Vegan Mofo - Very Successful Tempeh Loaf

Last night my Parents & Grandma came over for dinner. Having five people to cook for and finding I was pretty close to having all the right ingredients for tempeh loaf from the Real Food Daily cookbook, I decided to go for it. As I was making it I realized I've been wanting to find a good vegan loaf recipie for a while and as it came together it looked more and more like I had found it. Real Food Daily is a really great restaurant in L.A., all vegan, organic, two locations. When we visited L.A. last October their food was so good we visited them twice and bought the cookbook. And so far I've had nothing but luck with the recipes. The recipes are well written to be exciting yet reliable, and like the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook, it's peppered with stories about how the restaurant started, why they started offering thanksgiving meals, etc. Anyway, I went with the route of making the recommended side dishes as well, roasted fall veggies and mashed potatoes with golden gravy. Most of the food, other than the veggies, was prepared by me the night before and Chuck helped by reheating it when my family came over. It all worked out really well, and the tempeh loaf got great reviews from the family despite their typically meat-eating ways. Which is exactly what you hope for with a dish like this. Oh, and I got to use the cool dicing wheel on our food processor too, to mush up the tempeh. That was so much fun!

I think we've got just enough leftover for dinner, and my stomach is growling in anticipation!