Tips on How to Prepare a Thanksgiving Dinner for Vegetarians

A Thanksgiving dinner will not be complete without the stuffed turkey sitting right in the middle of the dinner table. Everybody just loves its juicy meat and the delicious stuffing, right? But sometimes, specially these days, not nearly everybody enjoys the main dish because an increasing number of health buffs are turning their backs on meat for good by becoming full-pledged vegetarians.

If you find vegetarians included in the guest list for your Thanksgiving dinner, you have to make proper adjustments in the kind of meal that you will be serving at the Thanksgiving table. You do not necessarily have to do away with the turkey, you just need to offer something that your guests can eat. And here is the challenge: You cannot just serve random vegetable menus and be done with them. Neither is it necessary to lay on the table the vegetarian equivalent of a turkey. What is really needed is that you try to keep the Thanksgiving theme alive in your vegetarian-friendly celebration.

Fortunately, the challenge is not as difficult as it appears to be. If vegetarians make up the minority in your list of guests, you can cut up fruits and vegetables into small pieces and serve these as side dishes. For a more filling treat, put a variety of breads on the table as well. Whip up a fresh salad which can serve as the main course for your guests on the vegetarian side. For sure, even your meat-loving friends will love this dish!

If you do not have the time to spend in making separate courses, you can just make the necessary substitutions in the ingredients of your usual Thanksgiving fare. For example, cook dishes with soy milk instead of full-cream milk. When frying, you can opt to use corn oil in place of animal oil. When baking your pumpkin pie, replace the eggs with silken tofu.

Of course, the changes in ingredients can cause slight differences in the tastes of the final products, but these will generally be negligible. The taste buds will necessarily have to do some adjusting but in no time, you and your guests will get used to the slight modifications and eventually enjoy Thanksgiving dinner.