Seven dinners for seven daysI’m going to hold your hand when I say this: There are seven dinners between you and Thanksgiving. Do you know what you’re eating? Given all the brain space reserved for holiday centerpieces and mashed potatoes, it can be easy to forget about the meals in between the planning and the feast. I wouldn’t fault you for ordering takeout for a week straight — I’d encourage it, were it not so financially ruinous — but that’s not why you’re here. You’re here, presumably, for something fast, something you can make ahead or perhaps even set and forget. So tonight, get going on your cranberry sauce and make a pan of Hetty Lui McKinnon’s 25-minute basil tofu, a vegan spin on pad kaprow, the breezy, fiery stir-fry with Thai chiles (that can be made milder, if you so desire). And then on Friday, keep those decidedly non-Thanksgiving flavors going with Hetty’s vegan al pastor tacos, bright from a quick pineapple and jalapeño salsa and smoky with canned chipotle chiles in adobo. Two blocks of crumbled tempeh briefly marinate in a mixture of the chiles, adobo sauce and pineapple, as well as a bit of cumin, paprika, garlic and soy sauce, imparting the sweet-savory qualities of the beloved classic. OK. I think that’s about as much effort as you should expend heading into a weekend of pie prep, casserole assembly and gravy making. Saturday, put on a pot of Sarah DiGregorio’s five-star slow cooker creamy tomato lentil soup while you tidy up the kitchen and dining area for the days ahead. While it’s great with fresh tomatoes (and I’ve seen some stragglers at the market even still), it can be made easier with a mix of canned and fresh. “Outside of tomato season,” Sarah writes, “use a 15-ounce can of tomatoes to start, and finish with chopped cherry or grape tomatoes.” Or, if you bought one too many cans of pumpkin purée for pie, why not throw together Sarah’s extremely pantry-friendly slow cooker red lentil pumpkin soup? Leftovers on Sunday — them’s the rules. Alexa Weibel’s five-ingredient creamy miso pasta on Monday. “This one-pot pasta comes together in minutes, and requires zero prep and minimal cleanup,” she writes. Sold. Tuesday feels a lot like Ali Slagle’s six-ingredient skillet broccoli-Cheddar rice, a kid-friendly recipe with plenty of fun suggestions for personalizing it in the comments. Wednesday, order pizza. If you must cook, no heat, minimal effort. Hetty’s roasted pepper, white bean and mozzarella salad. Yasmin Fahr’s chickpea spinach salad with curry yogurt dressing. Sue Li’s white bean salad with fennel and celery. Then it’s the big day. And if you’re still not sure what to make, well, you have seven days to figure it out. Here are seven side ideas. Tara Holland’s new roasted butternut squash mac and cheese speaks to me, with it’s crisp sage and panko bread-crumb topping, as does the neon hue of Andy Baraghani’s golden mashed potatoes with Cheddar and chives and the whole “buried in cream” bit of his brussels sprouts buried in cream. Nisha Vora has a whole slate of vegan sides for your perusal. Her citrus-braised fennel with white beans would make a satisfying main on any other day of the year, if you ask me, and ditto her maple-roasted squash and chickpeas with mint-pistachio pesto. And as the pastry chef Tanya Bush told me for our new list of 61 Thanksgiving hot takes (pick your sides!), we should be eating stuffing year-round. Consider: Nisha’s vegan herb bread pudding with caramelized leeks. I’ll see you on Thanksgiving.
Roasted Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese
Brussels Sprouts Buried in Cream
Vegan Herb Bread Pudding With Caramelized LeeksFor a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. One More Thing!
Nothing moves me like a good argument. So I asked a handful of talented recipe developers, food writers, chefs and tastemakers for the holiday hills they’d die on. The result is a list of 61 enlightened and, at times, provocative Thanksgiving takes to debate at your own feast. Pick your sides now: Scroll, vote on each take and see if other readers agree with you. (You can also come back in a few hours, refresh the page and see how voting has changed.) What are your steadfast takes? I want to hear them! Email me, and thanks for reading. Email us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have questions about your account.
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