Don’t panic!!! We know that Thanksgiving is only 8 days away so we have gathered 8 fantastic real food recipes that are perfect to serve on the big day! When it comes to eating real food, it’s not always easy to stay on track around the holidays. If you are hosting Thanksgiving at your house, it’s much easier to control the quality of the food that is served. When you are visiting friends and family for the holidays, eating real food can become a bit more difficult. The best way to ensure that you and your family stay on track this holiday season is to make plenty of real food dishes to share with the people you love! 

The Thanksgiving Turkey 

If the honor of cooking the turkey falls in your hands this year, you should probably invest in a heritage turkey. We headed over to Agrilicious to find out why:

“Heritage turkeys are hard-to-find breeds such as Narragansett, Standard Bronze, Blue Slate and Bourbon Reds. They are similar to what the Pilgrims themselves enjoyed during holiday times. These breeds have smaller breasts, darker leg meat and a truer, gamier “turkey” flavor than the factory-farm raised turkeys. These breeds have a slaughter age of 26 to 28 weeks, while the conventional bird is ready for slaughter in 14-18 weeks. Heritage birds are also raised in smaller flocks and are generally given access to fresh air, sunshine, and pasture, making them more humanely raised than their factory-farm raised counterpart. This extra grow time and freedom allows for sturdier and more flavorful meat; two things very important to the outcome of your holiday meal.”

You can find heritage turkeys in area near you with the help of the Heritage Turkey Foundation, Agrilicious, and Local Harvest. 

Real Food Side Dishes

If you follow a real food diet, the days of packaged stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and marshmallow casseroles are long over. Serve these three healthy side dishes with plenty of healthy green vegetables for a delicious, nutrient dense, and well rounded meal. 

1. Maple-Cinnamon Butternut Squash

2. Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage Cream Sauce

3. Thanksgiving Baked Sweet Potatoes 

Real Food Desserts 

You can enjoy pumpkin pie and other healthy Thanksgiving treats even if you are vegan and gluten-free! Pinterest has become a wonderful resource for healthy thanksgiving recipes so if the following recipes don’t make you drool, a quick search on Pinterest should reveal dozens more! 

1. Vegan Pumpkin Pie

2. Vegan Chocolate Cream Pie

3. Pumpkin Frozen Yogurt 

4. Eggnog Frozen Yogurt

5. Peppermint Frozen Yogurt

These recipes should get you started on your real food Thanksgiving journey. We hope that you enjoy them! What are your favorite real food Thanksgiving recipes? Please share them in the comments section below and be sure to have a wonderful holiday season!