Vegan Traditional Thanksgiving Pageantry. For years I've listened to the T-day hotline on NPR and have wanted to share my own ideas on how to have a traditional T-day if you don't want or can't do turkey. I originally submitted the following to the Organic Consumers Association's on-line forum under the "Hot Topic" of "Thanksgiving Turkeys", which also contains a recipe for Tofu Turkey and Vegan gravy for those trying to replicate the textures and flavor of the meat. I'm after reclaiming the family traditions and pageantry for those who don't want to do turkey on that day, so I've not included actual recipes, as my point is to use your family's recipes as a starting place and adapt them so that it is as similar as possible except healthier.

"I'm glad for all the carnivores that care enough to choose meats that are healthier for themselves and the planet, but for those who are looking to do a Thanksgiving or Christmas without the main meat dish for any of a multitude of good reasons, yet find the tiny, outrageously expensive Tofurkey to be lacking in an adequate sense of abundance and pagentry, I'd like to share my Meatless Turkey solution. I grew up helping to prepare the traditional turkey dinner featuring a stuffed bird that filled the whole oven and was carved in ceremony and fed an entire extended family, with leftovers that lasted days. Lots of warm fuzzy family togetherness memories that a Tofurky just can't touch - get out the big carving implements to work on a "roast" that is smaller than a chicken and the whole family will just laugh at you.

But the meat version of Thanksgiving did have its downsides, too - prepping the bird was absolutely gross - slimed both you and the sink in a heavy film of grease that took more than one washing with detergent to get off, and the clean up afterwards was just as bad. And stuffing ourselves w/ meat made us feel sleepy and bloated, which wasn't good for socializing, not to mention our weight. And then there was the minor problem of dad dying from heart-disease after only a little more than a half-century, which woke the rest of us up for good. Granted these were agribusiness butterball birds, and the lean range-fed birds discussed by the other members of this list above would likely not have these problems, at least not in the same magnitude.

When my vegan spouse and I joined a CSA organic farm a few years ago, one of our late summer distributions included a monstrous Hubbard squash, which in form and size looks remarkably like a store-bought Thanksgiving turkey, if you ignore the beautiful light pale blueish cast to its skin. My husband had years of experience storing winter squash in a root cellar, so after a few days of hardening off in the heat of our garage attic, our winter squash all went to a cool dark basement room until such time as we could catch up on eating and canning the other huge portion's of our share of the farm's harvest that were far more perishable. Sure enough, as Thanksgiving rolled around that squash was still there, in the same fantastic shape as when we'd stored it away, and I got the bright idea to do the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but all vegan with the squash substituting for the bird.

So I prepped my mom's recipe for stuffing, using veggie bullion instead of chicken broth, but w/ far less water than normal, since the squash would be plenty juicy. Then I cut off the top 1/4 of the squash in an almost horizontal cut as one does for a pumpkin, removed the seeds, and stuffed the "bird",replaced the lid and put it in the oven to bake for the same temp and times as a real turkey. When it came out of the oven, I could put it on a platter and carve it at the table almost like a turkey, though you don't eat the tough squash skin, so there is no need to cut through that more than once to open the "bird". The firm orange squash flesh hangs together when carved in a slab almost like meat if you first separate it from the skin with the knife, and the savory stuffing and slightly sweet squash each enhanced the other's flavor.

I separated the seeds from the pulp and coated them with cinnamon and sugar and baked them at the same time as our tofu pumpkin pies, made using my grandma's traditional recipes with slight alterations for crusts 9substituting whole wheat for 2/3rds of flour and used only 1/3 the amount of fat called for and veggie shortening instead of butter) and filling (substituted blended silken-style tofu for sweetened condensed milk). We liked the pies even better than grandma's recipe because the crusts where crispier and the filling firmer, but the flavor was very similar otherwise. The mashed potatoes were very similar to what I remember, too, except I used olive oil and soymilk instead of butter and cow's milk to bring them to the right consistency, and since I used thin-skinned Yukon gold potatoes I didn't even bother to peel the potatoes, just pureed them with the other ingredients so they'd have all the nutrients in the skins in them, too. Green beans and other traditional veggie dishes were close to vegan anyways, cranberries were fixed as a sauce/puree instead of a jello, though one can use agar-agar to thicken instead of gelatin.

It all came out well enough that I did it again the following year at my vegan mom's household, and it has become our nuclear family's annual tradition now. We've also hosted the whole extended family of my childhood memories for Thanksgiving, though the rest of them are confirmed carnivores, so we also do a Tofurky for those that don't feel the meal complete without something that has the flavor and texture of turkey meat and gravy. While I don't think we made any converts of the carnivores (which wasn't our intention anyways), everyone was very gracious and there were a lot of folks who commented with surprise about how good everything tasted. They also noticed that they didn't feel stuffed after eating a huge quantity of food (one of my favorite reasons for being vegetarian). Thanksgiving goes in rotation in our extended family, so most years we are the guests at a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner, but at least now we all know that we can participate in the hosting rotation and everyone will still have a good time and satisfied stomachs.

I encourage folks to both research the web for vegetarian/vegan recipes, and to use those ideas to modify your family's traditional recipes, but always experiment on yourself first until you get something you are satisfied with, before you debut it to a larger group that is not used to vegetarian (much less vegan) meals. It will take some tweaking, but you can find new ways to realize old flavors and textures, and discover some new favorites in the process."