Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Nov16

Starting to Plan for Thanksgiving

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I go a little crazy at Thanksgiving time. I love to cook for people, and I tend to cook for my family on the day itself, then do another meal with friends soon after.  I make an insanely huge amount of food, too.

This year, I am thinking about skipping the friend Thanksgiving meal. I do love it, but I may be taking on too many things for the holiday season. I need to ask the kids what they think and do a small poll of my friends to see if they will be available on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I have taken on so many other things, though, I am not sure about taking on a full day of cooking. I am not sure about skipping it, either, though, because it makes me sad to think about missing it.

Regardless, I need to do some planning about the upcoming Thanksgiving time, both food-wise and time-wise. I am taking some time off leading up to the big day, plus the day after, so I want to make sure I am using the time wisely. I will be off this Friday, and every day except Tuesday next week, but I will be working at home on Tuesday, so I could do some baking, in theory. I like to spread the cooking out for a few days so that I am not running around like crazy on the day itself, especially since I like to do a late lunch-time meal. I also want to make sure I use my time off wisely to do some other tasks. So this is another post of lists.

Food for Thanksgiving day (subject to change after I consult my family—or not)

  • Dill dip and rye bread with veggies
  • Cranberry sauce
  • Butternut squash risotto (or possibly cornbread stuffing)
  • Roasted potatoes
  • Roasted Brussels sprouts
  • Turkey
  • Steamed green beans
  • Tropical sweet potato casserole

I have no idea how I am going to do the turkey. I am not sure I have ever made a full turkey, between a spotty history of vegetarianism and just having other people make it (my ex-husband or my dad, usually.) However, the boy is excited to make the turkey this year, so I said we would. My dad did offer to come over and do it on the BBQ grill, though, and I may take him up on that.

I am thinking about doing the risotto instead of my usual stuffing this year for a couple of reasons. First, I have been experimenting with going wheat free lately, and I am thinking it is going well. I have eaten wheat a few times and felt that I was having symptoms related to that, although I have not been systematic about it. A much bigger factor, though, is that I am the only one who likes the stuffing I usually make. I love it, and eat enough to make up for everyone else, but I am thinking I may be better off going to the risotto that I know at least 4 of the 6 of us love. I am considering trying out a cornbread stuffing recipe though, so we’ll see.

I am not sure what to do about dessert this year. I might do a crustless pumpkin cheesecake, or some kind of pudding. This gluten free and dairy free pumpkin pudding looks good. I may have to try that out this weekend to taste test.

Things I can make ahead

  • Dill Dip
  • Cranberry sauce
  • The pumpkin pudding up to baking
  • All the chopping
  • Roasting the butternut squash

Writing Tasks I would like to do in my time off

  • Complete Gaming Angels Holiday Guide
  • Complete The Cult of Lego review
  • Posts for ever day
    • Another budget set up post
    • List of gifts to make
    • Menus
    • <More planning needed here>
  • December Convention post for Gaming Angels
  • A few other Gaming Angels things—featured web magazine, featured web comic, talk to other Pulp Angels team members for ideas and schedules

 Crafts I want to work on

Does this seem like too much? I hope not, because I haven’t even gotten to cleaning and reading and gift shopping.

What are your Thanksgiving plans?

Nov30

Menu, 11/29 – 12/3, along with some Thanksgiving stuff

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Last week, I didn’t do a plan, and I didn’t do much cooking.  I don’t even remember what we did on Monday, Tuesday we went to my parents’ house for an early Thanksgiving dinner, since the kids were going to their dad’s for the holiday, Wednesday, we just had falafel with pita bread and tahini sauce, and the weekend I just kind of grabbed some leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches.  I did cook for my parents on Thanksgiving, but not as much as I have in the past.  I am saving my serious cooking for this coming Saturday, when I think there will be a lot of people here.  (Ack, I need to do a lot of cleaning!)  On Thanksgiving, I made cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and margarine, mushroom gravy, roasted Brussels sprouts, seamed green beans, and a roasted buttenut squash dressing.  Here is a picture of the meal:

The dressing was based on the carmelized onion butternut roast with chestnuts from Veganomicon, but I didn’t make it to the store, so I substituted walnuts for the chestnuts, a loaf of cubed cranberry pumpkin seed bread for the beans, and left off the breadcrumb topping, although I did add the seasonings to the casserole.  It was a huge hit–both of my parents loved it.  Also, since we had done the whole turkey dinner thing onTuesday (except I didn’t eat any turkey of course), my dad didn’t even bring any turkey, and we all ate the vegetarian meal,which was pretty cool.

Anyway, on to this week.  I actually didn’t make the menu and get to the store until today, but I wanted to put yesterday on this menu, since the idea is to help with future planning after all.  I did most of this menu and the grocery list while the girl practiced putting contacts in and out of her eyes for the first time in the optometrist’s office.  Way to plan ahead, huh?

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Monday:  Chickpea noodle soup, from Veganomicon, without the mushrooms, since I am the only one who likes them (and we were out anyway), leftover steamed green beans and spinach

Tuesday:  Roasted butternut squash risotto, steamed broccoli

Wednesday:  Borrachos, whole wheat tortillas, sauteed turnip greens, steamed sweet potatoes

Thursday:  Fried rice/quinoa, cucumber wontons

Friday:  Pizza, one with chickenless strips and pineapple, one with sausageless Italian sausages

Saturday I am making a big meal for some friends.  I don’t have a full menu yet, but here are some things I am thinking of making:

Appetizers:

Main meal:

Desserts:

  • cranberry upside down cake
  • double layer pumpkin cheesecake
  • apple cranberry crisp

I hope it is enough food.

Feb1

A new laptop! Woohoo!

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Ever since my daughter knocked over my laptop and ruined the monitor, I have had a hard time with the blogging. My desktop is slow and uncomfortable, and I don’t like to blog at work, so I have just been finding it all too much work. On Friday, though, I got my tax refund (thank you, new house!), and yesterday I got a new laptop. I am just amazed at how quickly technology moves on–I got my old laptop only two years ago, and this one has lots more memory and hard drive space, plus facial recognition for logging in, and probably other things I have not discovered yet, for $150 less than I paid for the other one. Yippee!

On the eating front, we have been doing pretty good. I am still cooking more, to avoid the expense of eating out. My biggest habit change that I am so proud of is eating breakfast at home. I had gotten in the habit of waiting until I got to work to eat breakfast, because we were so rushed in the mornings. However, that means being up for about two hours before I ate anything, which is terrible for my metabolism, and making poor choices, because I was starving by the time I ate. Lots of greasy hashbrowns with eggs, biscuits, donuts, and other heavy, unhealthy foods were had. Now I have cereal with rice milk, or oatmeal cooked with maple syrup, dried fruit and cinnamon, or a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and a banana, or a fruit smoothie. Much better choices!

On a completely different note, I have to share a picture of my almost vegan desserts from the after-Thanksgiving meal I had with friends the first weekend in December:

Don’t those look delicious? The first one at the top left is my almost vegan dessert–a pumpkin bread pudding. I used soy milk, but I went ahead and used the eggs in the recipe. I have not been brave enough to experiment with egg substitutes for cooking yet. Scrambled tofu for brunch? I got that down pat, but not so much on the cooking subs. Next is urban vegan’s cranberry upside down cake which was absolutely scrumptious, as expected. Front and center is the Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake from the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen (not a fatfree recipe!). That is very nearly the perfect dessert. It’s rich and delicious, and I really couldn’t eat more than a small slice at a time, because of the richness. Everyone loved it, vegan or not.
Okay, I have gained about 5 pounds just looking at that picture and thinking about how good those desserts were, so I need to go do some exercising! Hopefully I will be back here more often with the new laptop–I’ve missed it.
Dec4

Leftovers

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I have been thinking about this recipe that I found in a Laptop Lunchbox newsletter last year

for some time now. It really looked good, and I even considered making it as an entree for the Thanksgiving meal, like they suggested. I really like the individual dishes, though, and I have some picky family members that don’t necessarily like their foods to be combined, so I decided againt it. I didn’t forget it, however, and this year, I bought portobello mushrooms with my Thanksgiving supplies so that I could do it both ways, using my leftovers to make a totally new dish.
This turned out really well. The girl even ate some, although she said she wasn’t very hungry. But she even put the cranberry sauce on top and ate without complaining! The boy liked it all except for the mushroom, but he ate the sweet potatoes and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce.
I also made pumpkin soup with the pumpkin I had leftover from the pumpkin cheesecake. That wasn’t quite as successful. I thought it was all right, although it could have used a bit more spice. The kids, on the other hand, cried. They haven’t done that in a while, and I thought it was more than a bit of an overreaction, but it clearly was not a success at any rate. I am going to perservere, though, because they need to learn to like soups. I am wearing them down in other areas (excuse me, educating their palates), it is time for soups. They are such a great way to get in extra vegetable nutrition. Plus, it’s cold outside and soup is warming.
I just need to prepare myself for the whining and complaining! They will get used to it eventually, I am sure.
Nov27

Thanksgiving meal

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I love having people over for meals. I rarely have my family over, because they are suspicious of my food. I am slowly winning them over though. And they are big into food that someone else cooks, especially at Thanksgiving time, so I was able to get them over to my new house today for a big meal. My dad did make a turkey out on the grill, though. But that is a small concession to make, I suppose. I didn’t eat any of it, and they were happy to have it.

Here’s a picture of the meal, except for the garlic roasted brussels sprouts, the turkey and the double-layer pumpkin cheesecake:

The potatoes were mashed with Earth balance and Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream, the sweet potato casserole was based on this recipe from Fat-Free Vegan, and I got the cranberry orange sauce recipe on Rachael Ray’s website, although I added a bit of Grand Marnier to mine at the end. The stuffing recipe is the same one I make every year, although this year I left the raisins out in the hope that it would be more appealing to my mom that way. She did try it, but still thought it was weird; hey, at least she tried. Oh, and I also made the dill dip in the same post with the stuffing, but that was pretty well demolished by the time I took my picture.

Here’s a picture of my plate, with all the yummy stuff:

So, by switching my dessert (from the pecan pie of last year), I managed to go completely vegan this year. I thought about making some kind of replacement for the turkey, but there was really plenty of food; I didn’t miss it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dec2

All the Thanksgiving meals

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November was definitely a month for eating too much food. I have a lot more difficulty eating moderately around Thanksgiving than Christmas, because Thanksgiving food is real food, not junk. Well, except for the pie and cake, but it’s still not an endless supply of cookies and candy like Christmas food is.

The first Thanksgiving meal was about a week before the actual holiday, at work. We do a big potluck for all the people on my floor. Okay, not all, but a lot of people participate. Of course, these meals generally have a lot of meat, and I don’t even want to think about the dairy involved, but there is generally enough food available for me to eat far too much anyway. This year I brought my favorite stuffing, made with veggie sausage:

Sausage Apple Stuffing

~6 cups bread crumbs (I use whole wheat bread, cut into cubes and toasted a bit in the oven)
1 pkg. Lightlife Gimme Lean sausage
1 apple, diced
1 onion, diced
¼ cup raisins
1 TBSP poultry seasoning
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 ¼ cup apple juice (or, in my case, 2 6.75 ounce juice boxes, because that’s what I had on hand)

Gimme Lean sausage is very low fat, so I find it difficult to just crumble it in the skillet and cook it like normal sausage. So, I spray some cooking spray in the skillet, slice the sausage, fry until done, and then chop it into small pieces. Remove to a large bowl. Saute the apple, onion and raisins (the original recipe called for celery, too, but you will never find that stringy vegetable in any of my recipes!) with a little more cooking spray, then add to the bowl with the sausage. Mix in the poultry seasoning and walnuts, then stir in the breadcrumbs. Finally, pour the juice over the top and mix one more time.

Don’t do like I do every time, and put it straight into an unprepared baking dish. This stuffing is too good to be missing all the stuff that sticks to the dish. Spray the pan down well, then throw in the stuffing and bake at whatever temperature all your other dishes are cooking, generally 350. I bake it until it smells great in my kitchen and looks done, which is not a scientific measurement. I know it when I see it, but I can’t tell you how. I think it is about 30-40 minutes, though.

I am also lucky in this sort of potluck in that we have a fair contingent of Indians on my floor, so I am not the only vegetarian. This year, though, there weren’t any good veggie curries. Still, I had a good salad, lots of my stuffing, veggies, cranberry sauce, fruit, pumpkin pie, cherry cobbler and peppermint patties. I am sure the pie was not dairy-free, but overall, it was a fairly successful meal.

On Thanksgiving day, we went to my parents’ house. I didn’t cook as much as I intended to make originally, because I knew that most of the stuff I was making would not be appreciated by my family, and I would be having friends over the following weekend that would appreciate it all. I did make a pecan pie, cranberry sauce, mashed candied sweet potatoes, nutmeg mushrooms, steamed green beans and this great dill dip:

Dill Dip in a Round Rye bread
1 cup Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream
2/3 cup Nayonnaise
1 tsp dill seeds
1 tsp English Prime Rib seasoning (the original recipe calls for Beau Monde, but Penzey’s doesn’t carry that—I am only a little freaked out at all these “meat seasonings” I am using; first poultry seasoning and now this ;-) )
1 TBSP dried onion flakes
1 TBSP dried parsley
1 large round loaf of rye bread

Mix the first 6 ingredients well. Cut a bowl into the top of the rye loaf, tearing up the cut out bread for dipping. Place the dip in the bowl and eat with the rye bread chunks, tearing up the bowl when the chunks are gone.

This is insanely good. My family devoured this in about 20 minutes, just me, my mom, my dad and my brother. The kids did eat a little of the bread, but they aren’t much for dip.

I still have one more meal to describe, but that will have to wait for another time. It was delicious, though! And, of the 5 people I had over, 3 of them were actually vegetarians, so I wasn’t outnumbered in my non-meat-eating ways for a change. Not that I mind cooking for anyone, it was just a nice change.

Nov6

Thanksgiving menu, so far

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You mean it isn’t a requirement to make too much food on Thanksgiving? I never got that memo ;-) .

Appetizers:
Spinach dip with wheat thins (made with Tofutti sour cream and Nayonnaise)
Dill dip and rye bread (ditto above)
hummus stuffed cherry tomatoes
veggies, maybe with hidden valley ranch dip (is that vegan?)

Main meal:

My neighbor is going to bring a nut loaf and mashed potatoes
Punk rock chick pea gravy from Vegan with a Vengeance or mushroom gravy
Vegetarian sausage, apple and walnut stuffing
Sweet potato casserole
Steamed green beans with minced onion
Candied carrots with dried cranberries
Nutmeg mushrooms
Cranberry molds from the latest Vegetarian Times magazine, because my normal cranberry relish uses jell-o, which is obviously not vegetarian

Dessert:

Pecan pie, not vegan, because it has eggs
Cranberry upside down cake, recipe from a blog somewhere that I have favorited at home
Some kind of non-dairy vanilla ice cream

I think I might be forgetting something. I go a little crazy over Thanksgiving, :-D

This may or may not be on Thanksgiving. I may do this with a group of friends the following weekend, and take a smaller amount of food to my parents’ house for the day itself. What I am not going to do is spend all day at my parent’s house cooking while my dad makes the turkey and their yucky stuffing but otherwise everyone sits in a different room watching tv and ignoring me. If my neighbor stays in town, I am hosting the meal on Thanksgiving and inviting my family, although they may not come since I am not making a turkey. My kids are going to be at their dad’s house this year anyway, so I am not subjecting myself to all that. Plus, the cigarette smoke! Yuck-o.