How to Plan a Low-Stress, Vegan Thanksgiving Meal

It’s easy to get so hung up on holiday details that you forget to enjoy the quality time with friends and family. Here are the tricks I use to make our vegan Thanksgiving meal easy, so I can kick back a little bit.

My sister-in-law lives in Asheville, and last year she hosted our family’s huge Thanksgiving dinner at her house. In addition to the omnivores, there are two vegans and five vegetarians, and I was in charge of cooking for the seven of us. Because we were traveling, I needed to plan foods that either traveled well or that I could make day-of without interfering too much with her own cooking.

At first, this setup had me pretty stressed out. A meal for seven with basically no kitchen to work with? But with a little bit of planning, this situation actually led me to plan a super low-key meal. And you know what? Everyone loved it! Even the omnivores tried the vegan food. Here’s what we had:

• 3. Choose recipes that reheat and even freeze/reheat well.

  This goes hand-in-hand with tip number one above. Things like Ginny’s Plant-Based Sausage Stuffing (pictured above) make day-of cooking so much easier. Cook and freeze weeks in advance, and you can just pop it into the oven on Thanksgiving day.

  4. Stick with a few dishes.

  We didn’t have a huge spread, but everyone loved the food! Because I had a lot of food planned, I didn’t plan a dessert, except for the cranberry sauce. Everyone was so stuffed from all the other food, that no one would have had room for it anyway.

  5. Serve the food buffet-style instead of setting the table.

  This was my sister-in-law’s idea, and it made things so much less stressful! We didn’t have to worry about wrangling kids or who was going to sit where. We just stacked up the plates, laid out the food, and let folks have at it. She also designated a separate section of the counter for the vegan dishes, so we didn’t have to plate up next to any animal foods. It was a really thoughtful touch.

  6. Accept help.

  You don’t have to take on the whole meal yourself! Let your friends or family pitch in, especially if they offer.

  I got my son to help plan the menu. In fact, the kale salad we had was 100 percent his idea. He shopped with me for all of the mix-ins and helped massage the kale and fold in the fruits and nuts. Not only did his help make my life easier, it meant we got to spend quality time together, and he was actually excited to eat kale!

  While we were doing the salad, my mother-in-law kept an eye on the stuffing, so we didn’t have to worry about it boiling over. Even those little bits of help make a big difference as far as stress is concerned.

  I think we tend to idealize what the holidays are supposed to be like. By letting go of that picture-perfect Thanksgiving, we were able to pull together a low-stress, delicious vegan Thanksgiving meal and spend more time with the family and friends that we’re so thankful for.

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