I usually host vegan Thanksgiving for a dozen friends. I’ve been doing it for over a decade, so I’ve got a routine perfected to make sure everything gets done in time for the guests to arrive at 5pm. It usually involves the same 8-9 recipes.

This year, with COVID threatening to infect a record number of people, we invited no guests over for Thanksgiving. I think others may have chosen to do the same.

What was your Thanksgiving like, with nobody watching?

I imagine some people decided to dress-down their Thanksgiving since there was nobody to impress (except on Zoom and Facebook, of course).

My brain works differently. No guests? Then there are no guests to require food to be delivered by 5pm! Let’s make absolutely everything from scratch and let’s also make some extra new dishes we had never made before. If they took longer or came out bad, there would be nobody to disappoint but ourselves.

I made a tofu turkey from scratch, which involved pressing out 5 blocks of tofu and basting it every half hour for 2.5 hours, until it developed a caramelized skin on the outside. I also made a pecan pie instead of a pumpkin pie. I usually make a pumpkin pie (it’s easy!). We made a green bean casserole, which I hadn’t made in 5 or 6 years.

I was glad to have some slack to try out some new recipes. Maybe they’ll appear on my regular Thanksgiving menu once the pandemic is all over.

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