Thanksgiving is Coming Soon.....

For my newly vegetarian family, I had to come up with a Thanksgiving menu that would feel special and leave no one wanting. I deconstructed our favorite Thanksgiving dishes and created a new menu that would compliment a vegetarian protein rather than being centered around turkey.

Baked potatoes became latkes with applesauce. Sweet potatoes are still roasted but are served in thick slices drizzled with sage butter. Carrots roasted in the pan drippings are roasted in butter and cinnamon until they caramelize. As a main dish, I will serve roasted red onions with vegetarian sausage (store-bought because thanksgiving is already hard enough) with onion gravy. I'm also planning on serving a vegetarian approximation of my family's favorite stuffing, cranberry sauce, and our favorite pies.

I have several meat-eaters attending our thanksgiving and after conferring with them and my family, we decided that serving salmon would be a good compromise. It's a special protein, but isn't a huge piece of meat to have in the house. Another option would be a turkey breast or thigh, but I didn't want to handle poultry after giving it up.

Before lunch, I'll be serving soy egg nog, cashews, chex mix (despite the fish in the worcestshire sauce, we just couldn't give this up), an apple tart, a little relish plate, and some cheese. The relish plate will include kalamata olives, peperoncini peppers, pickled cucumbers, and sliced fresh cucumbers.

My family loves having potpie with thanksgiving leftovers, so the day after, I'll make a vegetable potpie. Potatoes, peas, carrots, and corn will be tossed with gravy and baked in a flaky pie crust. I'll use the vegetarian version of my Easy Peasy Chicken (or Vegetable) Potpie. I'll leave out the chicken, substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock, and add corn. This pie is nice hot or cold as leftovers.

I'll be working over the next couple of weeks to keep developing these recipes and doing small practice batches. I'll post them, when I've perfected them.

Broccoli Fettucini

Lately I've been flavoring olive oil to make the most of my calories. If I'm going to put it on something, I might as well enjoy it.

In a few tablespoons of olive oil, I saute 1 t red pepper flakes for a few seconds before adding 1 t dried crushed rosemary and then one large clove pressed garlic. At the very end I add 1 t dried basil.

I've been adding this to vegetables, tofu, and that sort of thing, but I wanted to make a pasta, so I came up with this Broccoli Fettucini (with no alfredo sauce what so ever). The flavored oil, parma, and sausage are rich enough that this replaces traditional fettucini alfredo quite nicely.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon flavored olio (from above recipe)

1 package refrigerated fettucini

1 large head of broccoli (fresh please, not the mushy frozen stuff)

1 vegetarian sausage patty per person (I suggest Morningstar, but use your favorite)

a little parmesan cheese. get the good stuff.

Cook the sausage and pasta according to package directions and the olio according to my directions (for this recipe, if you don't have the pepper flakes, pepper works instead). Once the basil is added to the oil, put it 2 T of the pasta cooking water. This will disperse the seasonings more evenly through the pasta. Cut up the broccoli into small florets and cook it in the sausage pan with a lid on until it turns bright green. Also chop up the cooked sausage. It should be about the same size as the florets. Toss the pasta with olio first, then add the parma, and, finally, top with the broccoli and sausage.