my first thanksgiving...
For social/ethical/political reasons that you really do not need me to go on and on about, my immediate family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. We just show up to my grandparents for dinner every year with a tofurkey in tow because it is important to them they we are there. We’ve been basically vegetarian my whole life, but recently made the shift to vegan (including my 12-year-old and my mother!!!).
(side note: if you’re dreaming of ways to convert people, try betting them that they cant handle a raw vegan diet for 7 days. I survived the 7 days and immediate started cooking my food, but it worked! Still vegan!)
Anyway, to avoid the family and the holiday and explaining that we can’t eat the mashed potatoes either because there’s dairy in them, we decided to go to Kauai for the week. Instead of looking at carcass on a table we don’t want to be at, we’ll have frozen tropical drinks on the beach. The plan was great until my grandparents decided to follow us. It’s so important to them to have thanksgiving with us that they ditched the rest of the family. Now I have to cook a big thanksgiving dinner and my mother is insisting that I cook them a small turkey breast. It’s not going to happen.
I’m hoping you can suggest some menu items that are so freakin fantastic that they won’t care that there is no animal product on the table. I figured that I could do a lot of the traditional side dishes because they’re all easy to make vegan and I’ve got the pies covered, but I really need at least one killer main dish and I really would like to avoid tofurkey.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help. I’ve never cooked a thanksgiving dinner…let alone tried to please non-vegans with a vegan feast.