Full!!!! And also thankful.

asparagus, spicy szechuan peas, cocktail sauce

baked artichoke dip

four varieties of sweet potatoes

Yes, thankful for lots of reasons...but, admittedly I am thankful Thanksgiving is over! I love every day which is my gentle way of saying I hate holidays.  But here are my tricks of lighter eating on Thanksgiving,

I made some trick hors d'oeuvres.  We had cocktail sauce with asparagus, cucumber and bread sticks.  I feel quite certain that my mother's husband who looked confused was wondering where the shrimp were, but vegan dishes with cocktail sauce are totally fab.  We also had tricky artichoke heart dip.  I like to create flavors from my childhood so I used nutritional yeast instead of parmesan cheese and my guests were actually quite enthusiastic about that one served  with good thin crackers.

I like to have lots of vegetables with Thanksgiving dinner because anything that can pull that horrible heavy food through the body and lead it out is helpful to all.  So, I made Brussels sprouts with ginger cranberry glaze.  These were simple, just strips of ginger sauteed in olive oil, soy sauce, sesame oil and good aged balsamic vinegar, then I added the Brussels sprouts and covered to steam.  Then, after they were finished I added a spoon of tart cranberry sauce and stirred it through.  The tartness of tonight's cranberry sauce triggered my mother to tell her endless story of how I like lemons so much and how I must be a freak of nature in my ability to tolerate sour.  Blah, blah at the Devon Horse Show when I was a child I would order a lemon stick.  Frankly, so did a lot of people and my mother has such an inability to tolerate anything sour at all that her salad dressing can not even contain vinegar...hmm, who is the freak of nature?

I also made a plain green salad and plain asparagus.  It was simple and adds a lot of water, fiber, vitamins and antioxidants. served with olive oil and vinegar but I smothered mine in cranberry sauce and merged all of my Thanksgiving flavors.

I made my simple unstuffing (brown lentils with Bell seasoning, onions and celery) so it would taste just like stuffing.  I also made regular vegan stuffing, some of which actually was stuffed into a turkey.  Yes, a turkey was present but I did my best to ignore it.

I did make sweet potatoes which are fundamentally my favorite Thanksgiving food.  I baked four kinds (Jewell yams, moist and orange, Garnet, also dark orange, Korean (which some call Japanese) light yellow dry ones with red skin, and yellow moist sweet ones which Perry favors.  I aim to please kids who
have different preferences so I am always buying a few varieties.

my healthy plate, well, ok, I did refill it once or twice, or maybe thrice

in contrast, Larry's plate

Dessert Debacles:
I made an amazing dessert of a chocolate pie crust with almond paste, shredded coconut, chocolate and vegan caramel and then ate way too much of it.  I still feel full and gross.

And I made what I think were the funniest yet quite horrid pecan pies.  The pecan pie filling was molasses, apple sauce, vanilla, coconut flour and pecans.  Do not ever try this.  It is horrible!!! If you want to taste it well, I have quite a bit leftover.

I had the kids make a gluten free brownie from a mix in the morning with a babysitter and that did not go so well either.  We remain uncertain as to whether adding Earth Balance instead of butter or apple sauce instead of eggs was the actual problem but the brownies did not rise at all.  On the upside, if you like chocolate chewy goop, which I actually do, then they were quite groovy.

A few packaged cookies and peppermint taffy saved the day.

Perry and Susannah, finished
all thankful Perry is on the mend and we think returning to school in January at least part of the day. doing well on new crutches and bones seem intact for now, lots to be happy about