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• Stuffing: This should be cooked in a casserole dish instead of inside the turkey. And this is good for everyone, as it also avoids the food safety issues that come with cooking a stuffed bird.

• For the liquid in the stuffing, use water, wine or vegetable broth rather than chicken broth. And if you’re serving vegans (those who eat no dairy products in addition to no meat), use a non-hydrogenated margarine or vegetable oil instead of butter for the fat.

• If you add meat, such as sausage, to your stuffing, just divide the batch into two casserole dishes and bake one with sausage and one without.

• Potatoes: Most mashed potato recipes are naturally vegetarian. Making them vegan is easy; substitute soy milk and soy margarine for the milk and butter.

• If the rest of your family demands traditional mashed potatoes, it’s easy to make two batches. Figure out how many potatoes you need for two batches, boil them together, then mash them in separate bowls.

• Gravy: Consider making a portion of the gravy vegetarian. Chopped, sauteed portobello mushrooms in a thickened mushroom broth make a delicious gravy for mashed potatoes and stuffing.

• Also, natural food stores sell many prepared vegetarian gravies.

• Baking: Be sure to use vegetable oils rather than animal fats for baking. Vegetable oil-based products such as Crisco work well for pie crust and other pastries. There also are some coconut oil-based shortenings that work well.

• Soy-based butters and margarines work well in baking, too. Most producers have overcome problems with early versions of these products (some of them didn’t melt), but it doesn’t hurt to ask the salesperson or manufacturer.

• Purchased items: Check the ingredient lists on packaged foods. Gelatin and whey, as well as many flavorings, are animal-derived and may not be appropriate for some vegans.

• For example, ingredients as innocuous as the marshmallows you put on a sweet potato casserole are likely to be made with gelatin and therefore unsuitable for vegans (vegan marshmallows are available at natural food stores).

Source: Journal World and The Associated Press.

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