Thanksgiving Recipes

Make your Thanksgiving delicious and healthy with these sinlessly delicious recipes! Find more holiday recipes here.

Vegan Southern-Style Cornbread Dressing

November 19, 2012
Southern-Style Cornbread Dressing

I recently realized that I’ve never posted the one dish that we had every Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was growing up–Cornbread Dressing. That’s mainly because I’ve always counted on my mother to make it. Even after I became vegetarian, my mother would set aside part of the dressing before she added the giblets or [...]

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Mary McDougall’s Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

October 17, 2012
Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

The first time I made these muffins, I was worried because they contain molasses and I thought I didn’t like molasses. Wrong! I love molasses in these delectable pumpkin muffins. It gives them a dark richness and amplifies the spiciness of the cinnamon and nutmeg. The second time I made them, I was confident that [...]

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Dreena’s No-fu Love Loaf

April 26, 2012
Dreena's No-fu Love Loaf

I’ve been looking for a great lentil loaf recipe, and finally I’ve found one! Unfortunately, I can’t claim credit for this delicious dish. That goes to Dreena Burton and her new book, Let Them Eat Vegan!: 200 Deliciously Satisfying Plant-Powered Recipes for the Whole Family. Fortunately, Dreena and her publishers have given me permission to [...]

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Seitan Stuffed with Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Mushrooms

December 13, 2011
Seitan Stuffed with Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Mushrooms

This is A Tale of Two Seitans. For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to make something a little fancier than the baked tofu my husband, daughter, and I usually enjoy while our omnivorous extended family is eating turkey. The day before the big feast, I took one of my old favorite stuffings, wrapped wheat gluten [...]

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Ginger-Orange Glazed Carrots

December 5, 2011
Ginger-Orange Glazed Carrots

As a lazy cook who values one-pot meals, I don’t cook many side dishes. If a meal lacks a vegetable, I’ll usually toss together a salad and call it a day. The only time I find I need true side dishes is when dinner centers around a protein-heavy dish, like mini tofu quiches, quinoa cutlets, [...]

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Creamy Vegan Broccoli and Rice Casserole

November 21, 2011
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Thanksgiving is just three days away, and I don’t know where all my time went. Well, actually, I do know how I used some of it: making this casserole, twice, to get it just right so that if you decide to include it in your holiday meal, you can be sure it will work. And [...]

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Nava’s Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie

November 14, 2011
Nava's Hearty Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie

When Nava Atlas asked me at the beginning of last year to take the photos for Vegan Holiday Kitchen, I thought about it for about a day and then gave her an emphatic “Yes!” She warned me that she would need more photos than I’d taken for her previous book, Vegan Express–about five times as [...]

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Ethiopian-Spiced Pumpkin Bisque

November 8, 2011
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I can’t pass up a pumpkin. As soon as I see winter squash laid out in rows at our local produce stand, I have to stop and buy many more than we’ll actually eat. My daughter will insist that we pick up a pie pumpkin or two, while I’m drawn to the less traditional ones: [...]

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E’s Super-Awesome Brussels Sprouts and Mushrooms

February 21, 2011
Brussels Sprouts and Mushrooms Recipe

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during almost 14 years of parenting, it’s that if you want your kids to eat vegetables, get them into the kitchen to cook them.  Last week I was about to toss some Brussels sprouts into the oven to roast when my daughter stopped me: “Please don’t cook them in [...]

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Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf

November 17, 2010
Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf

This is not your mama’s meatloaf.  This is not even your mama’s seitan loaf, tofu turkey, or nut roast.  It doesn’t taste like meat.  It doesn’t even pretend to have the texture of meat. But if you like savory, Thanksgiving flavors so concentrated that you can just skip the gravy and dressing, you will want [...]

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Brussels Sprouts and Shiitake Mushroom Soup

November 11, 2010
Brussels Sprouts and Shiitake Mushroom Soup

Brussels sprouts, rice, and perhaps some white beans.  I was planning a soup for dinner, but there seemed to be something missing.  Carrots?  No.  Potatoes?  No, the rice would provide enough starch.  I needed something to give the broth depth and flavor.  I was strolling through my back yard and considering my options when I [...]

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Pumpkin, Squash, or Cushaw Bake

October 22, 2010
Pumpkin or Cushaw Bake

One Sunday a month throughout my childhood, my family would attend Family Night Supper at our church.  It was a time of community, of fellowship…and of competition.  Because Family Night Supper was a potluck dinner, the ladies of the church showed off their cooking skills by bringing their signature dishes–their congealed chicken salads, artichoke dips, [...]

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Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin Biscuit Crust

November 14, 2009
Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin Biscuit Crust

I’m leaving you—and my husband and child—for a little over a week. By the time you read this, I will be cruising the Caribbean with my parents and sister. But at least I’m providing you with a new holiday dish (and the family with leftovers). Since I won’t be getting back until just before Thanksgiving, [...]

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Pumpkin Pie Bites

November 9, 2009
Pumpkin Pie Bites

My daughter and I go kind of pumpkin crazy this time of year. It starts when we see the first small pie pumpkins in the grocery store and she convinces me that we just have to have one. She takes it home, decorates it with permanent markers, and then refuses to let me cook her [...]

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Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

October 26, 2009
Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits

I used to love biscuits. I was raised on my mom’s Bisquick biscuits and sometime during college graduated to baking and devouring Southern-style biscuits made with White Lily flour and lots of butter or margarine. Living alone in my tiny student apartment, I would bake up batches of huge, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits on the weekend [...]

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Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

October 19, 2009
Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

At the farmers’ market a couple of weeks ago, I picked up two butternut squash that were each about the length of my hand. Since I love roasting butternut with a touch of lemon, I was considering cooking them in that tried and true (but unimaginative) manner when I got the idea to roast one [...]

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Fall Harvest Fruit Cake (Persimmon-Apple Cake)

December 16, 2008
Persimmon-Apple Cake

I came home after Thanksgiving with a bag of persimmons from my parents’ garden. As my father pointed out to me, these were fairly small fruits and still hard at the time, so I’d have to wait for them to soften up before I could eat them. If you’ve ever bitten into an under-ripe Hachiya [...]

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What to Do With Leftover Pumpkin

November 30, 2008
What to Do with Leftover Pumpkin

I’m willing to bet that immediately after Thanksgiving, Google sees the number of searches for “leftover turkey” skyrocket. A comparable search for vegetarians would have to be “leftover pumpkin,” though having half or two-thirds a can of leftover pumpkin after the holidays is certainly not a strictly vegetarian problem. Many recipes call for just a [...]

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Mushroom, Lentil, and Wild Rice Timbales

November 23, 2008
Mushroom, Lentil, and Wild Rice Timbales

My Thanksgiving menu planning will always be an exercise in fantasy because we celebrate the holiday at my in-laws’, but if I were serving Thanksgiving dinner at my house this year, my menu would include Green Bean Casserole, mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, cornbread dressing, Cranberry Relish, Sweet Potato Casserole, Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake, and these [...]

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Sweet Dumpling Squash Stuffed with Lemon-Herb Rice

November 18, 2008
Sweet Dumpling Squash Stuffed with Lemon-Herb Rice

One of my favorite ways to cook winter squash is to roast it simply with lemon, salt, and pepper. So when I brought home these beautiful sweet dumpling squash and started thinking about how to use them, my first impulse was toward the simple lemon treatment. But these little cuties are just the perfect size [...]

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Apple-Pumpkin Delight

November 11, 2008
Apple-Pumpkin Delight

What if you love pie but don’t like crust? Strange as it sounds to me, I have a daughter who doesn’t like crust–on bread, on pizza, or on pie. Her aversion is not a big deal because she can always eat around it, but since I have my own reasons for avoiding pie crust, I [...]

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Pumpkin and Black Bean Casserole

October 17, 2008
Pumpkin Black Bean Casserole

I’d like to begin this pumpkin recipe with an unintentionally Halloweenish photo: Look closely. I was trying to take a basic photo of our homegrown pumpkin–the accidental result of tossing last year’s seeds into the compost pile–when someone decided that she would make a better subject. So what you see here is an accidental photo [...]

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Skillet Gardener’s Pie (Vegan Shepherd’s Pie)

May 22, 2008
Skillet Gardener's Pie

“If everyone lived on mashed potatoes, the world would be a happy place.” –EV, Food Philosopher and Potato Lover I have a confession to make, the kind of deep dark secret that I would tell only a very close friend, preferably a non-judgmental one who doesn’t cook or care about food. Here goes: For the [...]

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Roasted Pumpkin and Garlic Soup

December 10, 2007
Roasted Pumpkin Soup

I was afraid that this soup, like so many unworthy recipes I’ve made in the past week, might never make it to this blog. I’d fiddled with the seasonings so much, even adding a major ingredient, that I was sure right up until the time we sat down to eat that I’d created another dud. [...]

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Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

November 21, 2007
Double-Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

[Insert standard "this is not a fat-free recipe" disclaimer here. Geez, what was I thinking when I named this blog!] I know most of you who celebrate Thanksgiving have already figured out your menus. I’m probably the only slacker who still doesn’t know what she’s cooking! I’m lucky, though. I’m going to my in-laws’ celebration [...]

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Quinoa and Red Lentil Cutlets and Roasted Pumpkin and Vegetables

November 20, 2007
Quinoa and Red Lentil Cutlets

I make no secret of the fact that I don’t really like Thanksgiving. I’ve tried my best to see it as a time to get together with family without all the commercialization of Christmas, but all the emphasis on food just annoys me. It’s probably not surprising that as a vegan I bristle at the [...]

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Persimmon Bread

November 16, 2007
Persimmon Bread

It’s persimmon time again, or at least it was, very briefly, in my parents’ yard in Louisiana. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my dad saying that if I wanted persimmons, I’d better come get them because they were rapidly going from ripe to overripe to compost. He’d pick what was [...]

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5 Croquette Recipes

November 12, 2007
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Spinach-Sun Dried Tomato Hummus Croquettes by Jule I’m busy compiling a complete round-up of all the Can This Recipe Be Saved Contest entries. But before I could do that, I needed to give the recipes that were emailed to me (rather than posted on blogs) a place of their own on the web. So here, [...]

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Pumpkin Spice Bread

December 19, 2006
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Reading other food blogs over the past couple of weeks has made me think a little about how being vegan has influenced my gift-giving. While lots of cooks, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike, merrily bake and pack up goodies to give as gifts, I’ve become a little hesitant about giving gifts of food. It’s not that [...]

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Calamondin (or Lemon) Pie with Oatmeal Cookie Crust

December 15, 2006
Calamondin or Lemon Pie

I started making this pie years ago, while visiting my parents for the winter holidays. In November, their citrus trees start producing more fruit than my parents can use, so by December they’re giving fruit away by the bagful. And since my father has a big sweet-tooth (which E. and I have inherited), he’s always [...]

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Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping

December 11, 2006
Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping

I’m going to be honest with you and admit that I’m not a big fan of holidays. Stressing over some arbitrary date on the calendar–to cook certain foods, travel long distances, buy token gifts, and so on–has never been my idea of fun. For a long time, I felt the same way about the traditional [...]

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Ambrosia

December 10, 2006
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I’ve been feeling kind of guilty about not telling you what happened with the Thai eggplants and citrus fruit that I wrote about after Thanksgiving. I’m afraid I made up a new, very successful recipe for the eggplants but didn’t write it down or photograph the dish. You see, it was late and we were [...]

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The Best Vegan Green Bean Casserole

November 22, 2006
Vegan Green Bean Casserole

I just had to write a quick post about this recipe because D. and I just had some for lunch and oh my gosh, it is good! Truly, we were scraping the casserole dish clean. This is adapted and plagiarized from Alanna’s World’s Best Green Bean Casserole, and I have to say, the name fits. [...]

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My Family’s Cranberry Relish Recipe

November 21, 2006
Cranberry Relish

I emailed my mother to get her cranberry relish recipe, the one my husband and I descend on like a pair of hungry fruit bats each year. She emailed me the recipe, but what she sent didn’t quite match my memory of the dish because I thought it had apples in it. By the time [...]

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Tofu Stuffed with Brown Rice and Mushroom Dressing

November 14, 2006
Tofu Stuffed with Brown Rice and Mushroom Dressing

Thanksgiving came early to our house this year. Though we’ll be visiting my in-laws for the main big feast, I decided to have a little celebration just for my own little family. After all, we have a lot to be thankful for. Besides, I wanted to try my hand at something that couldn’t easily survive [...]

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Pumpkin and Roasted Corn Soup

November 1, 2006
Pumpkin and Roasted Corn Soup

Here in Mississippi, you never know what the weather is going to be like on Halloween. Plan on having a hot bowl of soup for dinner and you’ll be disappointed when the temperature climbs into the 80′s. Last night was like that. Although it was a lovely night and the kids were very comfortable in [...]

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Impossible Vegan Pumpkin Pie

October 9, 2006
Impossible Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Most of you who guessed yesterday’s mystery food were right: Pumpkin or Squash Pie is a good enough answer on this test. But, if I were the kind of teacher who demands exact answers (and I used to be), you would have had to have written “Impossible Fat-Free Gluten-Free Vegan Cushaw Pie” in order to [...]

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Brussels Sprouts with Basil and Garlic

March 3, 2006
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Here’s a quick recipe. I had a craving for Brussels sprouts, and there was about a pound of fresh ones in the fridge, so I decided to cook them up for lunch. Here’s what I did: And yes, I did eat these all by myself. They and some fresh pineapple were my lunch for the [...]

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Brussels Sprouts Two Ways

February 15, 2006
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Now that my Valentine’s-induced hysteria is over, I can finally get back to writing about my new true love: Brussels Sprouts! Since our stores here have finally started carrying fresh sprouts, I’ve been cooking a lot of them, and I’ve learned why people say that fresh ones are so much better than frozen. I’ve also [...]

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