Thanksgiving 08

I love Thanksgiving so much.  This is food I would eat every day if it didn't send me into a delicious food coma.  I just woke up from a 3 hour nap.  Yep- that's right.  I did it just because I could.  

We hosted Thanksgiving this year- that's mostly been the tradition lately.  I love doing the cooking and Mike's mom is perfectly happy to bring anything I need and help with the grocery bill.  We're a perfect in-law match!  (actually not in law, since the law is not involved in our relationship.  But you know what I mean).  Mike's family is always a good sport about the whole vegan thing- no complaints about the missing turkey or anything. 

Mike will surely read this and make fun of me, but I want to post a picture of the table because I think it looked really cute!  The yellow candle holders are glasses with layers of tissue paper wrapped around them- they look really pretty when the light shines through.  The idea is from the November issue of Martha Stewart Living.  I broke out some homemade pickles on the table for snacking and the kids devoured them!

This is the first year I haven't made a seitan-tofu turkey a la Bryanna Clark Grogan.  I really love her recipe, but this year we made sure everything was wheat free and mostly gluten free for Mike.  And I just can't figure out how to make a "turkey" like that without wheat gluten. So I made some tofu turkey cutlets marinated in poultry seasoning, nutritional yeast, and veg. broth. And in case they weren't that good, I crusted them, fried them, and baked them to make up for it.  They were that good, though.

Of course there were mashed potatoes with onion gravy, green beans with a parsley, almond, and lemon gremoulade, cranberry-ginger relish (Martha Stewart Living Nov 08), and my gluten free cornbread stuffing, too.  Someday I'll post a recipe of it, but I never measure anything for it so I couldn't give you a recipe right now.  The cornbread I used was a double recipe of Mary Frances' Southern Style GF Cornbread.  It's my fave.

When I was a little girl I remember seeing my Meemaw bake HUGE pans of cornbread on Thanksgiving, only to break it up into bits for the dressing/stuffing.  I always felt sad seeing the perfect cornbread get smashed, but it's a necessary evil for this amazing dish!  

For dessert I broke out yet another Martha recipe.  This is the "Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Pie" from the Nov. 2008 issue.  I subbed a 12 point whatever ounce pack of silken tofu for the 12 oz. of  evaporated milk and 3 eggs called for in the recipe and used Newman's wheat and dairy free O's for the crust instead of graham crackers.  What happened to the creme filling on all those O's, you ask?  I'll never tell!

Since the O's have barley flour, this isn't gluten free.  But you could just use any GF cookie you can find.  I couldn't bring myself to bake cookies and then smash them to make a crust.  That plus the cornbread destruction might have been too much for my delicate constitution.  {I used to cry when balloons popped}

On top of the pie is some whipped Soyatoo cream.  I've had the stuff in a can and wasn't that impressed.  It deflated as soon as it left the can!  But this was the liquid variety that you whip at home and I thought it was 100% better.  Plus it was fun to whip it good in my KitchenAid. Seward Co-op in Minneapolis carries it.

We had a great day just chatting and eating and enjoying each other's company.  Now the kids are off to grandma's for the annual setting up of the Christmas decorations, I'm up from my nap, and I'm ready for leftovers.  Hope everyone else's Thanksgiving was as good as ours!