Thanksgiving wrap-up

Kitty-chan leads the parade down Central Park West!

Kudos to me -- I'm getting my Thanksgiving post done before Christmas.

As I posted before I went to NY, I have an amazing family.  My omnivore mom and aunt planned a totally  vegan Thanksgiving dinner, even though my girlfriend and I were going to be the only vegans there.  And everything was so delicious, I photographed it all and collected the recipes.  (My aunt said afterwards, "I hope you got some pictures of the family, too."  Um, oops.)

We tend not to have "traditional" Thanksgiving foods at our Thanksgiving dinners.  Before I went vegan, I was vegetarian for many years, and my mom didn't see the point in cooking a turkey I wasn't going to eat.  For a while we had a mini-tradition of eating spinach lasagna for Thanksgiving dinner.   But we've had all kinds of different things.  Last year Thanksgiving was just my mom, my girlfriend, and me, and I cooked all Indian dishes except for the desserts.  The one constant has always been cranberry sauce, but this year we didn't even do that.  We did have cranberry desserts though, so I guess cranberries are the constant.

I tried to take pictures of all the delicious food, but when I got home and started to upload the photos, I couldn't find my picture of the main courses!  So you'll have to live without that, but But then I found it a month later and edited the post, so yay! I do have recipes, or information about how to get the recipes, for everything I ate.

Baked apples stuffed with snausage

I conceived and made this dish a while ago, but never got around to posting.  It seems like a good Thanksgiving dish to me, so I'm putting it up now for the benefit of any last-minute types who are looking for a vegan protein to add to the plate.

I love baked apples and have always made them as a sweet dish.  My favorite way used to be to stuff them with chopped dried fruit and nuts.  This time around, it occurred to me that baked apples could be a savory dish.  I stumbled on a meatful recipe for baked apples stuffed with something disgusting like ground up pig muscle, and it occurred to me that I could stuff mine with vegan sausage.

The easy and peaceful way to do this would be to buy some vegan sausage, stuff it into the cavities left when you core the apples, and bake.  But I had to make my own sausage.  I looked at recipes calling for textured soy protein, tofu, tempeh (I don't actually like tempeh, but periodically think I should try to learn to like it), and seitan, and settled on one using frozen tofu.

I cored the apples, stuffed the cavities with snausage mixture, and baked as usual until the apples were done.  The snausage started to get brown too quickly, and so I covered the apples with foil for a while.  I would recommend starting out with them covered, and then uncover for the last 10-15 minutes of cooking.

They look cool when you slice them open:

Verdict:  this was fun, but I wouldn't make it the same way again.  I ended up with way too much snausage for the number of apples I had, and ended up nuking the rest and just eating it for breakfast one morning.  I also didn't think the snausage was tasty enough for the amount of trouble that went into making it.  The dried herbs didn't integrate with the frozen tofu very well; you could kind of distinguish them in your mouth.  If I were going to do this again, it would be because I wanted snausage for some other purpose, or had some leftover snausage lying around.  Maybe when I finally attempt the bean and seitan sausage that has taken the internets by storm, I'll seek out a few baking apples and give it another try.  I wouldn't use Italian snausage, though -- I'd recommend something more like a breakfast snausage flavor.  If you want to try this with store-bought snausage, I would try either the Tofurky snausage links (because I like all the Tofurky snausage products I've tried), or splurge on Field Roast sage-and-apple snausages, which I've never tried but don't they sound good?

Cranberry Applesauce for Thanksgiving!

I wanted to be sure to get this one up before Thanksgiving in case anyone else is experimenting with cranberries.

The apples this year have been disappointing.  A few weeks ago, my girlfriend bought a bag of Honeycrisp apples, of all things, and found them too tart for eating raw.  Honeycrisp!  Go figure.  I said no worries, I'll make them into applesauce.  I was going to do something really simple, just the apples and some Trader Joe's pumpkin pie spice (I love their pumpkin pie spice because it has cardamom and lemon zest in it).  Then I got to thinking about all the cranberries I have in the bottom of my freezer.

Over the River and Through the Woods

I've written before about how I obsessively prepare for travel.  Well, on Wednesday my girlfriend and I are going to New York City for Thanksgiving; we'll be gone three days and you would think I'm packing for the North Pole.  It's not like they don't have vegan food there.

My thing is, I want to be prepared, and I don't want to be any trouble.  When I'm around my family, I go into serious people-pleasing mode and often don't take care of my own needs.  This is my issue and mine alone -- my family is wonderful and is incredibly accommodating of my vegan-ness.  My omnivore mom and aunt have planned what I think is going to be an entirely vegan menu, and my girlfriend and I will be the only vegans attending.  This won't be my first vegan Thanksgiving with them, either.  So they are amazing and kind  and supportive and nevertheless, I.  Have.  Issues.

For years, I would binge whenever I went to New York.  There is so much yummy food there, much of which you can't get, or can't get as good, anywhere else.  And there's a lot of food I connect with emotionally.  (Bialys are probably the best example of both these qualities, but there are many others.)  The last few times I've visited, I've been so worried about not overeating that I've undereaten, and then there has been an equal and opposite reaction when I've returned home.   On this trip, I am determined to do neither of these things.  I am determined to take care of myself.  I didn't take good care of myself when I lived in NY, and so far I haven't pulled it off on a visit, either, so this will be a first.  And for me these days, taking care of myself means bringing my own food.