This will be our first Thanksgiving without Turkey. I gave up all other meats but poultry over 15 years ago and gave up poultry about 6 months ago. I need some good food ideas for picky eaters that wont touch beans or tofu.:wall:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kreeli/12323.html#cutid3

I made the nut roast last year and people (meaning my redneck hunting family) are all over me to make it again. Everything kreeli makes is incredible so you might want to look around her live journal for additional inspiration.

Hmm. Have you thought of peeling and slicing eggplant rounds, marinating them, and cooking them?

Hmm. Have you thought of peeling and slicing eggplant rounds, marinating them, and cooking them?

I love that recipe but there is no way my kids would touch it LOL!

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kreeli/12323.html#cutid3

I made the nut roast last year and people (meaning my redneck hunting family) are all over me to make it again. Everything kreeli makes is incredible so you might want to look around her live journal for additional inspiration.

Can you share the recipe?

Can you share the recipe?

Follow the link in the post. :yes:

Follow the link in the post. :yes:

OOPS! Sorry..I didnt see it.

OOPS! Sorry..I didnt see it.

No problem. You'll find recipes for an entire veg meal there :) ... I haven't tried them, but I glanced and got hungry.

What do your kids eat? What kind of food do they like?

I've been a vegetarian for over a decade now my father finally agreed last year that we could have a vegetarian thanksgiving. For a centerpiece I made stuffed pumpkin. It had a leek and nut and dried cranberries and wild rice stuffing. It looked nice and tasted great. If/when the photo album comes back up, I had a picture in it of last year's thanksgiving if you want some other ideas.

I'm planning on making a rice pilaf loaf with nuts and mushrooms that's really yummy. I serve it with a basic brown gravy with wine added and I think it rocks. One of the recent Vegetarian Times also had a recipe for Pumpkin Corn Cakes that seems like a nice festive autum dish. Then of course there's sweet potatoes, yellow squash casserole, corn pudding. My Voluptuous Vegan cookbook has a recipe for Cranberry Pecan Sauce that sounds awesome (I'm not sure if any canned cranberry is vegeterian- does it have gelatin?). I've never been a green bean casserole girl, but it ought to be failry easy to make a vegetarian version. So many good things... just don't go so crazy on the starches that you forget the greens. And don't forget to have some nuts and fruit.

cranberry sauce is pretty simple: one sauce pan and stove, two bags of berries, four cups of water, sweetner of choice, spices/add ins of choice. Apply heat, but use a lid as the berries pop! (and are a pain to clean up.)
i made my standard and an extra spicy (cardamon, clove, allspice and cayenne) for the extended omni family. both were inhaled

I made the nut loaf and the gingered yams last year, and they were great!

No one suggested Unturkey or Tofurkey?!

I love those two. I don't know about meat-eaters liking them, but I know that I love 'em.

A nice side dish

Savory Stuffing
Serves 6 to 8

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup diced onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
4 cups soft bread cubes
1 cup chopped apple
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup cranberries
1 cup vegetable broth
salt and pepper, to taste
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon oregano


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350oF.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and then sauté the onion and celery until tender, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Pour the sautéed vegetables into a casserole dish. Add the remaining ingredients, bread cubes through seasonings. Toss well, making sure all of the bread cubes are soaked in the vegetable broth. Bake for 45 minutes.

It's my first vegan thanksgiving this year. When I was vegetarian I always had quorn turkey roast because even meat eaters say it tasted just like turkey, but it has eggs so I can't eat it. I was going to make the nut roast and maybe buy or make my own recipe of tofurkey. I was also going to have candied yams(I loove sweet potatoes) with vegan marshmallows. What do you think of Tofurkey?...How about Unturkey?

i don't like the tofurkey things, and quite frankly, they're really expensive.

i usually make stuffed puffed pastry using a wild rice stuffing, but i'm going to try stuffed squash or pumpkin this year, a la rabid child.

I make a stuffed squash thing, too. This year, I'm contemplating making dinner in a pumpkin which is basically a veggie pot pie (with no crust), cooked and served out of a pumpkin.

Amber, caution on those vegan marshmellows.... it seems they might not be vegan after all (there's a few threads round here about Emes and how it affected the vegan marshmellow industry).

This thead is making me hungry.

Last thanksgiving, I went to a veg/meat thanksgiving dinner. The nut loaf was awesome!

Another vote for the tofukey here. Get yourself one of the tofurkey dinners, make a salad or some mashed taters, stuff yourself, and repeat. :)

The vegan sweets marshmallows from Pangea are safe, but as far as I know the rest were using Emes gelatin and are not vegan (and no longer in production either).

This thread is making me sooooo hungry! I vote for tofurkey. There's a vegan deli in our area that makes the best tofurkey. I won't eat the kind from the grocery store, but this one is absolutely delicious. You could have vegan stuffing w/it...& the vegan candied yams sound incredible! I'm making myself way too hungry now thinking about all this!

You could just do all of the side dishes your family loves to eat for Thanksgiving--there doesn't need to be a turkey substitute (though you might want to make sure that some of these have a reasonable amount of protein in them). Stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, corn, cooked greens, salad, dinner rolls or cornbread, baked macaroni and cheese (maybe not so traditional--but we like it in my family), pumpkin pie, etc. are all more than enough to satisfy anybody. You could try something new like a nut roast or something like an Unturkey or Tofurky, but if they don't like those, there will be more than enough sides for them to get their fill of.

Of course, if they really wanted turkey, you could always have somebody else prepare it. :-/