Planning for a Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving’s around the corner, and you can’t step outside without bloggers and food writers sharing their Thanksgiving recipes with you.  (And yet, everyone still seems to agonize about what to make – and tradition usually still wins out over fancy new recipes.  Curious, that.)

We decided not to travel this year – instead, we’re going to stay home and enjoy a rare long weekend in our new house that’s not dedicated to a home improvement project.  With all the work around the house that we’ve been doing, and a bunch of travel on top of that, it seemed like this was a good year to take it easy.  And while I’ll miss seeing my family and having our traditional menu, having dinner just for the two of us means we can have an all-vegetarian meal, which I’ve always wanted to do.

There are three strategies, in my mind, to vegetarianizing Thanksgiving: 1) make all your favorite traditional dishes, and just skip the turkey, which is what you’d do at a regular Thanksgiving dinner anyway, 2) concoct a protein-full main dish that fills the role of turkey in the meal (though, please, let’s not try to make something that looks or tastes like turkey but isn’t – there’s so much better food out there), or 3) make something extra-special that’s not traditional at all.  (I know one vegetarian who has an elaborate Indian dinner every Thanksgiving, and how could you go wrong with that?)

We’re doing something between 1 and 3 – a mix of tradition and other seasonal foods.  We’re also trying to gauge how much to cook for a 2-person dinner, and thus making fewer dishes than we otherwise would.  We’re still finalizing the details (I might like one more side dish), but here’s our plan:

• Sweet potato ravioli
• Mushroom-cream sauce
• Cranberry bread
• Apple pie

I promise to post some recipes later on!

If you’re still looking for ideas, check out last year’s big round-up of vegetarian Thanksgiving main courses, or Mark Bittman’s list of 101 prepare-ahead Thanksgiving dishes.  One of my favorites from his list:

60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.

What’s on your menu?