The only turkey that was part of my 100% vegan Thanksgiving was Antoinette , who I adopted at Farm Sanctuary.
The Menu
Appetizers
Teese Ball with crackers
Spinach Artichoke Dip with crackers, chips and veggies
Cocktail
Floating Star Martini
Salad
Roasted Butternut Squash with Apple Cider Vinaigrette
Main Course
Mushroom, Lentil, and Wild Rice Timbales with Mushroom Gravy
Polenta, Sausage, and Mushroom Stuffing
Agave-Mustard Green Beans
Sweet Potato Casserole with Sweet & Sara Cinnamon-Pecan Marshmallows
Dessert
Chocolate-Pumpkin Cheesecake
Apple Crisp with Caramel-Cinnamon Ice Cream
Truffles
Barnie’s White Christmas Coffee
We worked up an appetite at the 5K and dinner would take a while, so we filled up on a vegan cheese ball made with Teese. So delicious!
The spinach-artichoke dip tasted healthier than your typical mayo-filled restaurant dip, but it was flavorful. The lemon and the arugula are a nice touch. I did the bean version and added a can of artichoke hearts. Super easy.
I messed up the cocktails by adding 6 ounces of pomegranate liqueur when I should have been adding 6 ounces of apple cider. I threw in more cider and bourbon, so in the end it still tasted good, just a tad more pomegranate-y than the original. It’s a very pretty cocktail.
My mom made this salad. The butternut squash was perfectly roasted and the warm cider vinaigrette was a nice touch. The recipe calls for parmesan cheese, but that is not needed at all.
I made a couple things from my new cookbook, Vegan Holiday Kitchen. The polenta, sausage and mushroom stuffing includes a shortcut by using pre-packaged polenta, but I couldn’t find that at Whole Foods or Jewel (I didn’t look that hard at Whole Foods, because I knew they sold it at Jewel). Jewel was sold out until this weekend, but it was a sun-dried tomato version and I’m not sure that would have worked. Anyway, I had to make my own and I used this recipe, subbing Earth Balance. I should have halved it though, because I ended up throwing a lot of polenta away. It’s a good, and very easy, recipe.
My sister made her favorite Thanksgiving dish, sweet potato casserole. I always avoided this dish, even before I was vegan, because it was too sweet for me. My sister did not use all the sugar my grandmother does. I still didn’t eat more than a bite, but it was the best sweet potato casserole I’ve had. Better than what I made last year. The Sweet & Sara cinnamon pecan marshmallows were our modern twist to the classic recipe.
Mushroom gravy: easy and versatile – could go over the stuffing or the timbales.
Instead of green bean casserole, we had agave-mustard green beans. Nava stresses the importance of keeping the beans bright green, but I got a little distracted by the martinis. They were still good.
My only problem with the timbales was using a little too much non-stick spray in the ramekins. I was worried about the dish getting stuck in the ramekin (hence the overspraying), but it came out easily. It tasted great and the mushroom on the top was cute.
Dessert, the best part of any meal. I made a chocolate swirl version of Peta’s pumpkin cheesecake, but I used the graham cracker crust from Vegan Pie in the Sky. Honestly, I think I like a store-bought version better. The crust was too buttery and it competed with the cheesecake.
I also made truffles from the candy article in the most recent VegNews. It was a coconut truffle, but I made half without coconut, because my sister and I do not like coconut shavings.
And finally, apple crisp, a Thanksgiving tradition. I did a test run of this last weekend after a trail run at Veterans Acres and it went fast. It’s from Vegan Pie in the Sky. It went perfectly with the caramel-cinnamon ice cream from Bittersweet.
