Thanksgiving Planning: A vegetarian holiday

By Airmaxjunkie1

The planning has begun for Thanksgiving! I woke up this morning with the intention to gather what I am making over a four day cooking and cleaning fest! I have tried my hardest to incorporate our different dishes into Thanksgiving with some interesting findings.

1- My husband only cares about the bird.

2- I am all about the side dishes.

3- DON'T MESS WITH MY DOG SHOW!!!

4- My son loves to watch me cook and help.

5- I love adding soul food but can I remove the meat?

If you are vegan or vegetarian and this is your first holiday it is quite frustrating! All the traditions that you have grown up to love come with the thought of. . .say goodbye to them. Out of the six years I have been a vegetarian this is not true. You can even add some fun items to the mix. Here are some links and recipes that I will be adding to our meal line-up.

Kale Greens
1/4 cup water
12 cups kale, washed and coarsely chopped
1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup Bragg Liquid Aminos

Heat the water in a large pot until it comes to a boil. Add the kale, onion, garlic powder and nutritional yeast. Cover and let cook until the kale is soft and tender, about 15 minutes. Add liquid aminos to taste and mix thoroughly. I am trying to do this with collard greens instead of kale greens as I am adding kale to a salad and possibly a lasagna and that would be way too much kale. Even though you can not have enough kale. This recipe is from one of my fave soul food vegan restaurants here in Chicago- Soul Vegetarian

I also want to make green bean casserole- which was a staple in my family as a teenager. It is very simple to make standard but making it vegan may be a difficult patch. I know I am going to have to make the cream of mushroom soup first but I think with the big chunks of mushroom might make all the difference. I found a pretty good recipe to make but I am going to replace the vegan butter with coconut oil adding more of that yummy aromatic taste to it. Ooooh, this is going to be so good!

Vegan Cream of Mushroom Soup

Checking out the ingredients of the french fried onions is complicated- there is cheese and buttermilk in this so you can either make it or take it out altogether. There is a recipe where you would replace milk with almond or soy milk but the actual container has buttermilk and cheese in it so I am not sure on this one. When I make it though it may have to be lacto-friendly until I can master how to make it vegan. (Again, I am mainly a lacto-ovo vegetarian so even though it is an easier transition to vegan it is not always simple.)

Homemade French Onions

Here is a recommended recipe for a potato bake. I pulled this off the Forks over Knives website. It looks pretty good. I didn't grow rosemary this year which is a bummer because I would have had some fresh rosemary and who can beat that?

Rosemary Potato Bake

I want to make a kale salad with poppyseed dressing and dried cranberries. I can either get a salad pack from Aldi or throw something together with kale, spinach, cabbage, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds and pepitos- I have been craving pepitos and kale so I am pretty sure that is my body craving some virus fighters. ( Kale and pepitos are rich in zinc, vitamin A, vitamin C and calcium)

The "poultry" I am getting my buddy Gardein product. If you are just starting out they are the best at their chicken and turkey-veggie line. I have not been able to find it so I may head out to the burbs to look for their holiday meal product. I hear their vegetarian gravy is not very good so I will check out Sweet Potato Soul website and do her recipe which looks thick, savory and yummy.

Sweet Potato Soul Mushroom Gravy

Now, I just have to add some beans in there somewhere and we are set! Next entry is about the non-vegetarian recipes.

Bien provicho! Bueno suerte! Get it!! Happy cooking!

-Eclectic Lotus