Last Friday we took our first break in a few months and had our own vegan Thanksgiving Dinner.  We’ve added a few new employees so we can no longer fit into our kitchen.  We sectioned off part of our warehouse, rented some tables and chairs, plopped down some candles and some table linens and cooked up a storm.

Our vision for Thanksgiving was to honor the spirit (either in reality or myth) of the first American Thanksgiving – a multi cultural feast that honors each participating culture with special thanks to the First Peoples (Native Americans) of this country.

Jennifer was the hostess and party planner person with Chef Steve cooking the fundamentals…..mashed pots, gravy, stuffing, cranberry relish and yes…..our beloved Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute.  I (David) cooked some of the more culturally specific meals because unlike last year, employees were to busy working to cook their own dishes.  Mushroom Adobo from the Phillipines, Momo from Nepal/Bhutan with fresh salsa, Corn, Red Bell Pepper, Black Bean, Cilantro melange representing from South of the Border.

We also had a special honoring of key Field Roast employee Nhung Nguyen who has worked at Field Roast for 10 years!  If you’ve ever had Field Roast….then you’ve had something that has been sliced, labelled, packed by Nhung and her crew of almost 20 people.

We hope your Thanksgiving tomorrow is as enjoyable and meaningful as ours was last Friday.

Peace to you,

This is a warm spinach salad with Smoked Apple Sage Sausage, roasted butter nut squash, pomegranate, and toasted pumpkin seeds.  So rich and comforting for a fall day.

Preheat oven to 425 F.
Peel and cut 1 butternut squash into wedges.
Place on a baking sheet and drizzle with 2 Tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in oven for 15-20 minutes stirring occasionally.  In a small sauce pan over medium heat, add balsamic vinegar and reduce to a thin syrup.
Slice Field Roast Apple Sage Sausage. In a skillet over medium heat, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil and add Apple Sage Sausage. Cook sausage browning on both sides, 4-5 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add remaining one Tbsp of oil to pan. Add the spinach to the pan and stir constantly until spinach is wilted and reduced in size, 2-3 minutes.
Toss together spinach, Apple Sage Sausage, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate, and squash. Plate and drizzle with balsamic reduction.

Below is the press release and menu for the event.

Presidents Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt galvanized the nation with voluntary meatless days during both world wars. The idea of meatless days has recently been revitalized across the country in the Meatless Monday Movement and has been embraced by such luminaries as President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Degeneres and supported by organizations such as The Humane Society. By cutting out meat once a week, we can improve our health, reduce our carbon footprint and save precious resources.

In honor of this worthy effort, Field Roast is sponsoring an evening that celebrates a delicious plant based menu that carnivores and vegetarians will find both satisfying and delightful.  The menu has been created by the folks at Field Roast in conjunction with Judkins Street Café and will contain both Field Roast vegetarian meats and Judkins Street Café regular menu items.

Hello, Field Roast fans!

My name is Danielle.  My partner Robbie and I have been working with Field Roast since we met David in NYC, where we live, and expressed our love for Field Roast and our interest in seeing it take over the world.

We just came back from our second year at the DC Veg Fest 2011 where we had the pleasure of sampling free Field Roast sausages to tons of hungry people. We were blown away by how many people- vegan, vegetarian, and meat-eating alike were familiar and, like us, in love with Field Roast.  Within minutes of heating up our grill, we had a long line that continued to grow throughout the day.

There were also lots of people who were able to try our sausages for the first time, or sample a flavor they had never tried before. We were blown away by your stories of bringing Celebration Roast to family gatherings and watching your relatives open up to, and savor vegan food, as well as your very positive feedback about our new Frankfurter. Thank you all so much for your support!  – Danielle

Field Roast spent this past weekend just 20 minutes east of Seattle in lovely Issaquah as a guest at the Puget Consumers Co-op (PCC) Vendor Fair. We set up our table and canopy in the parking lot and handed out free samples of our 3 sausages: Italian, Mexican Chipotle and Apple Sage, – voted a PCC’s kid’s pick, and our newest addition to the family the Frankfurter dog! Thanks for stopping by and saying hi if you did, we love to hear from you. We had an ideal location, third stop on the right from the entrance, in excellent company between new and old friends. Our modest booth greeted many new fans, complete disbelievers and even some amazing Field Roast Evangelists.I love telling traditional omnivores that the meat they have in their mouth is completely vegetarian, comes from grains and doesn’t contain nitrates or cholesterol, like a sausage made from animal products.

Some people looked at me in extreme disbelief and wonder – can they trust this girl behind the delicious smelling sausage counter, cooking up the tasty meats? It smells and tastes like ‘real meat’, how can this all be true? I wish I had a hidden camera on all of the stocky sporting looking men who almost choked on their sausage, when I said “it’s completely vegetarian”. This could be my new most favorite part of the job!

Over the 2 day festive and sunny event – Jennifer and I demoed almost 50 pounds of our 3 top selling products. Everyone wanted to try our newest addition to the Field Roast family – The Frankfurter dog. The comments were interesting… one woman said “my childhood has just flashed before my eyes, I haven’t had this taste in my mouth since I was a little girl”. Funny how taste can trigger long lost emotion isn’t it? I know exactly what she meant. I haven’t had a hot dog in years.

My first day working here with the company, I walked in and said I must try the new Frankfurter – today! That night I took it home, grilled it up, put it on a bun with yellow mustard and took my first bite. It almost brought tears to my eyes because I could see my grandmother handing me a traditional hotdog as a child. So many years, even decades have passed since I’ve had this memory; happily triggered by my first taste of the new FR Frankfurter.

The Frankfurter is out in stores now and at Safeco Field if you happen to be at a baseball game in Seattle.Pick up a 6 pack of dogs at your local co-op or grocery store and let us hear your thoughts! We would love to post them on the blog so that others can share in this emotional experience. Go ahead and email us at info@fieldroast.com

Cheers!
FRinEveryKitchen

A hungry PCC employee knows what’s good for her!

For more info on this co-op visit:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCC_Natural_Markets

Why am I writing a blog about Thanksgiving and Christmas when school hasn’t even started yet? Here at Field Roast, despite being late summer, we’ve been working hard to make this year’s holiday season a success. Cooking for a large family can be overwhelming, cooking for tens of thousands of families….well that just takes a lot of people and planning!

Our grocery list is HUGE. The holiday shopping list includes such tasty things like buttery vegan puff pastry, tangy cranberries, fragrant curry powder, and delicious candied ginger to make a whole bunch of Hazelnut Cranberry Roasts En Croute. Storage in the warehouse and ingredients on hand are all increased. As the holiday approaches, we still need to maintain our current orders for sausages, deli slices and our new frankfurters. The mixing bowls and steam ovens will be working at full capacity.

Not only are we busy, but the buyers in the grocery stores that you buy our products from are busy placing orders as well. Jennifer and Staci have been hard at work calling grocery stores around the country to make sure they place orders for the Celebration Roasts and Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute. The buyers all seem eager and excited to carry our vegetarian holiday roasts once again.
Mid-September is the when the real bustle begins.

Fresh holiday specific produce and ingredients begin to pour into the warehouse and will be quickly fashioned into holiday roasts, packaged, frozen and put on semi-trailers to be shipped across the nation so that all of us can eat together and celebrate the holidays.

I know in my family food is one of the main traditions that we partake in around the holidays, and we here at Field Roast hope that we can become part of your holiday tradition.

This summer at Field Roast has been the “Summer of Franks”….as we have begun to make our brand new Frankfurter and start selling them around the country. Our first food service customer has been the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field. We were honored and pleased when they selected our new Frankfurter as their official vegetarian offering.

Our goal in making a Field Roast Frankfurter is to make a moist and “fatty” frank. Centerplate, the people who take care of the food at Safeco Field do a great job with preparing the frank. It’s available on the main concourse right behind home plate and in the 300 level at sections 132 and 329. We’ve been so delighted with Safeco Field and the Seattle Mariners that we decided to become a sponsor. Look for our advertisements along the third base line that tell fans where they can pick up one of our new dogs!

On another note…We have been busy as dogs at Field Roast…and frankly, we seem to have made some progress with placements of the new Frankfurter! Funny enough Florida and Colorado are in the lead in regards to number of stores. Shout out to Fort Collins for the business! Thanks!

There are still a couple months before summer is over (didn’t it just start?) and Labor Day is the hopeful weekend that the grills everywhere will be sizzling with Field Roast Franks. We know that many of you have gotten to try them, and the response has been awesome! We thank everyone who has taken the time to send a note via email or Facebook, and ask that you keep it coming!