Thanksgiving Meal with @gardein

Well my first completely Vegan Thanksgiving was AWESOME!!!! (just trying to figure out how to make a leftover turk'y sandwich with my @gardein stuffed turk'y.)

I ended up making mashed potatoes, gravy, peas and pearl onions, and stuffing.  Those are all my favorites and making them vegan wasn't hard at all!! The peas and pearl onions are already vegan and are super crazy easy! All you need is frozen peas and frozen pearl onions.  Steam them... and mix them together.  Just make sure the ratio of peas to pearl onions is about 2:1 or you'll have too many onions!

I love these because I love mixing them into my mashed potatoes :-)

Mashed potatoes are so easy too! Chop up the potatoes of your choice and put them in a pot.  Just barely cover with vegetable broth and boil until the potatoes are super soft.  Mash up the potatoes (don't pour out the broth) Add in cracked pepper, and some granulated garlic to your taste.  Add some vegan butter if desired.  (can make ahead... remember If creamy potatoes go into the fridge, they will come out as well!  Just heat them in the microwave with a little extra vegan butter)

**Confession, for my gravy I had 2 kinds... one came in a pouch with my gardein stuffed turk'y and the other was a brown gravy mix from simply organics...**

As for my stuffing... 

I used a bag of Whole Foods Brand Vegan Stuffing but dressed it up a bit.  I sauteed about 1/2 an onion (chopped), 1 stalk of celery (diced) and 1/2 a carrot (diced) in olive oil.  I followed the directions for the stuffing as noted on the bag but instead of using water I added in Better Than Bouillon No Chicken Base mixed with the amount of water as directed on the package of stuffing.   I cooked the stuffing as printed on the bag and added a little bit of Onion powder and granulated garlic.  It was great!  Almost like my grandmothers... except without the meat and meat juice!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I'm thankful for all of my followers and anyone else who reads my blog.  The dance studio will be closed soon for the holidays so I should have a little more time to share my recipes!  Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving Meal with @gardein

Thanksgiving is coming!!!!! I'm SO Excited!!! Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday!  This year will be my first full vegan Thanksgiving... But I'm really excited.

My "Normal" Thanksgiving dinner would consist of Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potato casserole, peas with pearl onions, ham, and biscuits.  (Stop laughing... no seriously I may be a ballet dancer but I love Thanksgiving food way to much to limit what goes on my plate.)

This year, will be different... I'm going to be eating gardein's stuffed turk'y for my "meat course" and I am definitely making vegan mashed potatoes, vegan stuffing, and a vegan pecan pie... (Those are my for sure foods... I may try to make some vegan biscuits or peas with pearl onions... maybe a vegan version of mom's sweet potato casserole.... but I know the BF's mom is making sweet potatoes... so we'll see)

Side note:  Last year the BF's birthday fell on Thanksgiving (lucky duck) so I made him a birthday cake... This year it falls on Black Friday and he has requested pecan pie instead of cake.

I need to apologize for not posting in a really long time... I've now got 7 jobs on top of dancing in the Community Nutcracker here in JAX FL so my time is very limited.  I do have some yummy things that I've made that I promise to share with you as soon as Nutcracker is over!  (Lots of soups and other yummy stuff!)

Stay tuned! (I'll try to post recipes for Thanksgiving stuff ahead of time so you can use it too!)