8 posts tagged “thanksgiving”
People are talking about the faux-pas of the week: Sarah Palin pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, and then being unintentionally ironic by giving an interview about it smack dab in front of some guy beheading a series of turkeys.
Over at Vegan Soapbox, Check it out.
Delicious Living Magazine posted some nice vegetarian recipes for Thanksgiving, and Kalyn from BlogHer put out a call for everyone's favorite Thanksgiving recipes, so I felt inspired to dig out my favorite Thanksgiving recipe. This was originally included in a PETA mailing as a little perforated attached recipe index card. This recipe is how I discovered nutritional yeast, so I am forever in its debt! I may not cook the entire thing very often, but I can tell you I cook the gravy recipe just about every week.
Tofu Pot Pie, Serves 8 people
Pie Crust
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
½ c. margarine
1 tsp. salt
½ c. water
Directions:
- Mix flour, margarine & salt together, adding water as needed. Separate dough into two balls. Roll one ball into a 9-inch pie shell. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 400° for a half-baked pie shell. Roll other ball into top crust.
Golden Gravy
Ingredients:
¼ c. flour
½ c. nutritional yeast flakes (available at Whole Foods.)
1/3 c. oil or margarine (oil works better.)
1 ½ c. water
2 to 3 TB soy sauce or tamari
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
- Toast the flour and nutritional yeast flakes in a pan, until the mixture gives off a nutty aroma. Add oil and stir until bubbly. Add water and cook until mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly. Add soy sauce, salt and pepper. Makes approx. 2 c. of gravy.
Pie
Ingredients:
1 half-baked 9-inch pie crust (see above)
¼ c. flour
1 TB nutritional yeast flakes
1 tsp salt
¾ tsp. garlic powder
3 c. firm tofu, chopped to bite size
2 TB oil
1 c. finely chopped celery
1 c. sliced carrots
Other vegetables as desired (I use corn kernels and green peas, for example.)
2 c. Golden Gravy (see above)
Preheat oven to 375°
Directions:
- Have ready the cooked pie crust, and the dough for the top crust.
- Combine flour, yeast flakes, salt, garlic powder and tofu in a paper bag and shake. Saute tofu mixture in oil until lightly browned. Add onions, celery and carrots. When onions are soft, add any other vegetables.
- Pour Golden gravy over mixture and serve. Pour mixture into half-baked pie shell. Top with pie crust and bake at 375° for 30 minutes.
- Alternate: You can also simply pour mixture into a casserole dish and top with crushed corn flakes.
Veggie Chic has a review of the Tofurkey they cooked for Thanksgiving. I've never tried tofurkey before, and frankly it scares me.
As always my sister-in-law throws a great Thanksgiving dinner, and goes out of her way to accommodate me. And this year there wasn't even a "what-makes-this-strawberry-soup-so-creamy?-that-would-be-cream" moment! Although she did buy a vegan dessert from Whole Foods, and then forget to tell me about it.
FWIW: The strawberry soup tastes pretty much just as good without the creme fraiche.
Breakfast:
2 slices of Seeded Sourdough
Soy Margarine, Tofutti Cream Cheese and Organic Avocado (not all on top of each other)
Lunch:
Leftover Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Soy Margarine and Vegan Parmesan
Snack:
Asparagus
Nuts
Sparkling Cider
Dinner:
Roll with Soy Margarine
Strawberry Soup in a Canteloupe
Sauteed Brussels Sprouts
Cranberry
Mushroom Risotto, made especially for me :)
Did any of you not eat leftovers yesterday?
I did, although not for breakfast, lunch and dinner (just breakfast and dinner!)
I also lost about a half-pound this week, which I can assure you would never have happened were it not for the veganism. I don't recall ever actually losing weight over Thanksgiving weekend. And if you read my posts over this long weekend you'll know that I didn't go hungry. So, that's nice.
Breakfast:
Leftover Corn w/Soy Margarine
Leftover Mushroom Risotto
Odwalla Grapefruit Juice
Snack:
Mini-Pita w/Guacamole, Tofutti Cream "Cheese" and Eggless Egg Salad
Lunch:
2 Frozen Hash Brown Patties
Morningstar Farms "Chikn" Strips in Olive Oil
Dinner:
Leftover Mushroom Risotto
1 Amy's Enchilada
Yesterday my mom had another version of Thanksgiving. She invited over the couple who introduced she and my step-dad to one another and even cooked a turkey, because my step-dad loves the leftovers for sandwiches all week. Once again my offer to make my baked winter vegetable dish was rejected, because my mom decided to try a recipe for vegan stuffed acorn squash that the San Jose Merc. featured last week.
This time I was smart enough to bring over rice milk and soy margarine, so I could make my own version of my very favorite Thanksgiving food...mashed potatoes. I got a little too creative, though, and added avocado to them as an experiment. Almost an entire avocado. Can you say rich? Not that they weren't yummy. But they were too rich. And in fact they didn't really taste so much like mashed potatoes anymore.
My sister and her kids also came over, and the whole evening was a little hard on my injured back/shoulder, what with the helping and with the reaching and testing to keep children from walking into corners or knocking glass items to the floor.
Breakfast:
1 slice Sourdough Bread, half with Soy Margarine, half with Tofutti Cream Cheese
Lunch:
Diet Coke
Leftover Baked Winter Vegetables with a scooch of Gravy.
Mini-Pita with Eggless Egg Salad and Tofutti Cream Cheese
Coconut Sorbet
Dinner:
Cashew Nuts
Water Crackers with Jalapeno Jelly (Never had that before, actually quite good.)
Bread
Avocado Mashed Poataoes (A little less avocado, a little more potato, and I would have been fine.)
Boiled Corn Kernels
Sugared Carrots
Acorn Squash stuffed with Pecan Brown Rice
Fruit Compote
Once again, hardly a lack of choices for me. I guess if I had to name one thing I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving, it's that my family is very understanding and accommodating about my veg*nism, not like some families I have heard about.
(Although my mom really really doesn't get why honey should be considered off-limits. I guess I could send her this link that explains it)
Yesterday I had a phone call with my mom about Thanksgiving. We ended up talking about what I eat, and she said she couldn't understand how I wouldn't lose weight if I was being a vegan. I proclaimed that I had indeed lost 7 pounds since becoming a vegan. She was surprised and impressed that that could be done "without trying."
It only occurred to me later that I had seen her but four days before, so obviously it doesn't look like I've lost weight!
Sigh.
I then proceeded to tell her that yes, there were times, particularly when out and about, that it was hard to get a hearty meal due to lack of available options. And yes, it was true that I hadn't yet discovered a lot of vegan snack foods...you know the kind you eat between meals with your hands, even though you shouldn't? But I assured her that when home and responsible for making my own meals it is still entirely possible to eat a bucketload of food, vegan or no. And that is even possible to have that food be relatively high in fat, vegan or no...what with the free use of olive oil, avocado, soy margarine etc.
Yesterday was one such day when I ate like a piggly-wiggly. See today is Thanksgiving. I am going to my brother's house today, and my mom is cooking tomorrow, so that my step-dad can have leftovers. (Don't ask.) I bought a bunch of squash and such, figuring I'd help the chefs out by bringing my own vegan dish. Turns out neither of them want it, because of limited oven rack space, and because they'd already planned a dish for me...vegan mushroom risotto today and stuffed acorn squash tomorrow.
So I cooked those winter vegetables myself yesterday and ate waaaay too many. I guess I was just getting my stomach nice and stretched out for today!
Breakfast (a very big breakfast):
Organic Pineapple Juice with Odwalla Grapefruit Juice
2 slices of Sourdough Bread, 1 with Soy Margarine, 1 with Tofutti Cream Cheese (which is really really good, I must say.)
Shredded Oats Cereal w/Dried Cranberries
Organic Rice Milk
Lunch (a moderately sized lunch):
Sandwich made with Mini-Pita, Eggless Egg Salad and more of that very yummy Tofutti Cream Cheese
1 ear of Corn
Diet Coke
Twizzlers
Dinner (a HUUUUUGE dinner):
Baked Winter Vegetables and Gravy, consisting of:
Organic Squash, Organic Golden Potatoes, Organic Yams, Brussels Sprouts
Gravy made from Olive Oil, Soy Flour, Nutritional Yeast, Garlic, Corn Kernels, Portabella Mushrooms and Organic Rice Milk
It was so good I ate way too much of it. Yum
I'll probably eat less today at my actual Thanksgiving dinner than I ate last night. But thanks to my accommodating sister-in-law, I will indeed eat :)
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
BTW: I saw wild turkeys at Rancho San Antonio while hiking there on Tuesday afternoon. They are huge and very very beautiful. Can't let this day pass without remarking that the turkey pictured in this post is meant to be alive, hanging out in the brush with a bunch of other turkeys.
