we got the mixed veggies and spinach dip as one of the appetizers every year.
This year we had a cheese ball with crackers, and mixed nuts.
Premixing the gravy and potatoes is just wrong.
Well, I’m in Canada, so we have our Thanksgiving earlier, in late October. Me and my husband always go to his parent’s place, and this year I offered to make a veggie pie with gravy, so that I’d have something veggie that wasn’t a side dish. It was so good, that my inlaws started eating it, they demolished the whole thing!
Here’s the recipe, if anyone wants to try it:
1 large onion chopped and fried in a bit of oil
2 packages of italian veggie ground round
2 egg whites
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 cans of corn (or 1 corn, 1 peas, if you like peas)
2 large tomatoes
3 tsp oregano
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
8 large potatoes
milk
butter
Start the mashed potatoes first, cut up the potatoes and boil them for 20 minutes or til tender.
Mix together the fried onion, veggie ground round, eggs, breadcrumbs and corn. Pat it down into big deep baking dish.
Slice 2 large tomatoes, and layer over the “meat” mixture. Sprinkle the oregano over the tomatoes, and sprinkle the cheese over the oregano.
Make the mashed potatoes, and layer them over the cheese. Bake it in a 350 F oven for 30 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before slicing. It’s yummy!
Oh, by the way, I also think premixing mashed potatoes and gravy is just wrong! Yuck!
Well, some vegans avoid white sugar, but they’d probably reject a commercially made bagel too. I’d wager a guess she was concerned about the fat content in the donuts as opposed to the bagels. Donuts usually don’t contain any ingredients that an ovo-lacto vegetarian would object to.
Monty: Yes, Jello is made from animal products.
We already had one Thanksgiving this year, with Mr. Gemini’s family in Canada. They tried, but it wasn’t much of a feast for me. Traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, chicken broth in the mashed potatoes and dressing, etcetera. Plus, I don’t like the smell of cooking meat. I made do with crackers and the relish tray. We skipped yesterday’s Thanksgiving this time, but when we do celebrate, my mother fixes a chicken or a turkey breast, I do the side dishes, and we split desert duty. Works well that way.
I love my family. This Thanksgiving was a feast for me - Mom took care to bear in mind my vegetarianism. (warm feelings to Mother and Father 
)
Not too many of the items you mentioned made my mouth water - cookies made with lard?!? Meat in jello salad? Bread dipped in drippings? What the friendly green rabbit? My family made some really nice things, most of which I could eat without worrying too much. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t help out more - I only cooked the rice.
Tellyawhat - I’ll mail you the leftovers, and invite you over next year. No one needs to be subjected to a Thanksgiving where you gotta go to your car and get a bag of trail mix so that you can at least eat. Hope your Christmas is better.
Candygram!, I see two courses of action:
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Next year, YOU do all the cooking. Offer ahead of time. If they insist, have your relatives bring some food like an appetizer or beverages. They show 'em what a real Vegan feast can be like. It’ll be a lot of work, but the stunned look on their faces would be worth it!
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Get out of it somehow. Tell you you’re out of town on business that week. Tell 'em your visting the relatives of your new partner and simply can’t make it. Tell 'em you’re not feeling well, then lock the door and turn out the lights. Then you hook up with your fellow Vegan friends and have a feast you CAN eat.
I hate gravy on my smashed potatoes-it HAS to be melted butter.
I got sick unfortunately from eating too many stuffed mushrooms before hand. 
Oh well.
If I were you, I’d go raid their fridge and when they got angry, say, “Thanks for being so considerate of my beliefs.”
Sarcastically, of course.
For what it’s worth, if you are invited to a dinner (thanksgiving or otherwise) and the host/hostess doesn’t include food for you (knowing full well that you are a vegetarian), they are asswipes of the highest order. If you were invited to MY house, you would have had plenty to choose from.
If these are your friends, who needs enemies? Anyone who has to pick a fight over food is just an asshole, IMHO. And for “not letting you” bring your own food? You need to get over that concept right away. There is no such thing as “not letting”. Do it next time, and fuck 'em if they don’t like it.
Zette
This thread is making me hungry.
Hope they at least had good beer. Bring your own food next time. Best revenge is to bring some really good stuff.
No shit! Even before I became a vegetarian I realized that gravy was just a gross glop that had no business near something as lovely as mashed potatoes. Butter, that is what belongs on potatoes!
that alone is worth a rant, vegetarian or not.
(& i used to think that my mother made unfortunate creative cooking decisions.)
Gotta disagree… okay, maybe they aren’t trying to make (him? her?) miserable exactly, but there’s something in that menu that sounds like they’re trying to get Candygram! to see the error of his/her ways and return to the meat-eating fold. I’m an omnivore and I think that’s more than a little extreme - every dish does not have to have dead animal bits in it, no, not even at Thanksgiving when we sing the praises of overeating. Who the hell mixes gravy into the mashed potatoes before serving? Why on earth put pan drippings on bread before it even gets to the table? When is the last time you had cookies made with lard?!? Even Oreos are made with vegetable shortening now… And they specifically said not to bring anything, and whined when Candy tried to fix the problem.
It may not be a conscious attempt to make someone miserable, but I smell a lot of bullshit in that menu… as well as a heart attack or three waiting to happen.
You know, I think you are onto something there.
The chicken bits in the jello - that’s too much. And mixing the gravy into the potatoes? Who the hell does that? Almost all of these dishes do sound “abnormal”. Of course, I’m from a more “veggie friendly” family (we never did eat much meat, even when I was a kid) so I cannot say I’m familiar with every variation on some dishes. But these dishes sound revolting, and very, very odd.
I think it’s the family’s insistence that they’d prepare things for her, that they knew what they were doing, that “this time it would be better” that really smells. Had they just acted oblivious, like they had no clue, then perhaps I could have bought that they just … had no clue. But they were already well aware of her vegetarianism, and all that goes with it. They had to know what they were doing, on some level.
I think the word you may be looking for is “sabotaged”. I consider myself a very liberal-minded omnivore (i.e. I eat EVERYthing), but these dishes were just, well, wrong. Well into “why would you do that?!?” territory. I’m glad so many others here agree; I was starting to worry that this was a typical American menu. :eek:
A couple of my vegetarian friends told me that Jell-O brand gelatine is made from animal products – hooves or something. When they make “Jell-O” shooters, they use a different brand that does not contain animal products. Sorry, I don’t know the brand.
Frankly it’s beyond me why vegetarians and carcass-eaters fight so much over food. Do carcass-eaters not like the “holier-than-thou” attitude displayed by many vegetarians? Do vegetarians dislike the way many carcass-eaters belittle them for being “too sensitive”. :rolleyes: It’s all so pointless.
I ate vegetarian for a few months. During that time I examined the ethics of eating corpse. For reasons I won’t get into here lest I start a debate (which is not my aim), I decided that there is nothing unethical about killing and eating animals. Yes, I really examined the issue and I made a decision that is right for me. YMMV.
Now here’s how I think it’s supposed to work. Last week I went to a party at the home of these friends. (BTW: She will eat fish, but he won’t.) They provided a nice spread: Sesame baguette and brie (from Trader Joe’s ), pinto beans, vegetarian enchillada casserole made with non-meat, Spanish rice, and of course guacamole and chips. Her sister, who does eat meat, brought vegetarian and meat tamales. Not a vegetarian? No problem! Eat a cheese one. Need meat? Hey, there’s corpse in that one right there.
At their BBQs they grill eggplant. Other guests are free to bring the carcass of their choice. Their wedding had all vegetarian food. Guess what? It was great. No one complained. Frankly, the meat/no-meat issue rarely comes up. If it does, then it’s just a good-natured comment about different lifestyles. When they came to my place I provided non-meat food.
So if you’re a vegetarian going to a party hosted by meat eaters, bring a vegetarian dish. I think most hosts will make sure that there are meat-free things to eat, but you never know. Hey, I didn’t know about Jell-O until I was told. And who knew that refried beans are traditionally made with lard? Some people just don’t think about animals that wind up in food. The thing that everyone must understand is that the carcass-eaters aren’t going to convert the plant-eaters, nor vice versa. When it’s a non-issue, everyone gets along.
Johnny,
Are you related to Beltrar (sp?)? Your post reminds me of:
I can certainly understand the point-of-view of the family. I don’t think they maliciously went out of their way to provide only meat dishes–they were doing what they no doubt have always done. My family would feel the same way. (“Thanksgiving without meat? You must be joking!”)
But I can also understand the OP. After all, if you don’t eat meat, the menu doesn’t sound too appetizing.
(And, FTR, I eat meat. And plenty of it.)
My opinion is that Candygram should have brought some of (his? her?) own food. Enough to feed everybody, or at least to provide a tasty side dish to those who might like something to complement their main dish.
There are some tasty vegetarian dishes out there that even I would like–Stephi, I’m in Canada also, but I just might try the dish you posted–thanks for the recipe!
You don’t want to start a debate, using incredibly loaded terms like “carcass-eater” and “eating corpse”? Are you trying to be funny? Cause I’m not really getting this joke.
The only people I know that use the term “corpse-eater” are carnivores with a sense of humour. (And “eskimos”.) 