Thanksgiving menu, or "What do those poor, deprived vegetarians eat for Thanksgiving, anyway?"

Our friends Paul and Michael came up from San Francisco for Thanksgiving weekend. They arrived on Friday, so David and I had our Thanksgiving Day feast with them a day late.

The menu: for starters, potato skordalia spread on baguette slices (very popular), with Marcona almonds, mixed olives, and crudités. The soup was a hearty lentil soup seasoned with Dijon mustard and vinegar — very good with Tabasco sauce!

For the main course, we had butternut squash purée seasoned with whole Indian spices and wrapped in baked whole wheat phyllo dough triangles; Mom's traditional garlicky cranberry chutney (made by David); bread stuffing with toasted pine nuts and chanterelle, oyster, and crimini mushrooms braised in white wine and lemon juice (with a touch of black truffle oil); and slow-braised Swiss chard with cilantro and garlic.

For dessert we had spiced dried fruits in wine syrup (also made by David) served over soy ice cream.

The meal was a great success — very festive and traditional in feeling even without the dead bird.

We were so busy socializing during the meal that we forgot to take any pictures, so we staged the following shot the next day with some leftovers.