VeganMoFo: What Thanksgiving Used to Look Like

Thanksgiving used to be fun. I guess. "Fun" five years ago is very different from "fun" today.

In my big extended family, any big public holiday essentially was equated with getting together at my aunt's place for a big noisy buffet dinner. Oh you have a birthday and you want to celebrate it with the fam? Saturday night! Easter? Saturday night! Christmas? Saturday night! (Actually, it was more like a consecutive string of buffets for the night before Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day. It gets tiring.) Thanksgiving was no different; there was just an extra carcass on the table, next to the glob of ham and fried pork chops.
It's different now. Yes, there's still the big buffet table with the same quintessential buffet items, but there are new faces and new wrinkles on the old ones. The kids have grown up and are less likely to show. Or less willing...

Without going into the deep and personal, or spinning off into a pitiful self-examination of my psyche, I'll just say that I do not particularly connect - or feel the need to connect - with my big extended family. That is where I am, right now. The person I am right now is going on a different path. I suppose I'm lucky? It seems to me that the youth, the young generation, in trying to find themselves, are constantly striving to be not like their parents. We will not be pinned down and be easily defined by the precedents that have been set for us.

Okay, I totally digressed, when in the same breath I said I wouldn't. Ha.

Today, I bought the most of the ingredients for the awesome Thanksgiving dinner that I'm cooking Monday evening for my parents, my sister, and my mom's friend. It's going to be entirely vegan, which I'm pretty excited about. I have a lot to be thankful for.
The menu looks like it's going to be:
+ mashed potatoes with spinach
+ chickpea gravy
+ cornbread (still iffy)
+ stuffing (maybe...)
+ tofurky roast - first time! I'm hoping that it'll turn out well. I guess I should make the iffy sides just in case tofurky sucks.
+ roasted carrots, parsnip, and onions
+ gingerbread apple pie