God, what a month November was. It started out with such elation, and ended in heartaches. In between, there was plenty of food, a little competition, and some serious soul-searching.
As you guys might know, I've been participating in a sort of blogging contest/project thing with a few friends. It's called the World Foods Fusion Taste Team. Our team represented Texas, and our job was to review a package of complementary sauces from World Foods. The sauces have all kinds of positive attributes. They are all natural, vegan, and gluten-free, so I figured it couldn't hurt to give this thing a whirl. Unfortunately, try as I might, I just couldn't get into the products. I really wasn't crazy about the taste of most of the sauces, so while the sauces did end up inspiring some cool recipes, including Texas Pad Thai, I only actually used one of the sauces, which was their Green Curry Paste.
It was tough to drop the project midway, but sometimes you just have to face the facts that something isn't going to work out. That's kind of been the moral of this month, hasn't it? Sigh.
It wasn't all mope and sadness, though. Thanksgiving was great. Scott and I hosted a dinner for fourteen guests. It was our first big holiday in our new house, so that was pretty cool. I had fun decorating, setting the table, and preparing dinner. The next day I got to see an idea become reality when we had our first live, online cook-off over G+. My Thanksgiving pizza may not have won the day, but connecting food people in a whole new way was reward enough. I can't wait for the next one. It's in the works, by the way. I'm shooting for January to throw the next one. If you'd be interested in participating in an upcoming throw-down, please sign up for the roster here.
I also got the chance to write a recipe for In.gredients, the hip new, package-free grocery store in town. I made a vegan sweet potato dish inspired by an old Southern favorite, Shrimp n' Grits, and a mess of the tastiest damned collard greens ever. They were almost good enough to redeem November entirely.
Almost.
Recipes from November: