Our Early Thanksgiving Dinner Menu -- Gluten Free and Dairy Free

I don't live in the USA, but I have very fond memories of Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends. Since moving abroad and marrying a non American, Thanksgiving sort of fell by the wayside other than one or two times.

However, because of the nostalgia, I've wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner, if only just to enjoy all these delicious fall favorites in one meal. Since we're not in the US, we don't have off on Thanksgiving itself, so yesterday some friends and I got together for a Thanksgiving dinner, if a bit early.

I made all the food, other than a can of cranberry sauce that my friend made (not shown) and the meal was absolutely delicious and the company was even better. I wanted to share with you what I made.

Everything was both gluten free and dairy free, not to mention egg free and overall allergy friendly.

And though it probably seems like a lot, it was really not so much work to make, as nearly everything was thrown in the oven and baked, and it all was pretty frugal to boot.

It took me less than 3 hours to make all this start to finish, including cleaning up afterwards.

My Menu:

Turkey. Locally they don't really sell whole turkeys in the supermarket, you have to order special from a butcher. And there's no 39 cents a pound sales like the US has before Thanksgiving, so it would get quite expensive. Not only that, I'm not exactly serving a large crowd, so no need for a huge bird. Therefore, I decided to go with just turkey wings, which I got at relatively low cost. I seasoned them absolutely deliciously, with nutmeg, sage, paprika, garlic powder, and salt, and I'm definitely doing that again.

Cranberry sauce. From a can. Nothing special, but terrific with the turkey.

Gravy. I made this dairy free and gluten free, with sauted onions and mushrooms, soy milk, soy sauce, chicken broth, garlic powder, and potato starch. It was terrific.

Green beans. I actually had leftover green beans that I'd made previously, and I topped it with some of my gravy, and it was amazing!

Candied sweet potatoes. With jaggery, cinnamon, cloves, ginger. 

Dairy free scalloped potatoes. Recipe to be posted.

Stuffing. Like this, only with gluten free bread instead of cornbread and mushrooms instead of eggs.

Roasted kabocha squash. I made this with sugar and cinnamon and ginger and salt.

Gluten free vegan cornbread. I used this recipe, the recipe I always use. Delicious!

Pumpkin pie. I didn't use any specific recipe, but probably should have because it didn't solidify as it should, though it did taste awesome.

Sea Breeze cocktail. This was a recipe I found online, basically cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, and vodka. Absolutely amazing.

I now have a lot of delicious leftovers to enjoy! And it was so nice to have all these wonderful yummy foods in the company of good friends. Hopefully this can give you some inspiration if you haven't settled down on your Thanksgiving menu yet.

P.S. One of my guests was vegan, so everything was vegan other than the turkey, because I actually used all natural vegan chicken flavored soup mix to make the chicken broth listed in the recipes.

What is on your Thanksgiving menu? How long does it generally take you to cook? Do you usually do all the cooking yourself or do you split the cooking with guests?
If you're an American expat, do you still have a Thanksgiving dinner?