When we returned from the Farm tour, I got to work on my cooking demos.

I showed attendees how to make my Creole Steamed Sausages, Vegan Pimento Cheese, and Tomato Salad, all recipes from my vegan Southern cookbook.

Here I am stirring the tomato salad:

And a small scoop of my Tomato Salad. Somehow I managed not to get many tomatoes on my plate, but I assure you they were in there.

Also, you may be wondering why I'd make such a summer-y salad in the fall. Well, it's still in the 80s here, and our tomato plants are booming.

My home plant has nearly 30 little tomatoes on it, and I hope it stays warm long enough for them to ripen.

By the way, you can find the recipe for this salad here on the Jazzy Vegetarian website, but you have to scroll down the page to see it.

After my demos, Douglas showed us how to make his Raw Crackers. Douglas is, by far, the BEST raw cracker maker in the world.

I've had a lot of raw crackers in my day, and his are just phenomenal.

He uses a mixture of nuts and seeds, ground up in the food processor, and mixed with cumin, salt, and tomatoes.

Douglas also showed us the old-school Farm way to make seitan, or gluten as they call it there.

Basically, it's old high gluten flour method where you knead and rinse the dough in water over and over until it runs clear.

That's the way I always did it when I first went vegan.

It might seem to be pain in the ass these days, when seitan can easily be made from vital wheat gluten flour or purchased pre-made in the store.

But this stuff is so much more tender and delicious. It's worth the work:

Then Douglas made the Indian street snack, Bhel Puri.

I'd never tried this before, and it was unlike anything I'd had before — crumbled Ramen (you KNOW I loved that), spicy mint chutney, unsweetened puffed rice, garam masala, tomatoes, and some other spices.

I'll certainly be making this again!

And finally, Douglas showed us how to make his simple Raw Raspberry Truffles.

These are just made with freeze-dried raspberry powder, dates, raw cacao powder, and a little agave.

And then they're rolled into coconut:

After dessert, we all made Veggie Sushi to take to a party on Saturday night at the Farm.

Farm resident Rick was in town with his new married partner Rose, and they were having a tropical wedding reception in the Farm's Community Center.

Here's Ebony, our class's master sushi roller, cutting the sushi:

On Saturday night, the retreat attendees attended the wedding reception of Rick and Rose at the Farm Community Center.

Rick is a part-time Farm resident, and he used to work for the Book Publishing Company. In fact, he was the first person I met at BPC when he would send me books to review on this blog.

Now, the Book Publishing Company is publishing my cookbook, and if it wasn't for me forming a friendship with Rick, I might have never decided to send them a proposal.

Rose, his awesome new wife, is a ball of positive energy. I had the pleasure of meeting her at my last vegan retreat in February, and she's just as fun as can be.

The two spontaneously got hitched on a recent vacation to Hawaii, but they held their reception with all their Farm friends back home.

When I was at the Farm last February, I demonstrated how to make my BBQ Tempeh and Carrot Sliders.

Rick and Rose requested the recipe to serve at their reception!!

Here's a slider stuffed onto my plate of veggie sushi (made by the retreat class), crackers, uncheese, and dip:

The night before the reception, Rick and Rose made a Vegan Wedding Cake using one of Fran Costigan's recipes from More Great Good Dairy Free Desserts.

Sadly, Paul and I had to leave for Memphis before the cake was cut since we had a 3 1/2 hour drive home.

I'm sure it was delectable!