What’s a Vegan to Do on Thanksgiving?

This is kind of like my What’s a Jew to Do on Christmas? post from last year, only for vegans and Thanksgiving. Here are some options and tips:

I'm thankful for FREE Thanksgiving dinner!

FREE Vegan Thanksgiving at Café Gratitude. Ok. FREE things are great, Thanksgiving is great, and vegan food is great (go ahead, leave nasty comments about how much you love meat, haters). Therefore, a FREE vegan Thanksgiving dinner should add up to be great. The only catch is that it’s at Café Gratitude, but if you can put suspend judgment for just a day (c’mon, you can do it, I believe in you!), it still has the potential to be great. Plus, what better place to give gratitude? Wah wah. They’ve been doing this every year for five years, and, as Stephen mentioned last year, it’ll have it’s pros and cons. You already know that I have mixed feelings about that place, but to be fair the desserts are the best thing that ever happened and half my problem is the pricey menu. But this time it’s FREE, so we all win. Even the pardoned turkeys! Plus, “clairvoyant” Adrienne Fodor will be offering FREE 10-15 minute readings from 11am – 1pm at the Harrison location and in San Rafael from 2-3pm. MAN, I wanna be an advocate but these guys just won’t quit giving me reasons to make fun of them!

"Vegan Thanksgiving Meat Cake," via Vegansaurus

Vegansaurus! There are a million places you could go for recipes, but I’d hit up our pals over at Vegansaurus because they’ll give you the goods and make you laugh while they’re at it. In the last couple weeks they’ve posted a video from The Ellen Show of Ellen and Portia’s personal chef, Chef Roberto, making a vegan Thanksgiving feast; they’ve given you several options for what to do with the eight butternut squashes your neighbor gave you; they’ve held a who-can-make-an-entire-thanksgiving-meal-in-a-cake contest and received several disturbing entries; they’ve linked every place in the Bay where you can obtain a vegan thanksgiving pie; and they offer their own EXTENSIVE guide to a Bay Area vegan Thanksgiving. Plus SO MUCH MORE. Just keep scrolling down their endless entries for fab recipes, ideas, and links.

Take Your Family to Millenium. All year long we tell you how not to spend money, so you should have a ton saved up by now. If you’ve got one of those families who don’t believe that Thanksgiving can be good without disease-ridden carcasses to feed upon and you’re intent on proving them wrong, and you also can’t cook, now is the time to dip into the piggy bank and throw some money at defending your principles (pride). Go to Millenium for their special Thanksgiving Dinner. Yes, it’ll cost a lot, but it’s hella fancy and your parents will be impressed that it’s not some cultish cooperative filled with white-person-dreadlock-clad hippies. In other words, if you’re trying to impress them, don’t take them to the Gratitude event. Burn!

Get with the Times. Pun! The New York Times has featured tons of vegan and vegetarian recipes for Thanksgiving this year (with amazing pictures!) on the Well Blog, so take that! And San Francisco doesn’t like to be trumped, so SFGate has also been featuring veg-friendly Thanksgiving options. Check it out here and here. And don’t forget about VegNews Magazine, which is chock full of vegan Thanksgiving tricks and tips.