Right to left: Spanish rice, nacho cheez, Mexican Chili Gravy, TVP Taco & Burrito Filling
I decided to spend part of my new years day making an insane amount of food. (Once I had recovered from my hangover. For the record, vodka shots = bad idea. Always.) I wanted to make this enchilada recipe from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah: Recipes For Hungry Banditos, which involved making guacamole, spanish rice, nacho cheez, tvp taco filling, and enchilada sauce. I cheated and used the spanish rice from Trader Joe's, the kind that comes in a box with rice and a spice packet. I kind of feel guilty making food that involves a flavor packet, but I actually like this rice better than the kind I make from scratch. It's more like that rice you get in mexican restaurants, which I totally love. I also made the nacho cheez sauce from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. (The Nacho Cheez sauce is freaking awesome, by the way.) Everything else is from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah. I also cheated and used refried beans (in a can!) from Trader Joe's.
After making all the components, I assembled them into enchiladas with corn tortillas and baked it all. Oh man, so freaking delicious. Totally worth the time it took to make everything. The cheez sauce really works in this, and together everything is all spicy and nummers.
Tofu and gravy from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, potatoes from Real Food Daily
I was inspired to make this tofu after seeing it made by Bex at How to Feed a Vegan. I was like "Fried tofu and gravy you say? Why, I happen to own that cookbook . . ." I mixed up the gravy recipe a little bit by adding some spices and more mushrooms and cooking the mushrooms in some sherry, because booze makes things delicious, even things like gravy that are already delicious. (I'm a little obsessed with gravy lately.) The tofu was pretty easy to make and was also very tasty, especially covered in gravy. The spice mixture in the tofu breading added an especially nice touch.
The mashed potatoes were pretty good. They didn't taste particularly garlicky too me, but you can't really go wrong with mashed potatoes. They definitely added to the comfort food appeal. (And provided something else to put gravy on. Yum!)
Local: Tofu, salad fixins 
crust from 
What says fall more than apple pie? And what says apple pie more than "I've got three bags full of apples from my CSA and they're starting to look sad"? Nothing, that's what. This was my first time trying a vodka pie crust, and I was very pleased with it - usually I overwork my pie crust trying to incorporate all the flour and end up with the dread Tough Crust. But this turned out perfectly! If anything, the dough was overly wet and slightly sticky. As usual, booze solves everything. Booze and science. And my food processor.
My filling was also very tasty, although in the future I'll use more apples. I just sort of filled up the pie tin, and I think I could have really piled them in there. I want a mountain of apple pie filling! A mountain! Hooray for delicious and actually pretty easy apple pie. (I also cheated and didn't peel the apples. I am lazy and I sort of forgot to.)
Local: Apples 
Salad fixins: Lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, pickled beets and onions from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, "Betta fetta" from The Uncheese Cookbook, leftover Cumin Lime Tofu from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan, ground up cashews, and Miso-Tahini dressing from Veganomicon
Not the prettiest thing ever, but so tasty. The Miso-Tahini dressing gave this an almost smokey taste that was so good combined with the other flavors. The pickled beets had a lovely sweet and tangy flavor going on, the Betta Fetta was rich and salty and slightly tangy, the cashews were fatty and delicious. There were just a ton of deep, rich flavors in this salad, and they combined beautifully in each complex bite. Another very successful salad using the "throw in random stuff from the fridge" method.
Local: Lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, beets, tofu 
This is from the "Dirty South Cookbook" part of Hot Damn & Hell Yeah. The girl who wrote that part tends to be fairly vague about things, and I modded the hell of out of this recipe. I replaced macaroni with rigatoni because that was what I had, used peas instead of corn because I don't really like corn, cooked the veggies & tofu with lots of braggs & cayenne pepper and cumin, and added herbs de provence, cayenne pepper and chili powder to the "cheese" sauce. Oh, and I broiled it for 2 minutes to get the top crispy. It turned out really yummy and comfort-foody, but flavorful. My omni roommate said it "doesn't taste vegan," which I am taking as a complement. 
I was very sad that I had to stop eating this guacamole out of the bowl with a fork in order to take this picture. My friend saw me eating some and was like "You don't have to change guacamole at all for it to be vegan, right?" and I was like "Nope" and she was like "If I was considering going vegan, that might be the deciding factor." In summation, guacamole is super yummy. 
I let the tofu for the fajitas get to the point of almost being burned because I was making the gauc while it cooked, and it turned out delicious, all crispy and with that sort of gooey carmelization thing going on with the onions & marinade. I never do this when I'm paying attention to what I cook, because I'm too impatient and worried about stuff burning, but now that it's happened I think I'm going to try to make it happen again.
I don't think you can go wrong with any meal that involves guacamole. 
This is from a cookbook called "Hot Damn and Hell Yeah: Recipes for Hungry Banditos". (Yes, I ordered it from Amazon while drunk. Remember when I used to make out with people while drunk? Now I just order vegan cookbooks online.)
I am super craving the kind of rice you get in Mexican restaurants lately, you know the kind that's really soft and sort of greasy and the whole thing is red-tinged and it has tiny red flecks in it? I think maybe I'm using the wrong kind of rice, because in the Mexican rice the rice grains are sort of split open down the middle.
Anyway, this is not quite that, and at first I was kind of disappointed, but then when I went to put the leftovers away, I was like, "I'll just have one little bite," and then I ate like half a Tupperware container full. So I think maybe it just had to sit around a little bit to let all of the flavors meld and the rice get a little squooshy. Anyway, it's very good, I am looking forward to having it with tofu fajitas for dinner tomorrow. (I am also going to make guacamole!)