MrsHughey.com

Happy Thanksgiving

As a vegetarian and animal rights activist, I don't say "Happy Turkey Day". After all, it's not a very nice day to be a turkey! But I do want to wish all my readers a very happy Thanksgiving (even if they aren't American or Canadian).

I had the great pleasure of explaining Thanksgiving to an English colleague at the Bodleian this week. Those sorts of things are really fun when you're living away from home.

The great thing about Thanksgiving is the time we get to reflect on how blessed we are. To be very honest, I do this pretty nearly every single day of the year. I'm so fortunate to have a great husband, supportive family, sweet kitty cats who will still love me when I come home, the opportunity to live in a new place and be a writer, so many friends and students who care, and a good job. I have a comfortable place to live, enough to eat, and lots of love. You can't really ask for much more.

We have just returned from Thanksgiving dinner with about 50 people from the MCR. The dinner was pot luck. I made our family dressing/stuffing recipe and a new recipe for green bean casserole. To my pleasant surprise, there were plenty of veggie-friendly items there. As often happens at these events (we attend virtually every MCR function), there were many faces there we had not seen before alongside our friends like Steve, Chris, PJ, Rich, Mindy, Camilla and Neil. We had mashed potatoes (my favorite food on earth!!), cranberries, the two items I brought, and some salad. There was even pumpkin pie for dessert!! That's not easy to find here, as you know if you are a regular reader.

An interesting side-note about my mom's family recipe for dressing/stuffing (Andrew and I disagree about what it's called, so I will call it both dressing and stuffing for today): When I was 18 I became a full vegetarian. I committed to doing so during my senior year of high school after a couple of years of eating no red meat and little other meat. So I set a d-day of my graduation from high school. Since then I haven't touched meat.

Anyway, my mom was pretty upset at first that I wanted to be a vegetarian. Not that she had a problem with my moral conviction, but she didn't want to have to make special meals for me. I told her it wasn't a problem, I'd have the side-dishes they were having, if appropriate, and make the rest of my food myself. Surprised by her teenage daughter's zeal, I suppose, she acquiesced.

The first Thanksgiving I ate with her after going veggie, she was again a little upset about my vegetarianism. She didn't want to have to do any MORE work! But I was used to helping in the kitchen. So we adapted the traditional recipe by replacing the turkey broth with vegetable broth and making a small batch that way. It was an easy switch and tasted identical. Within a few years, my mom was making all her stuffing vegetarian. It was easier than making two batches and healthier. That's the entire story. Probably boring and overly long, but I think it's kind of cool.

One thing Andrew and I have always wanted to do but never been able to put together is a vegan feast for Thanksgiving. We'd love to have all our veggie and vegan friends over for a great big vegan meal. Unfortunately, our vegetarian friends live all over the country and, if they are travelling near us for the big day, tend to want to eat with their families. Still we dream of one day having this feast, not with some local animal rights group, but with our honest-to-goodness friends. One day!

Well, it's not a holiday weekend here. I worked today and will again tomorrow and Saturday (I work every third Saturday and this week is mine). So I suppose I should shuffle off to bed and let all that food give me a nice, big American belly!

Happy Thanksgiving! I love and miss you!

Posted by Erin at November 28, 2002 10:03 PM