Share Your Vegetarian Holiday Healthy Recipes

Before I became a vegetarian, I often felt that the side dishes at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners were my favorites—cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, and my mother’s apple-peanut salad, to say nothing of her amazing made-from-scratch pies.

These recipes can become vegetarian holiday healthy recipes and be served to vegans with some minor changes, like omitting the butter and milk in the mashed potatoes and using soy milk or nut milk instead.

But meat is the centerpiece of a typical holiday feast. What do you substitute for that main dish that everyone looks forward to? Or have you been a vegetarian for such a long time, that you don’t even think about needing something to take the place of that cooked animal?

Here is a no-added-fat recipe from The Rave Diet & Lifestyle book that will be a delicious addition to your holiday table. This book has many tasty recipes for your healthy lifestyle. The author, Mike Anderson, discusses why Americans cannot lose weight, why modern diets don’t work, and shows you how to reach your ideal weight by returning to the old-fashioned foods Americans used to eat, when losing weight was not a problem the way it is today.

Bread Dressing

• 3 cups sliced mushrooms (about 1/2 pound)
• 2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cups cubed whole wheat bread
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1/3 cup finely chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon vegetable broth
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon marjoram
• 1/2 teaspoon sage
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

(I would probably add a little sea salt to this recipe unless the broth and/or bread are very salty.)

Sauté onion in broth until translucent. Add sliced mushrooms and celery. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir bread into onion mixture, along with parsley, thyme, marjoram, sage, and black pepper. Lower heat and continue cooking 3 minutes, stirring often. Stir in vegetable broth, a little at a time, until dressing obtains desired moistness. Spread in a nonstick baking dish, cover and bake 20 minutes. Remove cover and bake 10 minutes longer.

Mmmmmmm… can you smell that delicious sage-y aroma?

Now it’s your turn.

Do you have a favorite recipe you'd like to share with the world?

This is your opportunity to show non-vegetarians just how good a vegan recipe can taste. If you have a photo, I'll be happy to post it, too.

Read Other Vegan Holiday Recipes

Click on the links below to see some great vegetarian holiday healthy recipes. They were all submitted by other visitors to this page.