Chill Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  This week has been a bit of a disorienting blur with Thanksgiving planning, Christmas shopping, odd work schedule, and maybe stressing about my upcoming first marathon! So I’m grateful to relax today, not participate in Black Friday madness, and maybe go for a leisurely run. Wednesday at work was busy trying to wrap everything up and get out of the office early, so I had a rushed lunch of Amy’s Organic Black Bean Enchilada at my desk.

I am typically not a fan of microwave meals, but these were satisfying and a little kick and did not produce a lot of plastic waste with the paper plate.

And an Bucha Elderflower Green Tea kombucha.

My insides were a little unhappy with a possible bug and/or stress, so this hit the spot with a bright, not-too-sweet tea flavor.

Thanksgiving seems to be all about food splurging and we stepped away from our daily breakfast smoothie routine for scrambled Follow Your Heart VeganEgg and fresh hash browns.

My plate may not have been a thing of beauty topped with Daiya cheese slices.

But it was a hearty and delicious savory breakfast splurge.

With hurried weeknight meals and busy weekends, we’ve been turning to our little, simple to clean ZYLISS manual pull food chopper more – but yesterday I pulled out our large, pain-in-the-rear to clean food processor to shred potatoes for breakfast and shred raw pumpkin for this smooth raw vegan pumpkin pie recipe.

I make it every year because I love the simple list of whole ingredients and that it can be served like a frozen or chilled cheesecake tart. And the measurements do not need to be exact, I used an entire pie pumpkin and kept adding walnuts, dates, and pumpkin pie seasoning to taste to create more filling. But it requires a big, heavy duty food processor to turn raw pumpkin, walnuts, and dates into a smooth custard texture.

We had a smaller, low-key Thanksgiving at my sister’s house which was nice. Hubby and I brought the Field Roast Hazelnut Cranberry Vegan Roast wrapped in pastry which looked divine cooked.

And amazing paired with this Vegan Mushroom Make-Ahead Gravy recipe, vegan sourdough stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

The pie was a hit too.

And paired great with So Delicious CocoWhip.

And that was family Thanksgiving 1 – we have round 2 this Saturday for a larger family gathering which I’m looking forward to! I’m thankful that it gets easier and easier every year to be vegan and enjoy meals with family with so many great products and recipes. It was great browsing many vegan holiday meals on Facebook and Instagram too with so many vibrant dishes.