The Smiling Onion

Vegetarian and Gluten-free Cooking

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Sample Thanksgiving Menu + Stuffed Kabocha Recipe

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Thanksgiving in my family usually involves a lot of arguing. It’s not the arguing you’d expect. Questions like Who’s going to host? When’s it going to be? and Who’s coming? are not major issues. What can fuel heated debates, however, are questions like What’s on the menu? Who’s cooking? and When can I put my dish in the oven – yours has been in there forever!

This year, I (somewhat miraculously) managed to get complete menu control, in exchange for cooking and hosting. Since my brother is vegan and I’m still on a mostly Low FODMAP diet, holidays can be tricky, and we generally end up with a menu where everyone has multiple options, but nobody can eat everything. This year, however, I decided to create a menu that is entirely on both of our diets, and still screams Thanksgiving. I hope it gives you some ideas!

Thanksgiving Menu 2017 (Vegan & Low FODMAP)

Assortment of dips with crackers and crudite
Buckwheat crackers
Blue corn tortilla chips
Veggie spears

Roasted red pepper dip
Garlic oil, red pepper flakes, coriander, cumin

Walnut dip (similar to this one)
Walnut, hemp, hot paprika, thyme

Oyster mushroom dip
Mushroom, zucchini, carrot, chive, basil

Main Meal
Stuffed kabocha squash (recipe below)
Quinoa, walnuts, herbes de provence

Mashed potatoes with oyster mushroom gravy
Yukon golds, garlic oil, fresh thyme

Balsamic-roasted green beans
Dijon, balsamic, toasted pumpkin seeds

Brussels sprouts
Hot paprika, fresh dill

Coriander-pepper tofu
Chives, coriander, black pepper, tamari 

Veggie cakes
Millet, cabbage, lentil, middle eastern spices

Roasted carrots
Citrus, garlic oil, red pepper flakes

Herbed focaccia

Cranberry Sauce

Dessert
Chocolate pudding 

Pumpkin Pie
Pecan-coconut crust

Salty Oat Cookies (vegan version)

Berry Crisp
Crispy quinoa flakes, berries

And now, for the stuffed kabocha recipe, read on!

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Chestnut Hummus

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Large quantities of chickpeas and garlic (two of my absolute favorite things!) are unfortunately prohibited on the Low FODMAP diet. For me, this meant going through some pretty severe hummus withdrawal.

Incredibly, I created a pretty darn good hummus substitute completely by accident, one lazy evening when I wanted pizza but had absolutely nothing in the way of typical sauce fixings. There were no tomatoes, no pesto-making herbs, and no olives for a tapenade. To make matters worse, the crust I had thrown together definitely did not lend itself to a white-pizza set-up, especially since I didn’t have any cheese. As I often do in these situations, I pulled out a blender and started throwing some random stuff inside, in the hopes I could come up with something spreadable and yummy. Lentils went in, then chestnuts, then some herbes de provence, olive oil, and spices. When I tasted the concoction, I was elated. It was a complete failure in terms of being a pizza sauce,  but it tasted remarkably similar to hummus!

After dancing around the kitchen for a good half hour rejoicing over having hummus back in my life again, I had one of the worst pizzas of my life for dinner (the absence of both cheese and sauce proved devastating) and promptly abandoned it in favor of some chips and chestnut “hummus.” Back to dancing – I could eat this stuff all day!

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