you want to feel really cool for cooking something, make this! Or if you don't like using packaged vegan cheeses (I do like using them, but holy cow, it feels awesome to make your own melty cheese), this is the way to go.

OK, it looks better all stirred up!

I actually used frozen spinach when I cooked it Friday (raw spinach is in the photographed version), and it turned out just fine -- I think I used probably 1 cup of frozen spinach to equal 2 cups raw. It was a little more spinachey, I guess. Seriously, the coolest part is making melty vegan cheese in a saucepan. All three times I've made this, I yell out, "I'M MAKING CHEESE!!!" -- that's how exciting it is. (It might just be me, I am still a cooking novice, even after several years...)

Conclusion: Both of these were a hit!! I was so happy with them both -- I saw people going back for seconds and wanted to cry tears of joy (and stress, and general overwhelmedness of throwing a wedding reception, but totally joy too). And just because I keep saying I cooked this stuff doesn't mean I am the only one who cooked -- Dan and his mom cooked, maybe more than I did, and pulled off even more major hits. Which I did NOT get photos of. Grrrr. 

Parting view of Lake Superior... I'll try to get one of these in for each post.

How awesome was our venue?