I often make a recipe from an old Laurel's Kitchen edition called Tennessee Corn Pone. It's a layer of seasoned beans covered with a layer of buttermilk cornbread. It is an excellent main course for a vegetarian and a great side dish for the omnivores. It tastes great with cranberry sauce, squash, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole to boot.

My go-to answer for feeding vegetarians who aren't vegans is quiche with snazzy mushrooms, caramelized onions, dried cranberries, and a sharp cheese. It's definitely an elegant main dish and looks more difficult than it is.

If you don't eat eggs and cheese, a vegetarian chili also packs "main dish" heft, though it's less formal.

this months Vegetarian Times has a gorgeous Thanksgiving menu. the main course is individual (meatless) shepherd's pies. the look delish! i don't know if it's on their website or not but it's worth picking up a copy.

Peter Berley's 'Lasagne with Fall Vegetables and Sage Bechamel' is a favourite. It's a really satisfying meal with conventional ingredients - even my parents have eaten and enjoyed it.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/lasagne-vegetables-sage-bechamel.html

I love the idea of the roast pumpkin. I think it would be delicious filled with a Moroccan style chickpea tagine, if your family doesn't mind a bit of ethnic influence in their Thanksgiving.

I concur about the Vegetarian Times Thanksgiving menu looking delicious; it was created by the team at Greens restaurant in SF. The wild mushroom shepard's pies are really lovely looking, though you might want to add a high protein side to go with it.

I've done stuffed pumpkin or acorn squash - filled with stuffing, quinoa, wild rice, or other grains. Acorn squash is great because you can bring it to the table whole and easily split it into quarters to serve. My standby though is the most delicious and hearty risotto i can manage, served in a roasted pumpkin/squash. Beautiful!

Molly Wizenberg's butternut squash and cheddar bread pudding went over really, really well with my 2 vegetarian sisters and everyone else at Christmas last year:
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2009/11/butternut_squash_and_cheddar_bread_pudding

Thank you jenn8181 for posting this link. I remember seeing this last year and meant to keep it and the, of course, lost it. So now it is in my to cook pile!

what a great thread! i agree on the squash thing going on here; if i want fall festive looking mains, i put things in a roasted pumpkin. you can lay some fresh herbs around the base and it's totally picture-worthy. i personally prefer pie pumpkins, as they're smaller and roast more quickly, but any will do.

i've made the feature epicurious stew recipe here with great success, and it can easily be made vegan. i'd would also definitely recommend this one; http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2008/11/roast-pumpkin-with-cheese-fondue. it sounds a bit strange, but i've never served it to anyone who didn't get themselves seconds and, if foodies, thirds :)

Just make sure your dish has some protein, and is not just heavy starches. I find that to be a problem with a lot of vegetarian Thanksgiving main dishes.

I made Dana's nutloaf last year and it was delicious:
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/vegetarian-thanksgiving-nutloaf-and-leftover-nutloaf-102222

It takes some time but it's not difficult and makes a nice presentation if you make it in a ring mold with pretty garnishes. My guests were hard-core meat eaters and I made way too much other stuff so I ate most of this myself as leftovers, but had they had less options I'm sure they all would have loved it.

The addition of nuts (walnuts, pecans), lentils, mushrooms and blue cheese (if not vegan) is an easy way to boost the protein content in an autumnal dish without making it seem forced.

My Butternut and Sage Lasagna is meat-free, very fall-ish and so good. I am not a vegetarian, and have served this to many meat eating friends and no one has noticed the lack of meat. http://therunawayspoon.com/blog/2010/10/butternut-and-sage-lasagna/

We love Deborah Madison's squash galette with caramelized garlic, parmesan, and sage. Guests --- vegetarian and meat-loving --- have raved over them as well.

The year that The Fella brought squash mini-galettes to my family's turkey-centric Thanksgiving, my siblings almost fought over the last one. (You can see my fuzzy photo of the mini-galettes here.)

One of the nicest things about these: you can make them far in advance: form the galettes, flash-freeze, then bake 'em off later. Just be sure to let them thaw and rise a bit before baking. We made a hundred mini-galettes to serve (with other savory pastries) for our wedding buffet, and they came out perfectly.

Last year I made a mushroom-pecan mixture seasoned with sherry that I wrapped in puff pastry. I've also done mushrooms stuffed with seitan and bread crumbs (seitan isn't scary to "traditional palates" when it's minced).

Try mixing gnocchi with roasted butternut squash, then toss with sage and brown butter - it's easy and looks impressive. Also, what about something unexpected, like beet risotto? Yum, now I'm hungry...

Last year we made a batch of the nutloaf (on The Kitchn last year) and stuffed two pumpkins with it for two Thanksgiving tables... it was an amazing presentation, perfect flavors of the season AND even the carnivores loved it!

French onion soup! Dirt cheap, delicious, autumnal (in my mind, anyway), and no one will expect it to have meat in it, so you don't have to worry about trying to "replace" the meat. Except you have to sub veggie stock for the beef. My beef stock carton (yes, I cheat) had a recipe for "quick" French onion soup that included chickpeas. Do the French do this? Anyway, that would be another way to add protein, if people don't like mushrooms (like me).

Also, mixed greens with sliced bosc pears, walnuts, and a drizzle of walnut oil is AMAZING as a salad. You can thank my mom for inventing that one.

And last winter I tried my hand at broccoli pesto using broccoli steamed until very soft, walnuts, parmesan cheese, a little olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper blended together. It was quite good on plain pasta and I didn't miss having meat, thanks to the walnuts.

Last year I did a vegetarian meal with pumpkin ravioli with hazelnut brown butter sauce, baked winter squash with wild rice stuffing (vegan), a balsamic roasted vegetable platter (vegan), and a green salad. It was a rather simple meal to make, and the omnivores likes it, I almost felt like I was cheating somehow.

Bon Appetit this month has a recipe for Lentil and Mushroom Pot Pie with Gouda Biscuit crust. Get some.

I made sweet potato gnocchi with a brown butter sauce and fried, salted sage leaves, toasted walnuts and shavings of parmesan. Really delicious... and I'm an omnivore.
pam h
howtorunyourlife.blogspot.com

I have been a vegetarian my whole life and our Thanksgiving staple is walnut balls with a bechamel sauce. All of the meat eaters in the family also think of these as a staple for the meal.

If high-protein is the issue, a couple of years ago we had a vegetarian cassoulet (I know, there isn't truly such a thing) that went over very well. Flageolet beans, carrots, shallots, celery, lots of herbs, with a buttery crumb topping.

Vegetable pot pie. My boyfriend and I are veg and made one as our main course for last year's thanksgiving, along with traditional sides (mashed potatoes w/ mushroom gravy, sourdough bread stuffing, and pumpkin pie), and it was such an amazing meal. My boyfriend begs me to make the veg pot pie again -- trick is to use a good crust, either homemade or puff pastry. I think we used a recipe we got from the food network website. It had fennel and other traditional veggies in it.

Perhaps butternut squah risotto with feta and perhaps some sun dried tomatoes? You could even serve it in a pumpkin.

I'm also the only veg in the family, and I think the lasagna is your best bet to woo easily intimidated meat-eaters. Over the years, we've also made: chana masala, veggie chili with cornbread crust, millet-lentil tourtière, spinach quiche, and mushroom bourguignon.

Garlicky Butternut squash from allrecipes is my go-to vegetarian dish with oomph. Everyone always asks me for the recipe. Here's the link

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garlicky-Baked-Butternut-Squash/Detail.aspx

Important points for success:

1. Don't substitute another kind of squash. Other winter squashes can be too dry. I've experimented with others with lesser results. Butternut squash is perfect.
2. Toss, don't drizzle. First toss squash cubes in the olive oil. Then add the parsley and parmesan etc and toss some more. The squash needs to be coated in the olive oil first.

I made an awesome sweet potato risotto. My mom and I are planning on having it for our thanksgiving dish, just substitute water for the chicken broth. http://whatcanyoueatblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/sweet-potato-risotto.html

How about butternut squash lasagna? It's delicious, and can be cheesy, but it's still familiar. I'm a vegetarian, and I this dish always does well. If you want a soup, 101Cookbooks has an amazing french onion soup.

Two words: nut roast. Very popular for holiday meals in the UK.

I even went a step further once and baked it wrapped in phyllo pastry. My family loved it.

Last year I made vegan haggis - the recipe I used calls for ground seitan, but there's no reason not to substitute cooked beans. It's good - like meatloaf with more moisture and less tomato - but for obvious reasons, ANY kind of haggis tends to frighten less-adventurous eaters, just FYI.

My family is not vegetarian, but I am. If I'm cooking for non-veggie crowds, I've found that puff pastry or lasagne are generally the best bets. There are all sorts of puff pastry-squash combos out there. Lasagne seems a little less "seasonal", but I've received lots of compliments on a butternut squash and hazelnut lasagne. The butternut squash makes it seem a little more thanksgiving-ish:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Butternut-Squash-and-Hazelnut-Lasagne-105911

. . . a couple of years ago we had a vegetarian cassoulet (I know, there isn't truly such a thing) that went over very well. (gah, 11/1/2010 at 4:53pm)

Actually, that's what I make every New Years, using black-eyed peas.

I'm not a vegetarian, but a few holiday seasons back, I was cooking black-eyed peas for a potluck where I thought there might be a lot of vegans and/or people who kept sort-of kosher, so I skipped the meats and doubled up on the chopped vegetables (carrots, celery, fennel, parsley, parsnips, tomatoes, leeks, mushrooms--basically, whatever fell out of the vegetable bin that wasn't cruciferous) and added the crumb topping (drizzled with olive oil and garlic) to make it look good.

And I thought: gee, this tastes better than the kind with hamhocks, or smoked turkey, or andouille.

Then I thought: oh, that's impossible; why, everyone knows that vegan food sucks.

So the next year, I made it with meat. It was okay, but clearly not as good; the flavor was overwhelmed by the sausages and the texture was: creamy delicious beans . . . with these discordantly chewy bits of meat among them. Feh. I went back to the meat-free version and have been using it ever since.

Apparently, vegan food doesn't suck. Who knew?

We came up with an amazing stuffing strata this year that's vegetarian but tastes amazing! You would never know it wasn't cooked in the turkey. You layer all those traditional thanksgiving-y, stuffing-y flavors (celery, onion, sage, thyme) with bread that's been soaked in egg, milk, wine, and mustard, and then bake it in a casserole, and it comes out amazing. So rich and moist. It's definitely the best veggie stuffing I've had, since it doesn't taste like vegetable stock the way most seem to.
http://theweekendgourmande.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/savory-stuffing-strata/