It’s the holiday season! And holidays mean food, family traditions, and family traditions about food. This is the time of year where the subject of my veganism comes up the most often, and in the most varied sets of circumstances.
“But, what do you eat?” is a question every vegan has faced, multiple times. Sometimes, multiple times in the course of a day. I don’t think there’s any other lifestyle choice one could make that comes up in conversation more frequently. I’m not the sort of vegan who runs around announcing it, or lecturing people on their dietary choices. So every now and then, someone I’ve known for a while but might not have eaten with, will actually not know I’m vegan.
People are curious. I get it. Being vegan is still a bit of an aberration, despite how much it’s grown as a movement since I finally quit dairy in 1995.
So, what do I eat at the holidays? It’s actually quite simple to make vegan versions of most of your favorite things. For Thanksgiving, I made “stuffing” in a non-traditional, traditional way. 
Here’s what I did:
Honestly, Celiac is the dietary restriction that is harder to work around. I found these, already cubed, from a company whose ‘bread’ I’ve eaten in the past. Since I haven’t used these before, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. (Some gluten-free products do not hold up as well as their wheat counterparts.)
I began my “stuffing” by making the mirepoix. Mirepoix is a French term for the mixture of onion, carrots, and celery– about 2:1:1 ratio — diced into equal-sized pieces, and cooked over low heat until they are tender. (It is named after a French general, in case you were wondering.)
Listen, no one is going to mistake my knife cuts for those of a professional chef; but I did my best. I don’t mind that it’s a bit chunky, especially since I had no idea how the GF bread cubes would perform. I do not use butter(obviously) or even oil, so I cooked them with a bit of the unsalted vegetable broth that I planned to use for the rest of the stuffing.
Once the mirepoix was ready, I added more broth and then folded in the cubes. To my most pleasant surprise, they did quite well, and still looked like cubed bread instead of one great big pile of mush. This made me especially happy since I planned to “stuff” it into this tofu turkey creation(adapted from The Happy Herbivore Cookbook).
I think it ended up looking (and tasting!) quite traditional, and no turkeys were harmed in the making of this dinner.
