Reply to Thanksgiving with two vegan guests; please help me plan!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was raised vegetarian and have been vegan on and off at various times in my life, including around Thanksgiving with my non-vegetarian/vegan family in the Midwest.

Re: dairy, my grandma had zero problem replacing all the butter with margarine and frankly it was probably already margarine. She didn't do any substitutions for the milk/cream in potatoes and just used water, which sucked. This was in the 90s, and there are better options now.

Other than replacing chicken stock with vegetable stock and using non-dairy dairy stuff, you don't really need to modify much of anything on your menu. Literally everything described can be made vegan without actually compromising flavor or richness. If you are comfortable modifying meals for allergies, this is easy.

I always have to laugh at threads like this that pop up where many posters bemoan people's "high maintenance choices" and talk about how the vegan person is "making things difficult." Literally these people are not asking OP to ensure the entire house is vegan. She's just trying to make sure that what she's thinking is enough food compared to what others will be served. It's not any more high maintenance than any other question from someone asking "is what I'm doing enough?"[/quote]

No, you don’t need to make as much food as “what others will be served.” That’s not the threshold. The threshold is “can they make a meal of it.” And no, you can’t make everything vegan “without actually compromising flavor or richness.” B.S. This is Thanksgiving. It should be the traditional, indulgent, special holiday feast that OP and her family are used to and look forward to, without “vegan cheese” or whatever making an appearance. OP is already going above and beyond. Any guest should be grateful to sit at her table.[/quote]

Well, if you're going to be like that about it, ANY guest should ALWAYS be grateful to sit at a generous table. OP's post was not made in the spirit of "what is the bare minimum of food I can get away with" and she wasn't taking shots at her vegan cousin. That's you and posters who, like you, are offended by people choosing to be vegan. It's really very dramatic, and it happens every year. It's like by suggesting that you make a couple of things slightly differently, people are asking you to compromise the integrity of your entire Thanksgiving experience. I guess in my family, it was always more about family sharing a meal together than it was about whether stuff had vegetable stock or chicken or used margarine vs. butter.

As for your comment about calling BS on flavor and richness, there are a lot of ways to boost flavor in various ways that don't involve the use of animal products. You can have rich flavorful vegetable stock, or you can have watery bland vegetable stock. I'm not saying that all vegan food is amazingly rich and wonderful, but some of it really is. I don't like vegan cheese either. It's actually the one vegan-ized thing I'm not sold on at all and never have been. But they make very passable vegan butter in terms of texture and flavor. There are also non-dairy milks that could be used in mashed potatoes convincingly, though as someone who's also been served almond milk mashed potatoes, my preference is to just use vegan butter and skip the non-dairy milk.

FWIW, I'm not even vegetarian anymore. I am basically making traditional Thanksgiving food and almost none of it will be vegan. But the level of drama that y'all bring about vegans coming to Thanksgiving, every year, is ridiculous. Particularly here because OP had learned some new dietary information and was making modifications and looking for suggestions that would meet the newly discovered needs. She was looking for menu options, not value judgments, but y'all didn't disappoint. Again.[/quote]

OP literally asked if what she intends to make is enough to make a plate. There is a huge difference between “can my guests make a meal of this” and what you suggested, which is them having as much food as others are being served. The point of a big holiday meal like Thanksgiving is not for every person to eat some of every dish—the point is make a plate of your favorites. As long as OP’s guests can make a plate—which is indeed what she asked—then mission accomplished. And you’re here trying to say that everyone should eat vegan food. No, nope, especially not on THANKSGIVING. That’s not what the majority of people want. For some random Sunday family dinner, sure. But people should be able to eat the traditional dishes they look forward to and love without compromising one freaking day of the year. Don’t mess with Thanksgiving. [/quote]

So dramatic. Why is your Thanksgiving experience so fragile that it's threatened by vegan butter? Get a grip.

I truly don't care what you eat on Thanksgiving. OP's menu sounds great. There are ways to make it vegan-accessible won't actually compromise the traditional Thanksgiving experience. You have probably eaten vegan substitutes before and not even realized it. I myself didn't even suggest that OP even SHOULD make all the food vegan. If she wants to use chicken stock, use chicken stock! But your comment was that it's basically impossible to have a traditional Thanksgiving experience unless you use animal products in every single dish. My point was that there are a lot of substitutes that actually do work really well. I mistakenly assumed that maybe you just didn't know that those things exist. [/quote]

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