thanksgiving dinner

6 Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dishes That Hold Their Own With Turkey

Christa Avampato — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:00:06 +0000

I have a lot of friends who are vegetarians, and I eat my fair share of vegetarian dishes even though I'm an omnivore. Many of my friends and I have discovered dishes that are crowd-pleasers for everyone at Thanksgiving, whether or not our guests eat meat. Here are some of my favorites to make and serve. (See also: 35 Slow Cooker Recipes for Busy (or Lazy) Vegetarians)

1. Crustless quiche

I love a good quiche whether it's for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. This crustless quiche from the excellent food blog The Bojon Gourmet heightens the humble dish with a succulent combination of potato, goat cheese, Gruyère, and chives. Because it's made in a cast iron skillet, it gets a crunchy crust of its own during the cooking process without needing to add the calories of a proper crust. This leaves you more room for the other delicious goodies on the table!

2. Stuffed butternut squash

Butternut squash is one of my very favorite fall harvest vegetables. To make it extra special for Thanksgiving, take a page from the Pickles & Honey blog and stuff it with a tempeh and rice mixture that makes it even more satisfying! (See also: 12 Easy Squash Recipes for Fall)

3. Acorn squash with walnuts and cranberries

Can't get enough squash during the holidays? Me neither. One of the things I love best about the marvelous varieties of this vegetable is that they can be sweet or savory. Here's one that's yummy enough to be a main dish or a dessert. The gooey combination stuffing of walnuts and cranberries makes this one a wholesome sweet treat for everyone!

4. Savory sweet potato gnocchi

Gnocchi is one of my favorite pasta dishes. This recipe from Salt & Wind is one that's both savory and sweet. The sweet comes from the sweet potato gnocchi, and the savory comes from the brown butter, balsamic vinegar, and sage. No time to make gnocchi from scratch? No problem. Pick up some pre-made or frozen gnocchi, and just prepare the sauce from this recipe.

5. Vegan veggie wraps

Give the vegetarians at your table some fun with these vegan veggie wraps. They are a perfect blend of flavorful roasted chickpeas and sweet potatoes wrapped up in a pillowy soft flatbread with a silky sauce. Plus they are super cute and easy to prep and serve. You can substitute any roasted root vegetable for the sweet potato.

6. Brussels sprouts and root vegetables

Take the bitterness of Brussels sprouts, the heartiness of any root vegetable combination, the crunch of pecans, and the sweetness of cranberries and cinnamon. Put it all together and you get this masterpiece from Julia's Album. Even though this one uses butternut squash, you could use any roasted root vegetable, or a combination of them for more variety.

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This article is from Christa Avampato of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

10 Things You'll Waste Money on This Thanksgiving

Marla Walters — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 10:30:29 +0000

Serving a Thanksgiving feast on a budget is like performing a magic trick. It takes a lot of money to buy the large quantities of food to fill the bellies of all your Turkey Day guests. But it helps to know what people usually end up wasting money on, before forming your feast menu. If you're the host, here are 10 ways to stay on track and not blow your Thanksgiving grocery budget.

1. Buying Expensive Centerpieces

Have you priced formal floral Thanksgiving centerpieces, lately? Your basic cornucopia number runs around $50. Ouch! No need to engage a florist. Try your own hand at tablescaping. Here are simple, beautiful ideas using items you may already own, or that are easily found outdoors.

2. Serving Food Nobody Really Likes

Yes, Aunt Peggy's wiggly molded red jello may be traditional, but does anyone really like it? Take a hard look at your menu. It may be time ax the dishes you think you ought to make in favor of ones that people actually enjoy. Why waste time, money, and energy on food that is going to sit in the fridge for weeks?

3. Making Too Much Food

One of my grandmothers always worried about not having everyone's favorites, so she made it all. We really did not need both a turkey and a ham, or sweet potatoes fixed two ways. Even when everyone took leftovers home, her refrigerator was still difficult to close. Learn from my grandma: Stop overspending and also cut back on your food waste.

4. Only Buying Name Brands

Per pound, turkey is pretty inexpensive, unless you decide you need a pasture-raised one, which will cost you more. Big-box stores now offer organic products, too, so do your homework before you buy.

5. Not Asking for Help

One of the inevitable questions from your guests will be, "What can I bring?" Take them up on that! Hate peeling potatoes? Ask someone to bring the mashed potatoes. My mother couldn't make gravy without lumps, so she'd ask a friend to bring that. My daughter, who doesn't cook, can be depended upon to bring wine. There is nothing wrong with taking people up on their offers of help, and it will keep your costs down.

6. Serving Elaborate Hors d'Oeuvres

Spending loads of time on dinner? There's not much sense in your guests filling up on snacks ahead of time, and ruining their appetites. Instead of yet another hot appetizer that takes up space in the oven, try serving some inexpensive raw vegetables and spicy nuts that you can make ahead of time.

7. Using Fancy China

As someone who has multiple sets of china, I'm going to give you the straight scoop: I rarely use it. While I found the pretty flowers and silver bands on the rims just enchanting at age 20, now, I wish I had registered for a plain, good quality pattern. White, or off-white, is a lot more versatile, and a good quality plate is more useful than a highly decorative one.

8. Making Multiple Trips to the Store

Five years, ago, I found myself making a third trip to the supermarket when I realized I only had one type of cranberry sauce. What a waste of gas! How to avoid this? Make a list. Get out each and every recipe and make sure you either have the ingredient on hand, or that it is on your shopping list.

9. Creating Elaborate Place-Settings

I'm all for proper use of silverware, but you really don't need to go out and buy it all. It's no fun for my guests if they have anxiety about which fork to use first, or they don't know which bread plate is theirs. Here are some excellent photos and tips about which silverware to put where, ensuring that your guests don't stress.

10. Presenting Over-the-Top House Decor

Guests want to feel relaxed, welcomed, and comfortable. If you hang a wreath on your door, fine. But piles of pumpkins, huge hurricanes with candles, or hay bales at the front door are really unnecessary, and the cost adds up. What are you going to do with all this decor when Thanksgiving is over? Think ahead, and only buy the stuff you need and will use again.

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This article is from Marla Walters of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

8 Friendsgiving Hacks That'll Make Everyone Feel at Home

Max Wong — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 22:00:04 +0000

Thanksgiving can be a lonely and depressing holiday. For others who can go home, Thanksgiving can be a stressful onslaught of family dysfunction, terrible commutes, and questionable side dishes.

Luckily for my bummed-out friends, I love Thanksgiving. It is, by far, my favorite American holiday and I am sooooooo happy to share my celebration with them. I am one of those insane Turkey Day evangelists who actually makes a grocery shopping spreadsheet (and schedule) to plan out what ingredients I need to buy at each grocery store chain to receive my free, "one per household" turkey (my record is six free turkeys!). Boom.

Every year, instead of a traditional sit-down dinner, I host a Strays Party for my friends who cannot or will not go home for the holidays. I am very proud that this annual party has become THE Thanksgiving tradition for many of my friends, some of whom have attended every year for the past 12 years.

Here's how I ensure that my Friendsgiving feast stays super fun every year.

1. Keep a Flexible Schedule

Thanksgiving is often a logistical nightmare. Airfare is expensive. Traffic is terrible. The turkey takes two hours longer to roast than the recipe suggests. Instead of trying to schedule and cook for 50+ people, I start cooking at 10 in the morning and don't stop cooking until 10 p.m., and let my guests show up, eat, and leave whenever they want.

Some people stay all day, while others come for just a late night snack. I never know who is going to show up when, so every hour the party changes up with a different mix of guests. Just removing the time constraint from the party helps people to relax and enjoy themselves.

I know that my 12-hour Thanksgiving Day schedule is daunting to many just from the endurance cooking standpoint, but I like the ever-changing cast of characters. It's like a progressive dinner party that never leaves my dining room.

If I ever decide to tighten my party schedule down to just a few hours, I am going to borrow a slick scheduling trick from my friend Giselle. Every year, Giselle manages to get all the members of her enormous family to the dinner table at the same time, without hassle, by serving Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Do her relatives care that they eat cranberry sauce a day late? No. Do they like the fact that it's cheaper to fly on Thanksgiving, than the day before Thanksgiving? Yes.

2. Create a Non-Traditional Menu

I am just going to say it: a lot of traditional Thanksgiving sides look like vomit in a casserole dish. I mean, really. How anyone can screw up a recipe that involves cream of mushroom soup is beyond me. I know I am not alone with this criticism because every year I pick up more friends who come to my Strays Party as a means of subsidizing the terrible meal that awaits them at Grandma's house.

I used to really throw down in the kitchen for the Strays Party. I made a stuffed goose. I made Turducken. I made my Cajun family's recipe for WTF-en (ahem, What The Ducken), which is a Turducken but with game meat. Although I loved impressing my friends with my Iron Chef skills, I hated spending the rest of the holiday weekend washing every single pan and dish in my kitchen.

A few years ago, I realized that the dish that everyone craves, without exception, is not some elaborate entree, but my very simple Swedish pancakes. Instead of cooking Thanksgiving dinner each year for my friends, I now serve Thanksgiving breakfast — which consists of Swedish pancakes and a variety of toppings and fillings — all day long. My friends look forward to eating special crepes for Thanksgiving and my kitchen stays much cleaner.

3. Plan for Dietary Restrictions

Back in the days when I was cooking a full Thanksgiving spread, I used to include a menu with my invitation. Now, I ask every guest to bring a dish to share. This allows people to have a "safe" dish that they know they can enjoy. Self-described terrible cooks are allowed to bring wood for the fireplace, ice, or store bought goodies.

At every potluck, I provide pens and little place cards to my guests. This allows people to label the dish that they bring, so everyone knows what is vegan, kosher, gluten-free, etc…

4. Don't Give Dietary Advice

Often, Thanksgiving dinner is one of the only meals that people with severe food restrictions allow themselves to enjoy each year. One of my best friends is on an extremely limited, medically supervised, gluten-free diet to help keep his Multiple Sclerosis in check. Thanksgiving and his birthday are the only two days each year that he allows himself to eat "normally." According to him, the worst thing about eating Thanksgiving dinner is not his resulting, pie-crust induced joint pain, or the week-long bout of depression that he risks by eating cornbread stuffing, but having his bread pudding bliss interrupted by that busy-body who feels compelled to lecture him on nutrition.

More importantly, Thanksgiving is extremely stressful for people suffering from eating disorders and for their friends and families. Although it is extremely hard for me to sit by and watch my binge-eating relative engage in self-harm at the dinner table, Thanksgiving is the day to enjoy good food and give him some extra love. Thanksgiving is not the day to discuss my own body image issues, joke about calorie counts, or ask if he's gotten therapy yet.

5. Say No to Drunk Driving

Sadly, this needs to be said. I let all my guests know in advance that I expect them to take Uber or public transit home if they plan on drinking. Drunk driving is dangerous and unacceptable.

6. Let People Contribute in Their Own Way

Many people have a favorite family dish that they are nostalgic to eat. So, even if I don't need any extra food, I let my guests share their favorite Thanksgiving treat.

Coming alone to a holiday party can be nerve-wracking for introverts, so I recruit my shy guests to help me in the kitchen. Just like there's that friend who volunteers to grill the burgers at every barbecue as a shield for his social phobia, there's that friend who always offers to help me wash the dishes.

7. Allow All Naps

My brother-in-law always shows up hours early to help me prep for parties, eats voraciously, talks to everyone, and then falls into a dead sleep on my bed while the party is still going. Thanksgiving after-dinner napping is a great American tradition. I never see napping guests as a host failure, as I am giving my friends exactly what they want and need: more sleep.

8. Plan Activities

Obviously, I like my Thanksgiving dinner to be a slightly chaotic, choose your own foodie adventure. But some of my friends like a little more structure. For those friends, I organize pre-dinner ping pong tournaments, mid-dinner parlor games, and post-dinner walks by the river. Planned activities often make socializing with strangers a little easier.

Are you a host with the most? What's your secret to throwing the best Friendsgiving party?

This article is from Max Wong of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Little Old Lady Recipes: Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes

Meg Favreau — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:36:47 +0000

I am the rare person who really, really wants to host Thanksgiving. I've done it twice before, with the requisite newbie disasters (at the first Thanksgiving I hosted, a bubbling pie in the oven filled the kitchen with smoke, and when working on a chair, my father hurt his hand so badly that we thought it was broken). But hosting Thanksgiving combines two of my favorite things — cooking, and bringing together people I love to enjoy good food and conversation.

That's also one of the goals of my book, "Little Old Lady Recipes" — to provide recipes for classic comfort food that brings people together. One of the (many) great things about writing the book was getting to meet with mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers — lifelong cooks who had served food to several generations of family — and get their time-tested recipes. Some of the items in the book are the stuff of day-to-day dinners, but there are also great special occasion foods — like that Thanksgiving classic, sweet potatoes with marshmallows. (See also: Little Old Lady Recipes: Classic Frugal Cooking)

What I love about this recipe is that it isn't just sweet, it's also buttery (a requirement for me!), with a bit of citrus tang thanks to the addition of orange juice. I'm not hosting turkey day this year, unfortunately — I'll be attending a potluck, and it looks like I'm bringing a dessert. But if I was hosting, these sweet potatoes featured in "Little Old Lady Recipes," topped with just-crispy marshmallows, would be on the menu.

Sweet Potatoes With Marshmallows

5 or 6 sweet potatoes or yams

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 to 4 tbsp butter

1 tsp salt

Juice of 1/2 orange

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 cups mini marshmallows

Show me a Thanksgiving without marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, and I'll show you one annoyed lady. Though you'll normally see these orange-and-white sweets around November, try 'em in the cold depths of February, when you need a little non-holiday pick-me-up.

Peel, cube, and then boil the sweet potatoes until tender — or use canned sweet potatoes. Mash. Then add sugar, butter, salt, orange juice, and cinnamon. Scoop into a greased casserole dish. Sprinkle the marhsmallows on top and bake in a 350°F oven until the marshmallows look toasty. Serve hot. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

What's your favorite classic Thanksgiving dish? Share in the comments!

This article is from Meg Favreau of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: