Who needs a real turkey anyway!?
Whenever the holidays roll around, I’m often asked, “As a vegetarian, what do you eat at Thanksgiving?” Besides the turkey itself, and the gravy, there’s no meat in pumpkin pie. Last time I checked, the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole were meat free. Heck, if you bake the “stuffing” separately, it can be totally satisfying meatless. Thanksgiving and Halloween duke it out as my favorite holidays, but with all the amazing food, I think Thanksgiving K.O.s Halloween. Particularly with everything getting more and more consumer driven, at least Thanksgiving is more about eating good food with loved ones than any other modern day holiday.
Plus, with the hourly barrage of advertising telling you how inadequate your life is without insert-name-of-useless-gadget-here, how awesome is it to have a national holiday encouraging us to be grateful for what we already have?! (Even if President Roosevelt did move the national holiday to the third Thursday in November, from the last, to extend the Christmas shopping season.) The same way I buy much of my groceries, I just buy most of my Thanksgiving ingredients from the growers I know and love at the farmers market. So, for the next few days, I will feature some of my favorite autumnal vegetarian dishes, perfect for your Thanksgiving with a crowd, or just a few people. Even if you eat meat, these recipes are a great way to incorporate more veggies into the meal, or just put a fun twist on holiday classics.
7 thoughts on “Vegetarian Thanksgiving”
Hi1 nice to see you are all geared up to post some veggie thanksgiving recipes! I am a born vegetarian, and maintain a veggie food blog too:) I field the same question as you every year, so looking forward to your posts!!
-Mansi
Did you make that furkey (er, fake turkey)? That is AWESOME!
So, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, of course. The only time I’ve had Turkey is at Subway and they’ve phased it out in favor of Chicken Ham.
Mansi – Thanks for commenting. I’ll have to check out your blog too. I will have cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and a few other things. Yum!
Manggy – Again, my awesome husband found a similar photo of a turkey made from potatoes, on the web, so we recreated it and took pictures. Hmmm…chicken ham, huh? As one thing? I must say that as a vegetarian, I do miss Thanksgiving turkey. It’s one of the only real meat things I get a hankering for sometimes.
okay, you have such a gift for cooking and i knew you had a special talent for photography too, but this is just beyond.
dare i say that it’s better than your pumpkins? nothing is better than your pumpkins! 🙂
Gigi – Thanks! Marc never ceases to amaze me with his ingenuity and creativity. Too bad Tastespotting didn’t think so. Glad you liked it. I was hoping the po-turkey wouldn’t need any explanation. Phew. 🙂
Bri, love the po-turkey! I made a turkey-shaped loaf of rosemary focaccia one year, with fabric feathers on skewers stuck in it… but yours is definitely cuter! 🙂
Quick historical note (found when I was researching the Ethicurean article, but not used, obviously): FDR did succeed in moving Thanksgiving to the 3rd Thursday of November, but after 2 years, Congress fought back and moved it back to the 4th Thursday because it was too “commercial.” Hmmmm… what would they think now???
Thanks for dropping by Jennifer. Well, a turkey-shaped rosemary focaccia sounds tastier than this po-turkey. I totally saw that thing about Congress fighting against moving Thanksgiving because it was too commercial. Oh, how times have changed. I am happy to have found Ethicurean, and now your site as well. I will be sure to frequent them.