Product Review: Gardein Limited Edition Stuffed Turk'y + MY THANKSGIVING FEAST!

For vegans, the holidays can be trying times. Worrying about what goes into all the dishes your relatives are trying to stuff in your face and dealing with their ridicule can be daunting to say the least. For less-experienced vegans, this usually means hiding from the buffet table while eating steamed veggies and maybe a roll, but for us veterans in the game it means taking control of the kitchen and cooking up a feast fit for a king. In my family, I cook everything but the bird, so I feast on more and better tasting food than I used to when I was an omnivorous kid. If you had an unpleasant experience at your Thanksgiving, get in the kitchen and practice now. Then, by Christmas, or at least next Thanksgiving, you'll be able to cook a feast that you can enjoy, while impressing people with foods that don't contain animal products.

This year I was lucky enough to be blessed with a complimentary package of Gardein Limited Edition Stuffed Turk'y from the fine people at Gardein, so that was the centerpiece of my meal. Gardein says this about its newest offering: "New limited edition gardein™ savory stuffed turk’y is made with vegetables, ancient grains and plant-proteins (soy, wheat, and pea) and is a delicious meat-free main course with 22 grams of protein, 9 grams of fat and 270 calories per serving. The turk’y is breaded with toasted crumbs and is stuffed with celery, onions, cranberries, and bread crumbs. Cooking time is 25-30 minutes in the oven."

The Gardein Stuffed Turk'y was easy to cook and provided a great alternative to the somewhat rubbery Tofurkey roast I would otherwise be eating. The Gardein product has a much nicer, more pliable texture, the stuffing was tasty and the outer breading provided for a nice crust. The gravy that came with the Stuffed Turk'y was absolutely delicious, but since I needed more I mixed it with a generic mushroom gravy and added my own blend of spices to liven it up even more. Overall, the new Gardein Stuffed Turk'y wasn't quite perfect, but it is probably the best holiday meal centerpiece I have tried to date. The Field Roast offering rivals it, but definitely doesn't beat it. Thanks for the grub Gardein, another reason for me to continue as a major fan and promoter of your wonderful meatless proteins!

Also with my Gardein Stuffed Turk'y, I enjoyed a spread of other vegan amazingness to rival even the biggest and best family feasts. A delicious salad with dried cranberries, pears, candied almonds and homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Green beans with fresh garlic and teriyaki almonds. All organic apple sage stuffing from scratch. Organic garlic rosemary mashed potatoes. I'm talking a serious feast here people.

I aim for this to be more of a resource/travel/news blog than recipes for home cooking, but in case you need some ideas of how to get started with your next holiday feast, here is a quick rundown of how I make my two favorite dishes (I don't measure anything when I cook so just experiment to suit your tastes):

Garlic Rosemary Mashed Potatoes

• 10 medium organic potatoes
• Lots of Earth Balance or other vegan butter substitute
• Unsweetened plain soymilk
• Garlic powder
• Fresh or dried rosemary
• Salt and pepper

Rinse and scrub potatoes to remove any dirt. Boil potatoes until they are tender enough to poke with a fork. Remove potatoes from water, place them to the side, remove water from pot and return to burner on a lower heat. Add Earth Balance and allow to melt to a liquid. Stir in a bit of soymilk and mix up the wet ingredients. Add potatoes back to pot and use potato smasher to crush potatoes into soymilk/Earth Balance mixture. Continue to mash until your desired consistency, adding more soymilk and/or Earth Balance as necessary. Mix in salt, pepper and garlic powder along the way, and just before you're ready to serve mix in the rosemary. Remember, herbs are delicate so you don't want the rosemary cooking in the pot the entire time.

Apple Sage Stuffing

• One loaf sourdough bread
• Lots of Earth Balance or other vegan butter substitute
• Vegetable stock
• 1-2 green apples
• One medium onion
• 3-5 stalks of celery
• Fresh sage, thyme and parsley
• Salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut loaf of sourdough bread into small squares, about 3/4" each. Place into a greased baking dish. In a large saute pan, melt a good amount of Earth Balance. Start to stir in and simmer finely chopped onion, then roughly chopped celery. Once those cook down, reduce the heat some and add the fresh herbs chopped as finely as possible. Don't cook that too long since the herbs are delicate and will be further cooked in the oven. While still on a lower heat, add in chopped green apple and vegetable stock and stir the entire mixture together. Add salt, pepper and any other spices you like last. Once this is well mixed, pour the entire mixture evenly over the bread squares in the baking dish. From there, I like to mix and squish everything together with my clean hands, evenly distributing the the apples, celery, onion, herbs and liquid across the sourdough. I add a little salt, pepper and more fresh parsley to the top and place the dish in the pre-heated oven. It will take about an hour for it to cook to a point where it's not too wet, but still moist enough to feel like stuffing. Just keep an eye on it around 40 minutes and you'll be good. This is one of my favorite things to make and for how simple it is it comes out absolutely heavenly.