How to Be a Vegetarian at Thanksgiving (Without Being too Awkward)

I love Thanksgiving. I love getting together with family and friends and talking about what we are so grateful for, even if we don’t have that much. I love snuggling with my pup, drinking hot cocoa and watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (which is turning 40 this year: http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Charlie-Brown-Thanksgiving-Classic-turns-40-4981328.php). And the food. So.much.food. The leftovers? Yes please. There is one little problem, though: I’m a vegetarian. This is a minor complication when the main symbol of Thanksgiving is a huge turkey in the middle of the table. And you guessed right: At Thanksgiving this year, I will be the only vegetarian. However, this does not mean that I’m stuck with eating cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie until my teeth fall out. Here are some tips on having a very vegetarian Thanksgiving: 
 

-          Make sure the host knows your veggie status: If you are pescetarian or the extreme raw diet vegan, make sure that whomever is hosting the Thanksgiving feast knows. That way they can plan for it. Vice versa, if you are hosting Thanksgiving realize that some of your guests might have dietary restrictions. Contact them so you can make sure that the vegetarian stuffing is indeed made with organic, non-GMO, MSG free vegetable stock.

-          Don’t be THAT person asking these questions/making these comments:

o   “So like, what do you eat?” I think the better question is what don’t I eat.

o    “Are you sure you don’t want any turkey? Maybe just some white meat?” No.

o   “This is [insert name]; he/she’s a vegetarian.” I have other qualities besides my diet.

o   “Why are you a vegetarian?” Haven’t we gone over this already?

o   “Do you eat that weird tofurkey stuff?” Don’t hate because you can’t appreciate a good tofurkey sandwich.

o   “Are you sure you have enough to eat? Because I could just run out …” Trust me, in all my years of being a vegetarian, I have never gone hungry.

-          Be gracious: Always bring at least one dish from home so that you won’t go hungry and it takes the pressure off the host for providing vegetarian dishes. And because you made it, your family members should eat it and (at least pretend) love it! Spread the vegetarian love.

-          People don’t realize how much Thanksgiving food is actually already vegetarian:

o   All the desserts are vegetarian (let’s be honest, dessert is the most important anyway).

o   Cranberry Sauce

o   Green bean casserole (usually, but ask just in case)

o   Sauerkraut

o   Wine. 
 

Have a great Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble! 

Have a gaggle of hippie vegetarians coming over or you yourself are a veggie and need recipes?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/vegetarian-dishes-for-thanksgiving 

Here’s a little more visual into what it’s like being a vegetarian at Thanksgiving: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/what-its-like-being-a-vegetarian-at-thanksgiving.

Thanks

This year as Thanksgiving approaches, I am in a very different and better place than I was last year. As prior blog posts will attest, I was overwhelmed and just looking for some bright occasion to look forward to. Thanksgiving and my grandmother's wedding was meant to be a sign of better things to come and the approach of the end of what I thought was going to be the most difficult semester of my college career.

As I now know, my second semester was just as bad as the first in many ways. My grandmother's new husband had an extremely debilitating stroke only a few short months into their marriage, my father was in hospital sedated and on a respirator for about a week mid-semester, my uncle was sentenced to a very long period in jail out in Colorado, both my parents lost their jobs, and my Aunt Glenda passed away after an eight-year struggle with cancer.

That is all mostly aside from the point because what I really want to talk about this Thanksgiving season is Glenda, because she used to always host Thanksgiving every year. My extended family is that rare type of close, where I know my second cousins once removed better than some people know their aunts and uncles and direct cousins. So that being said, Thanksgiving was a large event with the "small" year, the year where some people went to the other side of their families' places, involving about thirty people coming over to the house and the "large" year having over fifty people coming to Glenda's for dinner.

Glenda's house was by no means large, so fitting everyone around the table was a feat. The long string of tables would be stacked end to end along the length of the house. Every chair and couch in her house would be lined around the table, and each chair was needed for someone to sit in. One time I remember my then 92 year-old great grandmother crawling under the table to get out and grab herself a drink because she did not want to try to squish past all the people to get around the end of the table.

Getting all the food coordinated was another accomplishment in and of itself. Weeks in advance, Glenda would start calling people to see if they were coming and ask what they would like to bring. She then also made food herself and helped to make sure we had enough plates and dishes to serve everyone.

Glenda was always calm, always collected at these huge dinners. It didn't matter that children were running between peoples legs or that someone spilled the boat of gravy on the couch; it even didn't matter that one year that her cat brushed its tail against a lit candle and she had to chase it around the house to douse it in water. She just always seemed content to have all her family crammed into her little house, talking and laughing and generally giving thanks for being able to get together with each other.

This year, her twin sister Wanda is hosting Thanksgiving. And I think it will be hard. When I think about how hard it will be for Wanda and for a lot of the family, it hurts. If last year was bad for me, I cannot think of how hard it was for family members more directly affected by some of the events:  Wanda, my mother, my grandmother. I do not wish a year like last year on the worst of my enemies, but in retrospect, it has taught me to appreciate the little things and to be able to see the light in the darkest of moments. It has taught me to give thanks. So while I know this Thanksgiving will in many ways sad, I am looking forward to it because I think it is a sign of the resiliency of my family and I know it is what Glenda would have wanted to see happen. She would have wanted us to bring the chaos together and to rejoice in each other's support and warmth.

A couple of weeks ago Lauren C. posted about writing her honors thesis. In her post she mentioned the importance of finding “a place to be productive”. After having moved to Clark earlier this year to begin my first year of college I have become extremely aware of the impact your environment can have on you and how important it is to find places that make you feel at ease

Before coming to college I had mentally prepared myself for the academic challenges that I would face. What I hadn’t realized was that one of the biggest challenges I would face was becoming comfortable with a new, unfamiliar environment. For the first few weeks that I was on campus I spent a lot of time trying to discover my favorite study spots, learn the names of all of the buildings, and find my way around campus. I am happy to say that after a few month of wandering around I have managed to find a number of wonderful places that are good for all sorts of different things, and I thought I would share some of my personal favorites with you:

The craft studio:

I had heard about the craft studio from a couple of people, but It was only last week that I stumbled upon it while wandering around the lower level of the university center(speaking of which, the grind is pretty cool when they have events there). They have supplies for doing all kinds of arts and crafts, and they have a wall of beautiful unfinished ceramics that are being made by students in the pottery class. It is quite magical.

The thrift store:

The thrift store is cheap, sells a bit of everything, and is run by lovely Clark students that volunteer there. On Friday it was damp and rainy out, and I was lucky enough to find an oversized forest-green sweater to snuggle up in (and it was only five dollars)

Room 402 (in the library):

The Study rooms in the library are all great places to study with friends, and 402 is my personal favorite. The view of campus from the room is nice, and there are swivel chairs and padded benches to sit on.

And, last but not least, I have to mention Anderson House, where I work. The house itself is an extremely charming shade of yellow, and there are always things going on inside. I just got my job as a work study student earlier this year, and everyone has been extremely welcoming, and helpful.

If I have learned anything from my first few months at college it is that getting to know a new place can be a difficult but rewarding experience. And even though I have found my way around campus and learned about a lot of great places along the way, I still try to make a point of exploring when I can, of taking new routes to class and seeing what I can discover.

Writing for Modern Media

This semester I find myself in an odd place academically. Last year as an overzealous sophomore, I completed the majority of my English major requirements. Signing up for my current classes felt a bit misdirected at first, but the flexibility I gave myself in course selection allowed me to flex some English muscles I didn’t know I had. One of my favorites this semester is Writing for Modern Media with Professor Vicki Stiefel, which teaches how to write articles that could be submitted to periodicals. It stresses the importance of adapting to the rapidly changing publishing industry (in my professor’s words: “the publishing industry is like a crazy person on speed running around with his head cut off”) by maintaining an internet platform. Daily posts to Twitter and Facebook aren’t my favorite, but each week we get to dig in to a new style of article writing. Peer review sessions conducted around a conference table and detailed written edits from Professor Stiefel have initiated a new level of consciousness for my writing, and the variety of assignments creates a fun and challenging academic environment. Sample an assignment I wrote for the class after the break.