Uh Oh! A Vegetarian Is Coming for Thanksgiving!

Terrific Recipes for All Your Hosting Woes

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and many of us are run off our feet with planning, shopping, organizing, prepping, cleaning, and cooking. And then suddenly our teenaged daughter announces that she is now a vegetarian. Or our son’s new boyfriend is a vegan. Or we learn at T-minus three days that a guest has a food intolerance or is on a new diet. As if hosting a large gathering weren’t stressful enough, now we have to come up with new recipes? What to do? Well, readers, worry no more—I am here to help.

I have been a vegetarian since high school, with brief pauses because (in my early 20s) I was dating an amateur French chef and because (in my early-to-mid 30s) I was pregnant or nursing and following my doctors’ recommendations that I eat some chicken and fish once in awhile. But apart from those hiatuses, I don’t eat any meat at all—and I recognize that this can pose challenges for friends and family who will host me for holiday dinners, particularly on Thanksgiving, when meat features so prominently. So I have developed and collected recipes for dishes that I can bring with me. What follows are some quick and tasty recipes that you can prepare ahead. Whether you are hosting a dinner or are a guest who would like to bring a vegetarian dish to help your hostess out, I guarantee that even the most confirmed carnivores will love these dishes.

An Elegant and Delicious Main Course

Before I get to the first recipe, I would like to ask you all to be honest: You don’t actually like turkey, do you? I don’t mean the sandwiches you’ll make Friday with leftover meat and an eclectic mixture of leftover side dishes between hearty slabs of bread (I hear that stuffing and cranberry sauce work particularly well on these sandwiches, but pumpkin pie not so much). I’m not talking about the protein-rich and flavorful soup you’ll make from the turkey carcass on the weekend. I mean the plain (and, let’s face it, often dry and tasteless) turkey meat at the actual Thanksgiving meal. Do you actually like it, or do you just eat it to honor tradition and out of duty? I thought so.

One Thanksgiving when I was in college, my aunt and cousin, who are, like me, also vegetarians, came for Thanksgiving. With three vegetarians at the table, we had reached critical mass, and my mom made a nice vegetarian lasagna for us. Hooray! The only problem was that the lasagna was so much yummier than the turkey that all the carnivores ignored the turkey and ate up the lasagna instead. I was deprived of my rightful second helping of lasagna! The moral of the story is that you can serve the mushroom lasagna below to all your guests in good conscience: they will love it, probably even more so than they like the traditional dishes.

Starý Mlýn [the old mill], handmade Czech pottery lasagna pan.

Adele’s Mushroom Lasagna

Shortly before I moved away from Prague, my wonderful friend and neighbor Adele did me the tremendous honor of teaching me how to cook her authentic northern Italian mushroom lasagna. When I arrived for my lesson, she presented me with a beautiful lasagna pan (pictured above) and walked me through the steps. This recipe is elegant, satisfying, and richly flavorful. Your guests will love it!

For the mushroom mixture

500gms (1 pound) mushrooms, stem ends cut off and caps thinly sliced

about 1/4c olive oil

a big handful of dried fancy mushrooms (like morels or porcini), soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes

1 clove garlic, finely chopped with a bit of salt to make a paste

a glug of good-quality dry white wine

the leaves from about 10 stems Italian flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped (discard stems)

For the béchamel

50gms (1/4c) each flour and unsalted butter

500ml (2c) whole milk at room temperature

1/4 tsp nutmeg and a bit of salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the assembly

2 150gm balls (about the size of your fist) fresh mozzarella (I use Galbani), well-drained, diced into 1cm cubes, and divided into 3 equal piles

a bit more than 1-1/2c grated hard Italian cheese (I use Gran Padano)

9 no-boil lasagna noodles (I use Barilla)

more chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley leaves

1. Preheat oven to 190C/375F and generously butter (use unsalted butter) a 9 x 13 lasagna pan.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and sauté the fresh mushrooms, stirring occasionally. When they have softened a bit, throw in the garlic. Then, when they have given up most of their liquid, add the wine, the drained fancy mushrooms, a bit of the soaking liquid (reserve the rest just in case), parsley, and salt and pepper.

3. In between fussing with the mushrooms, make the béchamel: melt the butter in a large saucepan and add in the nutmeg, a dash of salt, a grind of black pepper, and the flour, stirring to make a smooth paste. Slowly pour in the milk, stirring constantly, and heat to just below boiling. The sauce should thicken up. Turn off the heat.

4. Get ready for the assembly: smear a small ladleful of the béchamel on the bottom of the lasagna pan and dust a bit of the dry cheese over. Then pour all the mushrooms into the saucepan with the béchamel and stir well to make a mushroom goo. Add a bit more of the dried mushroom soaking liquid if desired. Now you’re all set to assemble!

5. Layer the ingredients evenly in the pan three times, in this order: A. 3 noodles (note: they won’t cover the whole bottom of the pan, but that’s ok—everything expands during baking), B. a generous cup of the mushroom goo, C. one pile of the cubed mozzarella, and D. 1/2c of the dry cheese. If you have any mushroom goo and/or dry cheese left over at the end, pour and/or sprinkle that over everything. Top with a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Note: you can make the lasagna ahead up to this point. Just cover it and store it in the fridge for up to 48 hours. Bring to room temperature before baking.

6. Bake for about 20-30 minutes until the top is golden-brown and bubbly. Let sit at least 15 minutes before cutting. Serves 8 very generously.

A Vegan, Gluten-Free, High-Protein Salad

But wait! you say. That lasagna looks terrific, but I have vegans coming, and they will not eat the cheese. Plus, my cousin is gluten-free, so no pasta for her. Dear Happy Wanderer, can you help me? Why yes, I can! But first, another story:

When my son was a baby and I was nursing him, his pediatrician thought he cried so much because of an allergy to milk protein,¹ so the pediatrician put me on a strict no-dairy diet. During this time of sad deprivation, we invited two other couples over for dinner, only to discover that one couple was vegetarian, and the other was on the Adkins Diet, so they wouldn’t eat carbs of any kind. I rose to the challenge! I made a stir fry with crispy fried tofu, broccoli, and red pepper spears. For the sauce I sautéed garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes and then poured soy sauce, hoison sauce, and a bit of sesame seed oil over everything. The Adkins Diet friends simply ate the stir fry without rice and were otherwise fine to eat with the rest of us.

Whenever I read letters in etiquette columns grousing about guests’ dietary restrictions, I think of this dinner and smile to myself. It’s much more fun to get creative and find a new dish than to nurse a grudge about your guests’ dietary restrictions—and your reward is having a fun story to tell! If you are in a similar situation, you can throw together my vegan stir fry, or you can make the following recipe:

Julianna’s Church Picnic Southwest-Style Salad

I edited a cookbook for our international school last year, and my friend Julianna submitted this terrific recipe, which I have slightly adapted. It’s from her church cookbook, and like all church cookbook recipes, this salad is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser that will also feed an army.

For the quinoa

1c dry quinoa, rinsed

2T olive oil

1-3/4c water

1 clove garlic, finely chopped with a bit of salt to make a paste

1 400gm (15oz) can black beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed

For the dressing

1 jalapeño pepper, seeded, veins removed, and finely chopped (optional but good!)

juice of 1 lime

2T olive oil

leaves of about 10 stems cilantro, chopped (discard stems)

1/2tsp each cumin, coriander, and salt

For the assembly

1 avocado, chopped into small chunks

10 or so cherry tomatoes, quartered

1c corn (ideally sliced from the cob, but frozen is fine too)

1 red bell pepper, diced

1. Heat 2T olive oil in a medium saucepan and then toss the quinoa in the hot oil for a few minutes, until it smells nutty. Add the garlic and water, stir, cover, and simmer with the lid on for 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, make the dressing: in a small bowl combine the jalapeño, lime juice, 2T olive oil, cilantro, cumin, coriander, and salt.

3. When the quinoa has finished cooking, remove from the heat and fluff with a fork. Add the beans to heat them through. Let the quinoa cool for 5 minutes.

4. In a large bowl, mix the quinoa with all the other ingredients, including the dressing. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. You can make this salad a day ahead and store it, covered, in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before serving.

A Vegan, Gluten-Free, No-Carb Dish

But what about if you have a guest who is 1. vegan, 2. gluten-free, and 3. also doesn’t eat any carbs at all, not even quinoa? Guacamole to the rescue! I make this quick and easy dish a couple of times a week, and everyone loves it. In fact, I made the big bowl pictured below for an apéro with neighbors last week, and their fourteen-year-old vegan daughter ate half the bowl in one sitting! Your no-carb guests can dip red-pepper spears or just eat the guac with a spoon, and everyone else can eat it with chips.

Mari’s Guacamole

4 avocados at just the perfect moment of ripeness² (a tall order, I know)

1 red chili pepper, seeded, veins removed, and finely diced

6-8 cherry tomatoes, stem end removed, pulp squeezed out, and quartered

juice from 1-2 limes (to taste; I use 1-1/2 limes)

1 tsp salt

leaves from 10 stems of cilantro (discard the stems)

Mush up the avocados in a bowl, throw in all the other ingredients, mix, and guard from your husband until the guests arrive. You can make this a day ahead and keep it covered in the fridge until about an hour before dinner. Serve at room temperature.

Of Course, There’s Always This Idea

One Final Challenge

Ok, I hear you saying, but listen to this one: I have a guest coming who is 1. vegan, 2. gluten-free, 3. low-carb, and 4. also allergic to nightshades. So he can’t have anything with meat, dairy, eggs, carbs, peppers, tomatoes, or eggplant. Do you have a suggestion for me? Why yes, dear reader, I do!

Tee hee! I love coming up with recipes to accommodate people’s food restrictions, but there are limits!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Please share your favorite Thanksgiving dishes, stories, and reasons to be grateful in the comments.

The Tidbit

Enjoy these fun facts about turkeys. I took the first three from the World Animal Protection website and the last two from this blog:

Wild turkeys can fly, and they like to fly up into the trees at night to sleep.

Boy turkeys (toms) and girl turkeys (hens) leave different-shaped poop. Toms make J-shapes, and hens make spirals.

Turkeys’ eyesight is three times as keen as humans’, and they can see 270 degrees around—almost as much as owls!

Turkeys can run really fast—25mph!

Turkeys eat whole acorns, bugs, lizards, seeds, berries—no dietary restrictions for them!

1. It turned out he wasn’t allergic after all. I endured a year with no butter, cheese, or ice cream for nothing!

2. Don’t be shy. When you’re in the grocery store, go ahead and gently squeeze all the avocados until you find ones with just the right amount of give. Another tip for finding a perfectly ripe avocado is to surreptitiously remove the stem nubbin and look at the color underneath. You want to see pale green, not brown.