Your Vegan Mom

Totally Sick of Thanksgiving? Make Taquitos.

Take a couple cups of leftover roasted vegetables.  Ours were an amalgam of onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, delicata squash, and kale from several roasts I made in the days and weeks approaching Thanksgiving.  I had 8 roasts and their surrounding vegetables in my fridge and freezer at one point.  Toss your vegetables in the food processor with a few slices of your leftover untofurkey, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of chipotle powder (or smoked paprika if you're hoping children will eat this), and a teaspoon of oregano.  Process until chunky smooth.  Cover a small skillet with a slick of canola oil.  Wrap a dozen corn tortillas in a wet dish cloth, and heat in the microwave for a 1 1/2 - 2 minutes, until the tortillas are soft and pliant.  Spoon a generous tablespoon of leftovers into each tortilla, tightly roll, and pan fry seam side down, flip, fry some more, and serve with gaucamole or if it's really all leftovers all the time, then in tapatillo-spiked cranberry sauce. (Yeah, that's the level we've sunk to in this house.  Man, am I done with Thanksgiving.)    

Roasted Kale and How to Dress Your Seitan

To recap, for Thanksgiving 2011, so far we have made a 2-pound hunk of seitan that will become your Thanksgiving roast and, more importantly, the protein bit in your post-Thanksgiving sandwich.  At the same time, we made about 6 cups of tasty broth to use in your stuffing and gravy.  We made the gravy - cashew mushroom to be precise, and it's delicious.  Now, with Thanksgiving just two days away, it's time to talk about how you're going to serve the seitan.  

Just like a tofurky from the store, you can surround it with any vegetables that you like roasted for an hour.  The roots are classics here.  You could not go wrong with a combination of potatoes, onions, parsnips, and carrots.  But if you're having mashed potatoes as well (and you are, aren't you?), well then this classic combo might feel a bit redundant.  

I wanted something green and bright, but that could withstand all that cooking.  

I turned to my old pal, kale, and he did not let me down.

Gravy

Let's start with the gravy.  Last week, we browned aromatic vegetables in olive oil, deglazed the pan with a swill of white wine, stirred in some pungent miso and broth and then turned that fragrant pot into the seitan dough that would become our Vegan Thanksgiving Roast.  We coated the dough in seasoned flour, browned the whole thing in olive oil to create a crust, added more vegetables and herbs to the pot and covered them with water to create a flavorful broth all while the seitan simmered.

Your Big Hunk of Protein

Dudes, that was an epic potluck - one for the ages.  There was homemade sweet potato gnocchi and tamales and jerk tofu and biscuits and plenty of beer and wine.  Thank you all so much for coming.  Chosen at random, comment # 22 (!) wins the pie.  Amanda, please email me your mailing address so I can get it to you.

Now, let's talk turkey.  Obviously, we're not serving one.  And have you read Dav Pilkey's 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving?  Holy crap, I wonder how many omnivorous families unwittingly take that one home from the library.  Here is a popular, main stream children's book author writing about a field trip to the farm that turns unexpectedly educational when the children ask what the ax is for.  The kids hide the turkeys under their shirts and take them home to be guests at the table on Thanksgiving where they eat veggies and jelly and toast.

Apart from veggies and jelly and toast, there are so many options for the Thanksgiving table - as you recently illustrated - that it seems silly to have that old hashed out vegan-replacement-for-turkey discussion, so let's focus on the sandwiches.

Around the World with Bryanna Clark Grogan

Nine years ago this December, Paul and I got married.  After the stress of fabricating the most perfect day in our entire lives, I didn't care where we went on our honeymoon as long as it was warm and we could lounge.  We settled on Montreal.  In December.  

I can't remember precisely how we settled on Montreal.  In December.  But I had always wanted to go there, and we have an irritating tendency to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing even when they are right.  

So we went to Montreal.  In December.  And everyone there was eating poutine - a snacky, regional specialty of fries slathered in cheese curds and brown sauce.  And we wanted in.  So on one of our last days in the city, in a movie theater no less, Paul asked the French Canadian in charge, "Could we get an order of poutine without meat or cheese?"  With a mixture of French Canadian bewilderment and disdain, the concessionaire told Paul, "It is made of meat.  It is meat sauce."    

Unsatiated, I've had a niggling desire for poutine for the last nine years... until Bryanna Clark Grogan's new cookbook, World Vegan Feast, arrived on my doorstep in August.  Flipping through the roster of international recipes - Spanish Omelet - Saigon Crepes - Serbian Braised Sauerkraut and Seitan - South African Bobotie - Moroccan Bisteeya - Vegan Poutine - I knew where we would begin.