Vegan Bytes #56: Your Simple yet Traditional Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner

Welcome to the Vegan-Nutritionista.com subscriber group! Our newsletter focuses on helping you learn more about veganism and how to apply it to your daily life. Vegan Bytes is dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with the world of food, answering your vegan nutrition questions, and providing you with ideas on ways to spread your lifestyle beliefs.

*Nutritional Spotlight: Will Eating Pumpkin Pie Make You Live Longer?
*Holiday Link: Updated Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes
*Vegan Travel: Native Foods Chicago
*Question: "Are sugar substitutes safe?"
*Vegan Ebooks Collection: Vegan Nutritionista's Meal Plans and Cookbooks
*Recipe of the Month: Vegan Banana Bread with Chia Seeds
*What's New?: What's New With Vegan Nutritionista?

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It's the season of pumpkin lattes, pies, risotto, ravioli, and tons of other squash recipes. As you're gorging on pumpkin pie this holiday season, feel free to whisper this little secret to yourself, "pumpkin is good for me."

Of course, it's always going to be the healthiest for you when it's closest to its natural form, but even in desserts you still pick up some of the health benefits of pumpkin.

Pumpkin is an awesome antioxidant, so it flushes out bad toxins in your body. It's also great for your skin, hair, and nails, and along with other fiber-packed fruits and vegetables, it helps prevent degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

Read all about the health benefits of pumpkin, as well as my favorite ways to use pumpkin in recipes.

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I was recently asked to give tips to a local magazine on how to celebrate Thanksgiving as a vegan, and it was such an uplifting exercise for me. One of the first questions people ask is how vegans can participate in holiday traditions without being left out, and I loved responding with ideas on how to make it easy and seamless for us all.

I have to admit that even as a child, the idea of gorging on turkey and stuffing never appealed to me, so Thanksgiving food was never something I loved. However, I know quite a few vegans for whom Thanksgiving was an immensely important part of their lives. I know forgoing the turkey was hard for them the first year, but I also know that celebrating now has the same spirit as food that tastes just as good as the meaty versions.

The last time I served Thanksgiving dinner, every side dish was vegan and literally none of my omnivorous family members noticed. They ate the mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and dinner rolls just as quickly and happily as ever before.

I am really happy with my collection of Thanksgiving recipes, and I hope you'll try a few and let me know how you like them. You can also brag about your best recipes by sharing it at the bottom of the page, or clicking on this link.

I hope you have an amazing holiday full of laughter, love, and delicious vegan food!

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Native Foods is a chain of vegan restaurants that focus mostly on sandwiches, salads, and lighter entrees, as well as a few delicious desserts. They have locations in California, Colorado, Portland, and Chicago. A few months ago I dropped in for a takeout order and was pretty impressed.

There was one thing I was absolutely flabbergasted that they make themselves, and if you've eaten there you'll probably agree with me.

This is a perfect month to feature this restaurant, because for the 18th year, Native Foods is selling their "Native Wellington" holiday dinner entree. It looks amazing, cooks in two hours, serves 6-8 and costs $39.99. So, if you're just not interested in cooking or eating another tofurkey, try it and let me know how you like it.

Click here to read my full review of the Native Foods in Wicker Park, Chicago, and find out what impressed me the most.

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Question:

"As we are getting closer to the holidays, I'm starting to bake more often and I just noticed how much sugar is called for in so many of my recipes. Can I use a sugar substitute like Splenda in place of regular sugar?"

~Katie

Answer:

Don't use the yellow stuff! Or the pink or blue stuff either. There are actually several very scary side effects of sugar substitutes like splenda, and I recommend people stay far, far away from the substitutes.

Sugar itself isn't good for you, but when chemists start pulling out chemicals to create a food product and during that transformation process the chemical turns into a poison, it becomes much worse than the original food.

If you want to use a safer sugar, use sugar that's as close to the original sugarcane product as possible. You can also check out our list of vegan sugars for ideas on less processed sugar for baking.

If you have any vegan questions and you want some guidance, feel free to send them in by following this link.

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Vegan Cooking for Beginners

Vegan Cooking for Beginners is designed for new cooks and veteran vegans who want quick, cheap, and easy vegan recipes. It has 75 recipes, tons of pictures of the finished meals, nutritional information, and detailed instructions to make every recipe easy to follow. Read more and download a copy for only $7.99 here.

• Amazon for Kindle
• iTunes for iPad or iPhone
• Nook from Barnes & Noble
• Diesel books
• And, from Kobo

Vegan Meal Plans for Fall/Winter

Vegan Meal Plans is a complete meal plan for one month vegan weekday dinners. It includes 64 recipes, pictures, nutritional information, grocery lists, and tips and techniques. Everyone from those beginning a vegan diet to those veterans who want fresh menu ideas love this ebook. It focuses on fresh, local, and seasonal vegetables and uses all normal ingredients-- no fussy or gourmet skills needed. Download a copy for only $9.75 here.

If you have an e-reader, you can get Vegan Meal Plans for Fall designed specifically for that device for $9.99:

• From Amazon for Kindle
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• From Barnes and Noble for Nook
• From Kobo
• From Diesel Ebooks

The Vegan Bread Box: 30 Simple and Delicious Vegan Bread Recipes

This is one of our most popular cookbooks. I've found it really difficult to find a vegan bread cookbook on the internet; there are tons of recipes out there, but they're scattered all over different sites and you never know which ones are good. This book has everything from an eggless brioche to a classic whole wheat boule recipe, so you'll never have to go scrounging the internet again. I'm so happy people have gotten so much out of this ebook.

Learn more about the bread baking tip that's almost too easy here or download your copy for only $7.95 now.

Get iPad/Kindle/Kobo/Reader Formatted Vegan Bread Recipes for only $7.99!

• To buy The Vegan Bread Box on Amazon, click here.
  
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• For Diesel

Just the Menus Ebook Package Deal

Just the Menus Ebook Package allows you to have both Vegan Nutritionista meal plans, one for the fall/winter and one for the spring/summer at a discounted rate. Download your copy for only $16.99 here.

Menus and Cookbooks Ebook Package Deal

Menus and Cookbooks Ebook Package allows you to have Vegan Cooking for Beginners, both Vegan Nutritionista Meal Plans, The Vegan Bread Box, Vegan Christmas Cookies, and Cut the Cheese. Download your copy for only $41.99 here.

Vegan Grocery List

This massive, complete vegan grocery list is the only one you'll ever need. Print out copies of it to hang on your fridge, and then mark what you need as you go throughout the week. Download a copy for only $0.99.

Entire Collection of Ebooks Deal:

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The age-old solution for too-ripe bananas is to honor their bruises by smashing them into banana bread submission. Because bananas are a natural substitute for eggs, and because banana bread is moist on its own, you don't even really need an egg substitute if you are veganizing an old favorite recipe.

I took it a step farther by eliminating the need for added oil. So this is officially an added fat-free banana bread recipe.

The key ingredient here is chia seeds, which are packed with omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, minerals, and protein. When you mix chia seeds with water, they turn into a gooey mess that gives your baked goods the perfect lift and fluff of adding eggs and oil. It's truly amazing.

And, the cool thing about this month's recipe is that I included a video of how to bake this vegan banana bread recipe. I hope you enjoy it!

You can share your own recipes and comment on others by following this link to Vegan Nutritionista.

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Vegan Nutritionista is constantly growing and changing, and if you signed up for this newsletter a long time ago, you might not have read our new information. Our blog page keeps you up-to-date with new articles on the site.

We're in the process of updating the design of our website. I sometimes had a hard time fitting everything I wanted to say into the two columns we used to use, so now we have three columns. And, we'll be transitioning over to a really pretty color scheme. Nothing changes for you; all the content is exactly the same. I hope you like it!

We also now have a vegan forum where you can find topics submitted by users for discussion, answers, and places to add your own input. There is no member name required to participate, so you can jump right in and

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Vegan Essentials is one of my very favorite places to shop for vegan supplies. They have everything from clothes and shoes to vegan cheese, and their prices are the best around.

Amazon has really grown on me over the past decade or so. It no longer is just a resource for finding books, but now sells almost everything. Over the past few years, I've found more and more vegan-friendly supplies on amazon, including books, shoes, clothes, soymilk makers, soybeans, and so much more.

VitaMix is hands down the best blender on the market. I recommend it to anyone and everyone, and it's absolutely amazing... no exaggeration. In fact, the other day, I found myself taking a complete stranger to a section of a cooking store to show her the VitaMix and explain its benefits, just for pure fun!

You can make soups, ice cream, smoothies, whole fruit/vegetable juices, grind grains, make nut butters, grind ice, and so much more. I can remember life before the VitaMix and how frustrating it was to never get the exact consistency I wanted in my smoothies because the ice just wouldn't break up, and now I never give it a second thought. Highly recommended!

If you're a vegan nutritionista yourself and have always thought about running a blog with your vegan recipes, you should think about an SBI website. I would never have known how to start a website, let alone get Vegan Nutritionista to the successful place it is right now without Site Build It, and I can't recommend it enough. If you are passionate about anything, any hobby, lifestyle, food, drink, or culture, you can start a website about it. All you have to do is love it, research it, and learn to "talk" about it and SBI will guide you to making it financially successful.

I am an affiliate for these newsletter sponsors, so anytime someone buys something from these stores after using a link from our site, I make a small commission on it. But, I do promise that I would never recommend something that I don't use and love myself. So if you see a link on our site for something you like, you can support their company and the running of Vegan Nutritionista as well, or you can always choose to go directly to the company.

And don't forget, a percentage of all Vegan Nutritionista profits go to a rotating group of charities that benefit animals. This quarter we're giving money to the Louisiana ASPCA to help with animal victims of Hurricane Isaac.

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That's all for this month!! I hope you enjoyed reading it. Have a great month!