This Thanksgiving I’ll be traveling with my veggies

Let me start by saying I do not enjoy typical Thanksgiving food. I’ve never been a fan of casseroles, or turkey, or gravy, or anything cooked inside of a bird, or fruit that comes from a can or salads with marshmallows. I just like food to resemble food, in it’s original state. And I prefer it to be local, organic and vegetarian. That’s not too much to ask is it? Right?

Even though I don’t like the traditional food, I do like to be thankful and feel festive, with cooks spending the day in the kitchen and little ones waking up to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And even though I don’t eat turkey, I really love that my mother-in-law pulls out her vintage blue roaster every year to cook the turkey, the same one her mother used since 1950s, along with her same hand-written recipe simply titled “hen.”

We live 200 miles away from family so every year we pack up our kids, leave the dogs at home with the pet sitters, and hit to road to take part of the food and festivities. My family is always very understanding of the gargantuan obstacle it is just to get there much less cook for the day. They never expect me to bring anything other than bread. I am very thankful for that! Really, I am!

But there is a part of me that has always wanted to do more, fantasizing about one of those gourmet vegan feasts in the Vegetarian Times magazine.  I love to cook. I just don’t want to cook regular old Thanksgiving food.

So this year I’ll be printing off my recipes, packing up my CSA veggies, my spices, my cast iron skillet, my farm fresh eggs, my homegrown caned pears, my immersion blender and my favorite knife. My sister-in-law and I will be doing the cooking this year. We’ve been “put in charge.”

So far this is what I’ve got on my list of what I want to make. 

Deviled eggs

Brie served with pear honey from our very own pear trees

Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes

Whipped Sweet Potatoes stuffed and baked inside hollowed clementines

Broccoli potpie with biscuits – Farmer Megan from our CSA told about this one. She said to lightly cook broccoli, carrots and peas in butter, toss in flour, stir in milk, cheese, salt and pepper then pour in an oven safe dish and top with drops of biscuit dough. Bake at 350 until the biscuit top is slightly brown.

Butternut squash soup, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and cheesecake cookies – which are all seasonal favorites of mine and things I’ve written about recently. Plus my husband will make his soon-to-be famous pecan pie.

In the end, as a vegetarian Thanksgiving will always be about dining on a land of sides. One year, somewhere around 2001 (before I learned of the evils of processed soy), I made a Tofurkey. It was awful.

I make the choice to be a vegetarian because I don’t like the consumerism of meat, the treatment of the animals, the taste of eating animals or the growth hormones that most receive to get big and fat in a hurry. The Tofurkey is made to resemble the texture of turkey and replace it’s symbolism at the table. I almost find that offensive as a vegetarian. And I’d just about rather eat a good, local, organic, free-range turkey bought from a farmer with a good reputation.

I won’t be packing a turkey along this time. But I might need an extra suitcase. Because it looks like I’ll be packing half my kitchen – at least all the good stuff!