Vegan Thanksgiving

By now Thanksgiving was days ago and all of you are totally over it and ready for Christmas and New Year's. So let's catch up quickly shall we!

Mike and I headed down to DC last Wednesday evening for the holiday. Every year my Mom's family has a huge Thanksgiving. Like 40 people. It's crazy.

We started the holiday with a nice run. The weather was cool and crisp in the morning, which meant long sleeves.

Mike and I began by crossing over into Virginia to run on the Mt. Vernon Trail.

After about 2 miles we crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge back into DC.

Then we decided to run up the Lincoln Memorial steps and take a breather.

Bluest sky ever

Mike turned around after this and headed back the way we came. It was his longest run in months! 5 miles! I'm so, so excited and happy for him. 

Meanwhile, I decided to do a loop of the Mall of the past the Washington Monument all the way up to the Capitol Building before heading back over to the Mount Vernon Trail. 

On the way back I ran into these fools:

My sister Caitlin and her boyfriend Benny

They got a late start because they are in those special college years when your body still allows you/wants you to sleep in until 10 am. 

After the photo op I headed home to tally up the miles. I ended up with about 9.5, my longest run since the marathon only 4 days before. It felt really good and I took it nice and slow. I'm not going to lie, I kind of like this whole run as much or as little as you want whenever you want because you're not on a training plan thing. I look forward to keeping it up for another week to facilitate further marathon recovery. 

After a quick shower it was time to get cooking! Caitlin is a hardcore vegan, and even though our huge family caters for Thanksgiving every year, there are more and more family members every year who have gone vegan or vegetarian so Caitlin has started cooking some things on the side for these folks. I give all of the creative credit to her. I just chopped what I was told!

Me and the chef

Maple sweet potatoes

Kale, brussel sprouts, and almond salad with shallot vinaigrette

Butternut squash and cranberry pilaf for "stuffing"

Vegan apple pie

Mini vegan pumpkin pie

She also had regular vegan mashed potatoes, butternut squash soup, and steamed broccoli and beet salad.  Everything was absolutely delicious! I keep telling her she should be a chef if only to not deprive the world of her wonderful vegan desserts!

Cooking is more fun when you take silly pictures

The vegan choices were a hit with everyone, particularly the brussel sprout/kale salad (of which I chopped most of the brussel sprouts ahem ahem thank you very much). 

As is tradition after stuffing our faces with food at my Grandad's house, most of us head out to the street to work it off with some touch football. 

I caught the ball once. Too bad I didn't know what to do after that. Oops.

How was your Thanksgiving? Did you have any special/not traditional Thanksgiving food dishes?