The turkey has landed! One week and counting to the biggest food holiday of the year. Are you ready? Yeah, I’m not quite ready this year either. Luckily I have several beautiful recipes already figured out and just waiting to be made. Here are a few ideas from the archives to inspire and move you into the kitchen:

I have a new cookbook crush. In fact it may even be an infatuation. It started innocently enough, with a link from Heidi to a video interview with Yottam Ottolenghi. Now I had heard the name Ottolenghi mentioned before in vegetarian circles- always with proclamations of incredible food and concepts. Yet watching the video brought the passion and love embodied in Ottolenghi’s food to life. An Israeli born restauranteur who runs several eponymous restaurants in London with a Palestinian head chef, I immediately jumped over to Amazon and bought his new vegetarian cookbook, Plenty.

As you travel along Interstate 90 across South Dakota you might notice a brown sign which says “Badlands Scenic Loop”. A glance at your road map shows a 31 mile loop going south of the interstate. From the vantage point out your window on I-90, nothing but flat open grassland as far as the eye can see, it would be easy to just keep on driving. Yet those willing to take the scenic route will be rewarded with one of the more incredible (almost paranormal) phenomenons in the U.S.- the Badlands.

I know what you are saying. Eggplant bacon? Seriously? My thoughts exactly.

The world of vegetarian and vegan cuisine can have a lot of strange faux meat products. Everything from mock chicken nuggets to frozen veggie burgers with a disturbing brown color and ‘grill marks’. I have largely avoided these products since: 1.) most contain gluten to hold the veggie ingredients together 2.) processed food just really isn’t our thing and 3.) I’ve found the best way to enjoy a vegan diet is to stop focusing on meat replacement. However when I saw recipes for eggplant bacon on respected vegan food blogs curiosity got the better of me.