Move Over Turkey!

It's Thanksgiving time again, and turkey is on everyone's mind. Oh, for the love of stuffing, what's a vegetarian family to do?

Well, for the first year of our marriage, we tried to keep it somewhat traditional and had tofurky with all the usual trimmings on the side. How was it, you ask? Um ... I think it's enough to say that we didn't do it again the next year. We were still eating some fish very rarely then, so for the next few years we made a special occasion of it with some small pieces of salmon. And then ...

(Dal with homemade cheese (paneer) and peas; homemade naan, apple salad, and the potatoes-with-gravy that I'd choose over the mashed kind any day)

... and then! One fateful year my husband decided to try cooking Indian food. It was an instant success, and that's what we've done every year since then. It's so much fun to cook, and it fills the house with the yummiest smells, and the kids roll up their sleeves and pitch in too - which means no one person is stuck in the kitchen all by his or her lonesome - and I love this tradition so much that even if the world turns upside-down and we go back to eating meat, I think we'd still make Indian food on Thanksgiving.

(Making the Naan, Thanksgiving 2008)

And so. For your reference and inspiration, here are some of our favorite books to get ideas and recipes from:

Truly, if you're going to try cooking a different cuisine - besides Mexican or Italian - Indian is the most fun and the easiest, I think, by far. I dare you to give it a try!

And for dessert, as long as we're being non-traditional, we've also abandoned pumpkin pie for this:


Which is my bunt-pan take on this cake, which I blogged on just about a year ago, right here.