A vegan Thanksgiving

 I wanted to capture what we had for my first vegan Thanksgiving—honestly, this was Kent’s too although he isn’t vegan. And I did tell him he was welcome to prepare dishes with animal products in them (thinking of the green bean casserole, or turkey, stuffing and gravy). He said he didn’t want to, that he wanted to try what I was going to cook. So it was a vegan meal all the way around.

I’d found some Thanksgiving recipes for two from the New York Times that weren’t vegan, but I was pretty sure I could make them vegan. I won't bother linking to the NYT recipes because if you don't have a full subscription, you won't be able to access them. 

From the NYT, we had Maple Roasted Squash with Sage and Lime:

And Caramelized Brussels sprouts with vegan bacon. We will reduce the amount of apple cider vinegar the next time we make this and use a whole grain mustard instead of the Dijon we used:

Kent made the vegan bacon (or phacon as I called it) the night before Thanksgiving. It's made with coconut flakes and is quite good.

And Roasted Carrots, Faro and Lentils with *Cashew Sauce, which we've had before. This recipe is similar; I used one from a vegan cookbook my mother passed along to me.

We enjoyed this wine (even though we ate at noon and boy, drinking during the day sure makes me snoozy for the rest of the day.

Dessert was this very decadent NYT Pumpkin Sticky Toffee pudding with the most amazing sauce. This has what’s described as a soft cake-like texture. I thought it was similar to pumpkin bread only even better. We very briefly considered splitting one but didn't. And wouldn't in the future and agreed it was a Very Good Thing the recipe made two servings or we would have eaten it all.

*I’m so impressed with the sauces we can make with cashews. Those form the basis of the vegan Alfredo sauce we use on our pizza, with scalloped potatoes and of course with fettucine.