Are you vegetarian? Gluten free? Plant focused? Just focusing on eating healthily? Then likely you’ve experienced what I have at Thanksgiving. A weird feeling of both wanting to fit in, wanting to stay away from certain items, and wanting to eat something that will make you feel good. It’s a challenge every year. A couple of times I’ve brought something just for me, and felt all weird about it. A couple of times I’ve contribute things that were out of the ordinary, so at least no one would say “this doesn’t taste like the regular kind” or something like that. But it backfired, because my family just wasn’t always that adventurous. So a couple of times I’ve just brought nothing at all, in an effort to be the smooth rock, and I ate salad and a sweet potato and felt a little under celebratory. None of these things really made me feel good in the end.
But this year I have it. It’s awesome. It was inspired by the course I took this fall, and it tastes like stuffing. But it won’t leave you loaded down with that icky, greasy, white flour cooked in Turkey grease feeling. I’ll call it a Thanksgiving Skillet Bake, but whatever you want to call it, I think it will make you feel festive and satisfied and healthy all at the same time.
While cooking my “homework” for the Culinary Nutrition Expert program I’m finishing right now, one of the recipes really struck the BHH and me. As we were eating Meghan Telpner’s almond burgers, a special recipe assignment for my course, we thought, “These smell great. They taste great, almost like stuffing. Hmmmmm.” And so I set out to make them all festive like, and ready for the scrutiny of my in-laws. A few trials later, I think I finally scored.
We topped it with homemade cranberry sauce, but I bet it would be good with this gravy from Gena Hamshaw of Choosing Raw or this recipe from Angela at Oh She Glows, both of which are awesome and favorites of mine already.
Healthy holidays, here I come!
Thanksgiving Stuffing Skillet Bake
Ingredients:
1 ½ Cups Raw Almonds
¾ Cup Flax Seeds
½ Cup and mix of pecans, almonds and cashews
1 Cup Chestnuts (jarred, pre-roasted or roast them yourself!)
1 Cup Carrot, grated
1 Medium Onion, chopped
5 Cloves Garlic, finely minced
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
1/3 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
2 Eggs, beaten
2 tsp. Sea Salt
½ Cup Parsley, chopped
Directions:
-Preheat oven to 400
-In a food processor, process almonds to a coarse meal. Some pieces will be bigger, that is ok.
-In a high speed blender spice grinder or clean coffee grinder, process flax seeds to a powder.
-Coarsely chop remaining raw, mixed nuts.
-Coarsely chop chestnuts if whole, leaving them in large pieces.
-Add all ingredients to a bowl and mix well. You may need to use your hands.
-Transfer to an oiled 12 inch cast iron skillet or other oven safe skillet or pie pan.
-Bake in the center of the oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350
-Bake for another half hour, keeping an eye out to make sure it doesn’t burn. If it is browning quickly, you may want to loosely cover the top with foil.
-Cut into wedges and serve!
Note:
If you prefer to make it vegan, leave out the eggs and add 1/2 cup of water.
