This Thanksgiving marked a lot of firsts for me:
1) It was the first Thanksgiving that I didn’t spend in Phoenix with my family.
2) It was Leo’s first Thanksgiving ever.
3) It was my first Thanksgiving as a vegan.
Fortunately, I have my fabulous extended family here in Seattle: my dear friend Trish, her fiance Jesse and her sister Julie, who was in town for the holiday. Trisha’s vegan, too — in fact, she’s the one who got me started on the whole thing. (My boss when I told him this: “Oh, good. I feel better now that I have someone to blame.”) Jesse and Julie aren’t vegan, but they love us enough that they agreed to a vegan Thanksgiving after we promised them that it would rock. Honestly, Trish and I weren’t very sure how it all would turn out, but we figured that Thanksgiving is about togetherness and alcohol anyway, and if the food sucked we’d all still have a good time.
I went shopping on Tuesday for the vegan specialty items. Among them: seitan (pronounced “SAY-tan,” it’s pure wheat gluten), TVP (textured vegetable protein, which looks like rice and, when mixed with water, smells like oatmeal), soy “egg” nog (soy nog is waaaay better than regular egg nog, it turns out), soy whipped “cream” and vegan marshmallows (we’re not sure why regular marshmallows aren’t vegan, but I guess they’re not).
Our main dish was squash with a stuffing made from the seitan, TVP and a bunch of vegetables. When we first saw the seitan, we were nervous, to say the least. This is what is looks like, before and after being diced:
Gross, right? Except it’s not. We totally got grossed out at first, but it has the texture of tofu and smells like fresh wheat bread. I’m serious! It’s not gross at all once you actually start working with it. And this is the TVP after it’s mixed with water. Again, it smells like oatmeal and is just pure protein:
So here’s some more photos of our main dish coming to life:
And when it was done? It was delicious. Seriously, you never would have known it was vegan. It was super-tasty and the seitan and TVP actually do successfully give it a meaty texture.
We made a bunch of side dishes, too, including a green bean casserole with a breaded topping, candied yams with pecans, cauliflower “au gratin” (we thought that one was gonna suck as we were making it; Trisha was like “This is our miss, I’m calling it right now,” but guess what? It was good!) and mashed potatoes. All 100% vegan and all 100% awesome. Seriously!!! We were SO PROUD of ourselves. Here’s some pics of our side dishes being created:
Honestly? The two things we liked the least were the two things that we bought from a vegan bakery: the rolls and the pumpkin pie (although our home-made whipped cream was tasty!). It turns out we’re better vegan chefs than the pros!
To confirm our vegan success, we sat Trisha down to do an interview with her meat-eating fiance, Jesse, who’s going to be dealing with her vegan cooking for the rest of his life, to see what he thought of our vegan Thanksgiving. Here’s what he had to say:
Perhaps the best part of the night was watching our doggies, my teeny tiny chihuahua, Leo, and their huge Harlequin Great Dane, Bruter. Fortunately, Bruter is an absolute sweetheart and plays very nicely with Leo, even when Leo mounts Bruter from behind. I think Leo is so small that Bruter just thinks he’s being petted. Photographic evidence of Leo’s misdeeds here:
Oh, and Bruter also has little shoes to help him get better traction on the wood floors, and it’s absolutely the cutest thing to watch him walk around in them. He takes very meticulous, exaggerated steps, like he’s wading through shallow water. I should have gotten video of it but forgot.
After we finished dinner, we played WAY too many rounds of Scene It on XBOX (I won all the rounds, ‘natch) and then watched Get Smart, which didn’t suck anywhere near as much as I expected it to. By that point, everyone, including the dogs, was exhausted, so we called it a night.
I have to say, for my first vegan Thanksgiving and my first Thanksgiving away from home, it was a stunning success! It was one of the best and most memorable Thanksgivings ever, and I feel so lucky to have found such a wonderful home away from home here in Seattle. Thank you to Trisha and Julie and Jesse for a spectacular holiday, and one for which I am truly thankful.
More pics of our Thanksgiving fun (and of the doggies!!) after the jump! Also, Trisha would like me to mention that she was not so remiss in her hostessing duties as to put red wine in white wine glasses — the dark liquid you see in the white wine glasses is Diet Coke, which I insisted I be allowed to drink from a white wine glass, because I’m classy like that, yo.
Update: Links to the recipes are also after the jump now.
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