Cream of Thanksgiving soup with a cranberry Tofurky sandwich (vegan)

How this meal came to be:

This will be the first plant based Thanksgiving since my husband and nearly his whole family converted to a plant based diet a few months ago.  While experimenting with how we were going to modify our upcoming Thanksgiving meal, a holistic chef friend of ours suggested a simple green bean, mushroom, and coconut milk version of the green bean casserole.   She made if for us one evening and it was wonderful.  Then, I had an epiphany; coconut milk is not just for Thai cooking! If you used to make something with butter, cream, or cream of mushroom soup, chances are you can make it with coconut milk! Then it dawned on me: I can deconstruct the entire Thanksgiving meal into a soup and a sandwich and eat it every day from now until December.

soup ingredients (serves 4)
2-3 med potatoes (skin on)
1 med yam (skin on)
10-15 mushrooms
1 white onion
4 cloves garlic (pealed)
1 stalk celery
1 carrot (skin on)
1/2 tsp rosemarry
1/2 tsp thyme
2-3 bay leaves
 a few handfuls of chopped fresh green beans
1 can coconut milk
salt to taste

Chop onion and potato into equal size pieces (about 1"), put in pot, cover with water and begin to simmer.  Clean mushrooms with damp paper towel, clean carrot and yam with vegetable brush.  Slice thinly.

going plant based takes more time; more time shopping, more time chopping……so a few investments are quite necessary to make up for this time investment and a food processor is my number one recommendation and after that a high powered blender.   caption

Chop green beans into 1" pieces
Once potato and onion are soft, and you can easily stab the potato with a fork,  add the skinned garlic and coconut milk and puree with a soup wand ( or transfer to blender and puree).  In pot, add all remaining ingredients along with puree.

 Simmer covered until green beans are tender (about 15 min)

Now for the sandwich

sandwich ingredients
bread of your choice
Tofurky slices
butter lettuce
tomato
red onion
cranberry sauce
veganaise (optional)

If you pass on the cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving (I know I do), don't discount it in a sandwich.  Its better than you think.   I'm also going to confess that I garnished my soup with fried onion pieces from TJ's (Trader Joes).  But that was just naughty of me.