Hopefully the author has salvaged/re-used these disposable pie tins rather than buying new ones...

Sweet Potato Everlasting Rolls
Easy-to-make rolls: one more thing to be thankful for.  ...I love to make a double or even triple batch of these rolls, bake them off in "disposable pie tins," and take them around to friends and extended family on Thanksgiving morning.

Linuscello:  You bring up a good point.  I should clarify.  As a commercial baker I buy heavy duty, so-called "disposable" pie tins because I sell pies to the public.  I ask my customers to return them to me, and I reuse them again and again.  To avoid this issue altogether, it would be nice to bake a large batch of rolls on a sheet pan and wrap them in a tea towel to take to your friends and family.  

For myself, I use either my dad's pie pans (which are older than me) or my glass and ceramic pie pans.  I've found that ceramic pie pans make a better crust on pie >.>b

April,

I instantly connected with your lead description of rejecting the food (meat) of your family and the subsequent isolation that caused. I became vegetarian at a young age and was vegan for a while in college, which served to further my distancing from a family that I already felt estranged from, as I developed a worldview and political affiliations that were very distinct from theirs.

My family and I are still very different. But I, still vegetarian, have found ways to bridge the gap by cooking for them good food that they can enjoy. Sometimes they like the food enough to learn to cook it themselves, on other occasions it is simply a food I create for them when I visit -- but some of these concoctions they have liked enough to ask me to make them when I'm around. I've also been able to connect with the older members of my family through a shared love of gardening and growing things, both edible and decorative. This exercise in finding things we share -- an appreciation for foods that taste good and flowers that are beautiful, and a love for crafting homemade foods like preserves and pickles -- has brought me closer to my grandmother, who otherwise can't understand very much about the person I am. We might not agree on politics or presidents, but we can share recipes for peach cobbler.

It is my hope that, over the long term, I can use the beliefs and values that my family does share with me to help explain where I'm coming from in terms of the beliefs and values where we are vastly different. It will be a struggle. But food and art seem to me to be two universal spheres where human beings can connect and maybe span gaps that otherwise would be unbridgeable.

Thanks for the post -- now I have to try the recipe!

"Sacrament" and "poison" are strong words -- it is probably not very often that an actual divinization, or murder, takes place at a Thanksgiving dinnertable.  But Prentice and Casey are certainly right to observe that on such occasions, much can happen, for good or for ill, of great importance to how we get on with people who might be of uncertain closeness to us.

The verb "to reconnect" sounds rather cheap, prosaic and quick in this context.  It is what you do when the coffee pot's plug gets bumped and falls out of its socket.  E.M. Forster, one of my favorite writers, was indulging in a gnomic, vatic concision that we should not too readily try to imitate, when he made for his great novel "Howard's End" the epigraph and moral, "Only connect!"  The resumption of old conversations with distant loved ones, whom a happy occasion has gathered together with us, is a truly beautiful and precious thing, and deserves a better word than "reconnect."

And as for "traditions," they deserve to be sent to hell, if they are clung to merely through fear, or laziness, or a desire to control.  Certainly that Thanksgiving dinnertable will not be cultivating true "kinship," if a vegetarian/vegan is made to feel trapped, with no friend or ally, in a bitter dilemma: either eat the flesh of an unjustly slaughtered fellow sentient creature, or insult the company.

Thanks, April, for being a peacemaker ("Blessed are the peacemakers ... "), and for those mightily happy-sounding recipes.

And thanks, Amy Matthews, for reminding us that there are few sentient creatures who suffer as much injustice as dairy cows.

@farmersdaughter said:

"There is a significant increase in availability of farmstead cheeses, butter, and yogurt across the country from cows who are respected, well-treated, and graze on pasture. The same is true of pigs and chickens and turkeys."

While becoming vegan/vegetarian has a LOT to do with the treatment of the animals, this choice is equally related to resource issues. Spreading the idea of farmstead products only INCREASES the amount of resources required to sustain a growing population of humans demanding these products. The reason factory-farming grew so fast is because it requires less resources. This issue is much bigger than the middle-class farmstead Thanksgiving - there are 6 billion people eating animals - what happens if they demand their animal products from suppliers who require more resources to produce them?

If you WERE vegetarian and justified your switch by choosing a MORE resource-intensive option, then you were never really a vegetarian.. just a rebellious trendy middle class American.

Vstross,
I'll avoid your comments that were meant to be hurtful because I sincerely want to dialogue with you- what is your thanksgiving like? Are there people there from different generations/cultures? How do you relate to them? Good things? Bad things? Memories?

I'm not trying to be snarky, but I'm trying to figure out how progressives see and experience conviviality at the table in these times.

P

April, your Grist article was great, as always. I was moved and made homesick for southern Mississippi by the food and kinship quote... "Whatever increases our sense of kinship is sacrament and nutritious food. Whatever increases our sense of alienation is poison."

Up here, in Bellingham, Washington, everyone seems to define themselves based on what they WON'T eat (e.g. "I don't DO wheat/dairy/gluten/sugar/etc."), and it is truly alienating. Potlucks become a competition over who can bring the most politically correct dish, instead of a sharing of each person's favorite recipe...

In a town where most everyone is a transplant rather than a native, it's a shame that we know more about our neighbors through what they have come to reject or eliminate from their lives, than from the pieces of their own culture they could have brought into our little community.

I've written off those self-righteous potlucks completely and made an appreciation for bacon one of my tests for true friendship. You can't be too picky around here!!!

Has anyone had trouble with the dough rising in the refrigerator? I followed the directions with the starter, and then made the dough and put it immediately in the fridge to rise overnight, but it hasn't risen at all. Perhaps my fridge is too cold.

This morning I kneaded in some extra yeast, and have put the dough in a warmish place to rise. Hopefully this will help.

Was the dough supposed to rise very much in the fridge? Like double in size? Has anyone else had a problem? Please respond!

So long as your yeast was good and you didn't kill it by exposing it to too hot a temperature (not above 100 degrees or so), your dough should have risen some in the refrigerator -- though probably not double in 8 hours.  At cold temperatures, yeast dough rises slowly, but it does rise.  When you bring your dough out to room temperature it will warm up and rise more rapidly.  Kneading in extra yeast won't hurt your dough so you should still be fine.  If you cut the sugar in the dough, it will also rise more slowly.  Hope this helps.    

Another point I should mention is that you are not only relying on the yeast in this recipe.  You also have baking powder and soda as leaveners.  That said the dough should still rise, just not as much or as fast as say, baguette or pizza dough.  

okay, they turned out, and just in time for thanksgiving dinner! thanks for the awesome recipe, i only used half the dough, and might make cinnamon rolls with the leftover tomorrow, yum....