My Vegan Thanksgiving

As I said previously, a few friends had wanted to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving, not because they're vegetarians, but because they wanted to try it out. But in the end, there were some cancellations, and it turned out to be just my downstairs neighbor and I. Fortunately, she was hosting and between the two of us we had the bulk of the dinner anyway.

My contributions were as follows:

Mushrooms en croute (I based this on a recipe for mushroom Wellington, but I didn't use truffle oil so I thought I couldn't call it Wellington). This was really great, except that in trying to get the top to brown I burned the bottom. Oh, well. If one didn't eat the bottom, this made a really show-stopping main dish. What would you suggest instead of an egg wash to brown puff pastry?

Cranberry apple stuffing. This is a veganized version of the recipe on the McCormick website. I've made this many times; it's usually not actually stuffed in anything. But it's good without being in anything. You can put it in acorn squash, though, and it goes really well that way.

Corn pudding. When my neighbor--who is a committed omnivore--was trying to figure out how to handle vegan Thanksgiving food, I took the Super Fun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook over to her apartment to help her find ideas. This is one of the things from the book I agreed to take on. The recipe is easy, and it ultimately tastes a lot like corn bread--I'm going to try the leftovers with some butter and bee-free honey as a breakfast and I'll report back.

Green bean casserole, also from the Super Fun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook. I loved this and I was sorry I halved the recipe. I will be making this again and I won't wait for another holiday because I have half a can of French fried onions I have to use.

Her contributions were also delicious. She wanted more protein (although there are pecans and cashews well represented above, beyond the vegetable proteins) so I suggested she try this out:

Blood orange glazed tofu from the Super Fun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook. This was such a great flavor. It's actually one of the "Christmas" recipes but it went very well with the rest of what we had.

Roasted acorn squash. If you're having stuffed acorn squash as your major meal sometime, you can fill the cavity with that stuffing I made and have something nutty for dessert. I can see that being very satisfying!

Baked sweet potatoes. She told me to bring my own butter down to go with them, so I did; they were lovely, as sweet potatoes tend to be!

And finally, apple pie. I loved the little gingerbread man cut out! She made the pie with Granny Smith apples and they dissolved into more of a very thick applesauce-type filling. It wasn't her intention but I liked it.

If we'd had more people we probably would have had more dessert options, but we didn't really need them since we ate ourselves silly anyway.

I hope that anyone who was celebrating also had a lovely Thanksgiving! If nothing else, it's amazing to get this long weekend.