2020 was the first year that I was a full vegan on Thanksgiving, and things went A LOT better than I thought. Here's why:
The Menu:
While Thanksgiving tends to be a time centered around preparing and cooking the turkey, ours was - how centered around making this the BEST thanksgiving meal without any meat or dairy. The solution? VEGAN BUTTER. A lot of people have asked me how I "managed" Thanksgiving without butter or cream and you'd be surprised how many of them didn't know about all of the vegan alternatives that are on store shelves these days. Granted, most of them were my parents' generation or older.
ANYWAY. our menu consisted of:
Rosemary garlic mashed potatoes
A luscious, creamy gravy made with homemade vegetable broth (Thanks, Scout :) )
French bread stuffing made with the same homemade vegetable broth
Roasted Brussels sprouts with garlic aioli
Sweet potato casserole - minus the marshmallows
Pumpkin pie with coconut whipped cream
Cranberry sauce
It's safe to say that we were not short on anything and we were definitely full by the end of the meal. Prior to being vegan, I never realized how legitimate most of the vegan cooking alternatives are. I used Miyokos' Vegan Butter in all of my recipes, and instead of chicken or turkey broth, we used a homemade vegetable broth linked here. In all of the recipes that called for milk, I used Califia Farms Unsweetened Almond Milk.
While some vegans opted for the vegan "roast" instead of turkey, we decided to leave that part out. I am not a huge fan of using meat alternatives all that often and to be honest, I don't think I could have fit another dish in my stomach anyway (lol).
Thoughts for next year...?
I definitely plan to experiment with some new dishes as well as make some of my own (my coconut DREAM pie - featured in I'M HUNGRY - LAUNCHING DECEMBER 18, 2020).
The new recipes being:
Green bean casserole
Stuffed potatoes
Mushroom gravy
Sweet potato hash
Apple pie/turnover
What's on your plant-based Thanksgiving menu?
#bloggingtips #WixBlog #vegan #plantbased #veganthanksgiving