A Nutty Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dinner.

Last weekend I put up an extra post – a list of links to previous Thanksgiving stories, recipes, and menus which have appeared here over the years (if you missed it, it is here.) But there is more! There is always more to be added to the Thanksgiving Food story. Today, to add to the store, I give you a vegetarian menu from Guide for Nut Cookery: together with a brief history of nuts and their food values, by Mrs. Almeida Lambert (Battle Creek, Michigan; 1899)

THANKSGIVING DINNER.

The Thanksgiving dinner has been a great puzzler to the vegetarian housewife. "How can we ever celebrate Thanksgiving without a turkey?" has been a question which it has been hard to solve. I propose that we do have a turkey for Thanksgiving, - not the corpse of a bird whose life was sacrificed to satisfy our perverted appetites, but something which, although it looks like a real turkey, with neck, wings, legs, and even the drum-stick bones protruding, is only one made of nuts and grains. Then let us have the pumpkin pie, chicken croquettes, and fish all stuffed and baked, the salads, and lettuce, - in fact, all that Thanksgiving calls for; but we will use only wholesome material. We will substitute nut foods for the different meats, lemon-juice will take the place of vinegar, and nuts the place of animal fats. With painstaking, we shall have a better dinner than our sisters who have their platters ladened with the remains of a barn-yard fowl, and with cakes and pies filled with animal fats and spices. Besides this, we shall have a clearer mind, as well as a clear conscience; while those who eat meat are taking poisons into the system which benumb the brain, cloud the conscience, and render man unfit to meet the vesper hour and hold communion with his God.

THANKSGIVING DINNER MENU.

SOUP.

Canned-corn soup, canned-pea soup, or vegetable oyster soup, seasoned with raw peanut cream.

FISH.

A stuffed baked trout.

ENTREE.

Mock chicken croquettes. Serve with it mock salmon salad.

Stewed salsify (vegetable oyster) with cream.

THANKSGIVING TURKEY.

With the turkey send a sauce-boat of gravy, sweet potatoes, curled celery or lettuce, and cranberry sauce.

BREADS.

Nut crisps, nice buns, and cream rolls.

PIE.

Pumpkin pie with cocoanut cream crust.

FRUITS.

Fresh fruit, red-cheeked apples, oranges, and any other fruits desired.

NUTS.

Salted almonds, salted pine-nuts, and roasted chestnuts.

BEVERAGE.

Butternut coffee with peanut cream.

The recipe for the day comes of course from the same book – a finely sculpted Mock Turkey.

ROAST TURKEY.

To make a good-sized turkey, take 20 heaping tablespoonfuls of zwieola, 20 tablespoonfuls of No. 3 gluten, 8 tablespoonfuls of pecan meal, 8 tablespoonfuls of roasted almond meal, 8 tablespoonfuls of black walnut meal, 2 tablespoonfuls of peanut butter, 3 heaping teaspoonfuls of ground sage, 2 tablespoonfuls of grated onion, 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, 6 hard-boiled eggs, and 3 raw eggs. Put the zwieola in a large pan and pour over it 5 cups of hot water, and let it soak for fifteen minutes; then put the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and add them to the zwieola; add also the nut butter dissolved in water, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture with the other ingredients. Mix all very thoroughly; if it is so dry that it is crumbly, add more water, being careful not to get it too soft or it will not hold in shape well. A piece of sheet iron is nice to bake it on, as it can be more easily slipped off. Oil it with nut oil, and place on top of it a thick piece of muslin saturated with oil; upon this cloth form a turkey, making the breast full and high, and leaving a little piece for the neck. Press it together with the hands, oiling them with nut oil to keep them from sticking. Then take a large tablespoonful of the mixture into one hand, and press into the center of it a large-sized stick of macaroni, which is long enough to protrude about two inches, after running the length of the leg ; with the hands oiled, shape it into the form of a turkey leg, using the white of an egg to make it stick to the body, and secure it by sticking pieces of macaroni through the leg, just below the bone, into the body, carefully covering the end of the macaroni with a little of the mixture. Form the wings and attach them to the body in the same way in which the legs were secured. When the fowl is all formed and smooth, brush it over with a cloth dipped in nut oil, then bring up the cloth around the turkey and pin it together tight enough to hold the wings and legs in position. Then place in the oven and bake for an hour

and a half. Remove from the oven, unpin the cloth, and with the shears cut off as much of it as possible without moving the turkey; spread the turkey with a mixture of beaten egg and roasted almond butter with a little salt added. Return to the oven and bake to a nice brown. Again remove from the oven and slide it into the platter on which it is to be served. The garnishing, in the cut, is cubes of cranberry jelly and parsley.