Vegetarian Cooking Series-Part 5-The Holiday Feast

Published June 18th, 2008

For those of you who are just joining this series about vegetarian cooking, you can read Part 1-Introduction to get started.

Well friends, to wrap up this series on incorporating vegetarian cooking into your meals, I thought I’d end with some ideas for holiday meals. The holidays, though often a joyous time, can be quite stressful, and trying to incorporate a student coming back from college a vegetarian, or another family member or friend into your meals may present its own set of challenges for some families. While I’ll offer some specific suggestions, I think the biggest factor to the success of your meal will have to do with how well you prepare.

The first thing I always do when having any company over is ask whether there’s anything they’re allergic to or don’t eat. I find this opens up the door for them to share with you any special needs that you can discuss then and there. Depending on your situation, you may be happy to just plan around any special needs, place an order from a restaurant or caterer if that type of food is out of your repertoire, or many vegetarians may just gladly offer to bring along something as a main dish to share. Personally, when I invite people to my home, I never expect or ask them to bring anything–I’m inviting them to enjoy their companionship for the evening so they don’t have to worry about any of that. The bottom line is that it’s always best to just ask, avoiding any additional stress, confusion, or miscommunication that can really muck up a holiday meal.

Let’s assume you’ve decided to plan a feast that will incorporate a vegetarian, you have 3 options: 1) Make a traditional meal the way you always have and also make at least on separate main portion for any vegetarians in place of the turkey, 2) Make a traditional meal with a turkey substitute seamlessly incorporated, 3) Make a non-traditional holiday meal.

Let’s start with option 1: Traditional meal with both meat and vegetarian options

This is probably the easiest to please everyone, but will be a bit more work for the person(s) making the meal. There’s a lot of great, easy to incorporate ideas here, and you can use any of the suggestions from Part 4 of this series about main course options as the turkey substitute for any vegetarians. A personal favourite of mine is making stuffed portobello mushrooms, and then using onion soup mix to make a gravy for everything! Here’s some other ideas:

Vegetarian Wellington

Let’s face it, you can’t really go wrong with anything made of puff pastry! I love mushrooms, so I make a mushroom filling served with a creamy sauce, but anything goes here. You can get some great recipes by doing a web search for either vegetarian Wellington or mushroom Wellington. You can make anything from simple individual triangle turnover-style ones, to a more traditional looking Wellington that serves several people.

Souffles

Now don’t run away at the sound of the word souffle! These delicious wonders of chemistry can scare anyone that isn’t used to making them–but this needn’t be so. I’m convinced that all it takes is a little practice and being meticulously organized before you start cooking. I’ve eaten souffles several times, and made them once at home…they turned out perfectly but I also had a whole other person to help do things with me so we got everything just right! Anyway, this is another great option for either individual portions (in those little Ramekins) or a large one for everyone to share. A couple of ideas for fillings include sweet potato, and any kind of sharp not too heavy cheese. I’ve attached a link here, with some tips for making souffles, I haven’t tried this person’s specific recipe, but I thought the tips for preparation along the way were very useful…and funny. Again, in the interests of being prepared, if you’re not a souffle regular, I would try this out before the actual holiday meal to make sure you get the hang of it!

Stuffed Squash

You can either make a large stuffed butternut squash to share, or individual stuffed pepper or acorn squashes. This is also a very attractive dish to make if you’re looking to impress! I make these regularly, and the sky is the limit here for fillings, but I usually include a grain like wild rice or quinoa, a cheese like Gruyere or goat cheese, and whatever veggies you like such as red peppers, mushrooms, onions, or zucchini.

Now let’s look at option 2: Making all of the traditional fixings but a substitute for the traditional bird

There are recipes out there for tofu or other meat substitutes that you can make into a loaf and cut up as you would meat. Say you don’t feel like being this adventurous, or your cooking skills aren’t quite there, then boy do I have a suggestion for you…wait for it…how about a Tofurky? It might be just what you’re looking for! It’s made by a very creative company called Turtle Island Foods, who not only makes the Tofurky, but stuffing and gravy to go along with it if you so desire. You can usually find them at your local whole foods store, health food store, or even maybe at some of the big supermarkets around holiday time. I’ve eaten Tofurky before, and was really amazed at how delicious everything was, it just may be the thing that saves your traditional holiday meal!

Moving on to option 3: A non-traditional holiday meal

I think that this is really the best option for a very open minded group of people. The last thing you want is anyone harboring any bad feelings about having to stray from tradition in order to accommodate one person. Having said that, this may be the easiest option because there’s no strict rules or convention to stick to. You can use a combination of any of the suggestions from the other articles in this series, to even making a completely ethnic meal, like several Indian dishes, Mexican food, or a Thai smorgasbord! I’ve provided links to some of my articles with suggestions for popular ethnic foods in the other posts from this series, but I’ll add the links here as well just to make it easier: Food Around The World, Ethnic Food To Try Part 1 and Part 2.

Well, it’s been an enjoyable few weeks writing this series! The feedback has been great, and I think that I will do others like this in the future. If you know of any other blogs, websites, or individuals who might find the series helpful, don’t hesitate to send them a link to these articles–the more people can I help, the better :)

Read the rest in this series:
Vegetarian Cooking Series-Part 1-Intro
Vegetarian Cooking Series-Part 2-Pub and Casual Foods
Vegetarian Cooking Series-Part 3-Appetizers and First Courses
Vegetarian Cooking Series-Part 4-Main Course Options