A Turkey-Less Thanksgiving & Recipes
Disclosure: This is a paid post, but all opinions are my own.
Can you believe Thanksgiving is a week away? For many Thanksgiving is a time when everyone plans these huge lavish meals with family and friends. Sometimes everyone meets at your house, other times we travel miles and miles to meet with family members. The best part is seeing one another, sharing stories and of course the big meal, that is unless you have someone in your family with allergies. Am I right?
Ever since my oldest was 3 my family has basically done the unconventional because we found out he was actually allergic to turkey. When you have a child actually allergic to just about every Thanksgiving meal that is served it makes going to these type of things a bit more difficult, so we normally decided to have our own dinner at local restaurants where we knew there would be no mistake. Meatloaf for him because it was always his favorite, ham for me and steak for my husband.
I always get excited to read that not EVERYONE eats turkey on Thanksgiving, especially after reading other turkey alternatives. In the past if we didn’t go out to eat I would attempt other dishes. We’ve had lasagna for Thanksgiving, ham and of course my favorite, seafood. But to me it has never felt like Thanksgiving when there wasn’t a lot of family/friends or turkey.
IMG: SimplyBudgeted.com
I also love sweet potatoes (some know as candied yams) but to me it is the orange stuff with the marshmallows baked in on top of it. Over at Simply Budgeted (which is where I found this lovely picture) she spices it up a bit more with pecans crusted on top. Doesn’t that look even better? Another favorite of mine is the stuffing, I absolutely love stuffing and I don’t care if it is by myself, stuffed up a bird (oh that sounded strange, but you know what I mean) or smothered in gravy (yes, I’m a bit strange). I definitely want to try out the sausage stuffing over at Plum Crazy about Coupons.
Getting kids to eat their greens is always something I struggle with but they absolutely love green beans. Try the Bacon Green Bean side dish from Honey And Dime. Don’t forget to check out the beautiful Cranberry Orange Compote recipe she has on the blog.
Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving meal/dish you enjoy? I’d love to hear about it. Or tell me about an allergy that makes you very wary at holiday get-togethers.
Yum – everything looks great! We like to have Prime Rib for thanksgiving sometimes – it’s fun to mix things up a bit. And of course I always make my mom’s mashed potato casserole 🙂
I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!
Great grouping of recipes for a non-turkey dinner:) I’ve started following you on Foodie.com (love the cinnamon roll and bacon turkey recipe you collected!).
I’m so excited for Thanksgiving because I love the family time! You’ve listed so many great recipes!
OMG! All of it. All. Every last bit. Except, I can’t eat it on this anti-candida diet, but OHHHH can I pretend? 🙂
Those look really yummy. I need to add some of these to this years feast!
Oh that pumpkin pie white hot chocolate sounds amazing! At least you can have chicken, that’s “close” to turkey LOL
I need to try a few of these recipes. This looks simple and easy.
I tried to convince my husband do have a turkey-less Thanksgiving. He didn’t go for it!
Fall is full of some of my favorite flavors. You don’t have to have turkey to have a great feast.
You are making me excited for Thanksgiving. Everything looks great!
Turkey is definitely not the best part of Thanksgiving by any means. I love all of these alternatives
Mmm that pumpkin pie white hot chocolate sounds delicious! We have a very traditional Thanksgiving – with the addition of some gluten-free options!
So sorry your little one is allergic to turkey! Looks like you’ve found lots of great choices to make up for it hough! That pumpkin white cocoa sounds so tempting I’m going to have to make this this weekend.
I could live off of sweet potatoes, so delicious. These all look great for the holidays!
The sides are my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I love turkey, but all the other stuff makes the dinner to me.
To be honest, turkey has never been my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I’m much more into the sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie after wards.
Mmmm, that pecan crusted sweet potato casserole looks incredible. I’ll have to pass this along to my hubby. Maybe he can make it for us for the holidays. Thank you for sharing
Mmm that sweet potato casserole looked so good!
We have turkey, but we also have ham and that is usually what I eat!
Turkey-less or meatless, period, is a must for me. For some reason, meat has always caused nausea for me, so I decided to ditch once and for all several years ago. One of my favorite turkey alternative is Tofurky, which tastes just like turkey – just meatless! Gardein also makes a similar one that they call Turk’y, and it is also really good. 🙂
This gave me some great ideas for more dishes for Thanksgiving. The Pumpkin Pie Hot Chocolate sounds delicious.