Thanksgiving Day Vegan Fest Recap

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day yesterday! J and I were supposed to go to his mom's for a family dinner, but I've been sick and so we decided it best to have our own little fest at home. J, the sweetheart that he is, insisted I relax while he prepared our T-day dinner. About a week ago we had discussed what we were going to make and created a delicious menu:

• Vegan YumYum's Seitan Roulade with Chestnut Stuffing (with pecans substituting chestnuts because we couldn't find prepared chestnuts at Whole Foods)
• Vegan YumYum's Mushroom Gravy
• Garlic mashed potatoes
• NYT Well Blog's Stir-Fried Balsamic Ginger Carrots

So I sat on the couch watching TV as J worked away in the kitchen, running back and forth to the computer and to me with questions and exciting taste tests. The dinner he put together was spectacular. I had been a meat eater for many years, and this was MUCH better than any "normal" Thanksgiving dinner I'd ever had. He even changed up the menu a bit; we'd run out of mushrooms for the gravy, so he made Vegan YumYum's Tangerine Cranberry Sauce (made with orange juice instead of tangerine). Everything was delicious and definitely worth making again! Here's some photos he took while he was putting everything together:

Pecan Stuffing

Finished Pecan Stuffing with Homemade Croutons added

Cranberries, Sugar, & Orange Juice boiling down

Finished Orange Cranberry Sauce

Roulades just out of the oven. We realized we forgot to get cotton cooking string, so J was innovative and used tin foil "twist-ties" instead

Our beautiful dinner!

I had originally planned to bake a vegan French Apple Tart to take to J's mom's house, but as I was sick, I wasn't feeling up to baking. The tart would have looked like this though: 

This was the first year I did not feel overly stuffed from Thanksgiving. I didn't feel lethargic; I felt satisfied and lively. In retrospect, we didn't even need the tart - it probably would have been overdoing it. And what's the point in that?!

I'm glad we had an animal-free meal this Thanksgiving. As I perused Facebook, so many people had the status "Happy Turkey Day!" and it made me feel so sad that people don't realize the meaning behind what they're saying. Thanksgiving should not be a day about killing thousands of turkeys, most of which lived horrible lives in cages too small for them to move. Thanksgiving should be about being thankful for what we have and, if you're going to partake in the act of eating animals, at least have the decency to be thankful for the life you took rather than making light of it and wishing everyone a happy turkey day. 

For me, I'm thankful to have such a loving, caring, devoted fiancé. I'm thankful for our companion animals, kitties Ellie and Bob, who show us unconditional love and have lifted our spirits daily. I'm thankful for the family we've made for ourselves and for the happy home that shelters us. I'm thankful for the life I have and the happiness I can bring to others.