Pumpkin Shepherd's Pie - Vegan Gluten Free

My friend, Jan, and I made this delicious Pumpkin Shepherd's Pie for dinner tonight. We started with a recipe in the current issue of Sunset Magazine, which uses a lamb stew for the base. We made several substitutions to make the recipe vegan and gluten free and it worked! The result was delicious and definitely company quality tasty and beautiful. Specifically, we used a box of gluten free tempeh instead of lamb, increased the baby portabello mushrooms to 16 ounces and added halved brussel sprouts to the veggies. We quick sauteed each vegetable separately in a frying pan to seal in the flavors and then layered them in the ceramic baking casserole. And of course, we used gluten free flour for the gravy. For the mashed pumpkin, we used Silk soy creamer instead of dairy cream. And I reduced the salt by half. Everything else is the same. Delicious!

Handspinning at the Yarn School

Katherine and I attended our first ever Yarn School session in Harveyville, Kansas two weekends ago and it was fantastic! We joined about 25 other women from all over the country for a weekend of handspinning on spinning wheels & drop spindles, a dye lab workshop, knitting, eating and socializing. This was my first experience ever at handspinning and I had a blast! I'm definitely hooked. Above you can see my first clumsy efforts using a spinning wheel. The skein of yarn on the right is the first one I did and the skein in the middle is the second. Both are chunky and loose, but I can see a little improvement in the second. I brought the rest of the top home with me and when I buy a spinning wheel after Christmas, I hope to spin enough more yarn to knit a small cowl that I can actually wear. One of the highlights of the weekend was a field trip to the Wildcat Hollow Alpaca ranch nearby. There were many alpacas and they were all gentle, soft, adorable and friendly. The neatest thing about them was that they are curious and get to know you by nuzzling up to your face and sniffing your breath. It felt like they were "eskimo kissing."

Here is some beautiful alpaca/merino blend yarn that I bought while I was there. It was wonderful to meet the alpacas who produced this fiber.

And here are the results of our dye lab adventure.