Anyone have any tasty suggestions for Thanksgiving? This is only my second Thanksgiving as a vegetarian, and I'm thinking of bringing my usual green bean casserole to the family dinner. However, last year, I noticed meat in just about everything and my casserole was all I had to eat. So I'd like to bring a couple of new dishes this year so I have a a bit of variety.

Also, do any of you use those tofurky (or similar) loafs for the holidays? Are they any good? Any and all suggestions welcome!

Thanksgiving is a challenge for us vegetarians, isn't it? Each year our large extended family has a big turkey with all the trimmings.  Something that I usually make is Lasagna.  Usually it is a hit with everyone, even the turkey eaters.  My daughter-in-law always brings the green bean casserole,too.  And we try to have lots of fresh veggies and dips.  We tried the tofu-turkey a couple of times but people compared it to the real turkey and complained so the lasagna is what I usually do. Lest I sound too "holy",  I usually eat too much dessert. :)

A friend of mine thinks Tofurky is excellent and fixes it every year for Thanksgiving.

Personally, in the time I was a vegetarian some years ago, my philosophy was that if you thought you needed to eat a meat substitute, you might as well just eat the meat it's imitating. There are so many yummy things that can be done with vegetables that meat substitutes just seemed silly to me, not to mention extremely high in fat and sodium content typically. I honestly only ever ate a bit of TVP in chili and that was before I happened across a no-meat-substitute recipe for chili that was far better than the one I'd tried with TVP in it.

A bit of googling for vegetarian or vegan Thanksgiving menus would bring up lots of far healthier and tastier alternatives, I should think. Anyway, there are certainly a good many more resources today than when I was actively vegetarian some 25 years ago.

Have whatever you want, obviously. Personally, we don't like "Tofurkey," but we found terrific recipes for a lentil roast with cashew gravy and for a pecan loaf. Add homemade cranberry relish (orders of magnitude better than the gelatin-like mass that slides out of a can) and some nice veggies on the side -- an absolutely delicious and satisfying holiday meal!

nightwriterx wrote:

I have yet to attempt the lentil roast. I've been afraid my family would hear "lentil" and run away screaming, leaving me to eat it for a week. :eek: I personally love lentils though, so I may try taking it to Thanksgiving dinner and just see what happens. You never know, right?

So who has to tell them it's made from lentils??? I sure wouldn't if I had a family still reluctant about eating vegetarian dishes. You can always say it's made with a hamburger substitute or say it's some other kind of meat substitute that the finished dish resembles.

Most veggie loaf recipes freeze beautifully so no one has to eat them before they spoil unless you like the result enough to want to do that. If you're the only one who will eat a particular loaf recipe, slice it into you-sized portions, wrap and freeze them. That's what I used to do when single and not wanting to have to eat the same thing every meal.

As far as kids are concerned, I think my mom had a good method for getting us to try new foods. She rarely said what it was. Instead, she'd say we were having a "3-bites food" which we knew meant that she would put about three bites of it on our plates, and that's all we absolutely had to eat. Then, if we truly didn't like it, we didn't have to eat more. We were taught that when offered more we were to say, "No, thank you," and we'd not be urged to eat more of whatever it was. She was careful to gauge the size of the three bites, too, so that they made just a sample of the food altogether. It wasn't any big deal to try new things that way, so perhaps something of this sort might encourage your family to try things they'd otherwise refuse to eat.