Heya! Thanks seadragon!
So, it seems like it might be a good moment around here to start exchanging vegetarian Thanksgiving and holiday recipes.
Any suggestions for a new vegetarian?
All of the typical Thanksgiving foods are vegetarian, or can be, except turkey, and even that has replacements. So it's pretty easy. Mini-Meno and Mr. Meno are ovo-lacto veg, and I am, at home. The one day of the year that meat is served in our house is Thanksgiving, but my sister in law makes and brings it, and it's her family who eats it. I've thought about asking them to consider just leaving it at home, but it seems to be part of our family's exercise in diversity.
Anyway, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, yam and squash, green bean, cranberry, pumpkin pie, all just plants. Even vegan Thanksgiving is pretty easy. Over the years, we've at times had two mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving: one with dairy, one vegan; 2 stuffings: one with meat and butter, one vegan; 2 gravies: one turkey, one nutritional yeast-based. These days, no one in the family is eating consistently pure vegan, and the meat eaters have gotten more flexible about what ingredients HAVE to be in things, so the one stuffing has butter, but no meat, and the mashed potatoes have butter and half and half. We still have 2 gravies, and frankly the last two years, the turkey gravy I've served has been straight out of a jar, and no one has said anything, though they may not be crazy about it. The homemade vegetarian gravy is much more delicious. My husband, who doesn't often feel the need for faux meat-type products, likes having some sort of vegetarian turkey-like hunk to slice up at Thanksgiving. The last couple of years it's been Field Roast brand. The few years before that, it was Tofurkey brand.
I guess, for me, the most challenging aspect of vegetarian Thanksgiving has been lack of respect for it on the part of a couple of the meat eaters in the extended family. But by now, with my husband having been a vegetarian for at least 13 years, my niece for nearly that time, since she was 12, and my daughter for all of her 5 1/2 years, the jokes, remarks, and concerns have all been said, and everyone's food choices are a non-issue.