For Thanksgiving this year, Dave and I, along with my brother, spent the day at my Dad’s house with him, Stepmom, her parents, and my baby sister, who’s 3 1/2 now and very active, talkative, and loves to perform.

Stepmom and her family are Russian. Some of their traditions don’t exactly line up with my family’s typical Italian ones, but in the past two years since I’ve been vegan, this difference in tradition has actually worked out in my favor.

Yes, see, where my father expects every dish to be meat or to have grated cheese on it, but my Stepmom does not; while normally the entire turkey carcass would be brought to the dinner table, then carved there, Stepmom’s dad cuts up (not carves) the turkey in the kitchen, then just brings the meat on a platter to the dinning room; and there’s more versatility with the desserts, as not everything needs to be a big cheesecake or cannoli.

This year, Stepmom made all vegan food except for the cut-up turkey and the stuffing. But, Dave and I weren’t left without — she got us the Tofurky holiday roast that comes in stuffing inside and gravy to baste it with. Plus, she made additional vegan gravy, whipped sweet potatoes, wild rice medley, and asparagus. Yum!

Normally, I’m not someone that needs to be “tricked” by faux meats and if I had been making the dinner, I would have never got the Tofurky roast and never tried it. Since Stepmom made it special, Dave and I ate it and were pleasantly surprised (and it was cool that we got to get our protein too). It was really good, especially the stuffing. The “meat” itself was good, it tasted NOT like fresh turkey, but more like the turkey you get that’s premade and you just heat it up (can’t think of the brand that does it, but they do it for other meats too; oh, and it think, if I can recall the taste, I think Jennie-O had a small turkey roast that came with gravy, I think it was like that). And the shocker — my brother had some of it too because he wanted to see what it was that we were eating. Trust me, that’s a big deal. He agreed with me about the taste.

To accompany dinner, I made the Cornbread from The Joy of Vegan Baking. Oh and I’m so happy to have that cookbook (my sister-in-law Al so thoughtfully got it for me this year for my birthday). I wasn’t sure if the cornbread would be sweet enough, so I added 2 tablespoons of maple syrup to the mix and it came out great. Everyone ate it with dinner. Also, I saw my grandma, aunt, and uncle when they dropped off my brother and I gave them come cornbread too and it turns out they ate it all on the way to where they were going for Thanksgiving.

For dessert, my brother brought chocolates, Stepmom’s mom made apple bread, and I made a vegan coconut custard pie, the recipe of which I found online in the vegan forum. I used the oats crust and it was delicious. Most of the pie went and I gave the last slice to my grandma because if I’d have brought it home, I would have eaten it the minute I walked though the door.

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