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.

It's Almost Thanksgiving

Who else cannot wait for Thanksgiving Break? I have to say I am so excited for it my hands start shaking when I start thinking about it. Just think about it! Those mashed potatoes, turkey with gravy, my mom’s Kaluah cake… oh that food. My stomach is begging for it. Then there is my bed. That soft, big, bed that I will be able to curl up in and not worry about getting up for class, work, or homework at 7 in the morning. I might actually sleep enough so I wake up refreshed instead of just begging for one more minute. Of course my family is there. Although I have to say seeing them is amazing my priorities will be sleep and food. Still right before finals family time is like a shot of strength and forbearance that I so desperately need. So yes I am excited. Very excited. So so so excited. The next week and half cannot go by fast enough.

Yet there is one problem with Thanksgiving Break. It’s timing. I wish it was a week or two earlier. And not just because I really want to go home, but because Thanksgiving is RIGHT before finals. When you go home, the whole time you are counting down the days until that last project is due, or that paper deadline is. So you can’t really relax. Because even if you are not doing homework or studying you know you SHOULD be.  So you feel mildly guilty even as you are stuffing those mashed potatoes or Kaluah cake into your mouth.

But let’s ignore all that stress. Today is a day to forget about those deadlines and focus on the positives. This year Thanksgiving is going to be really exciting at my house because we are also going to celebrate my mom’s and sister’s birthdays when we all get home. So I get 3 celebrations all in one weekend.  I am also hoping my sister and her husband will bring their new puppy Josie with them. I haven’t met her yet and it would be amazing if they did.

The English Department is also trying to catch up with this very fast moving semester. Professors are trying to schedule evaluations, finals, and still fit in time to finish the lectures. The English Department has some fun events coming up too. We are getting the house ready for Chowder Fest tomorrow. And Wassail Party is also coming up. Everyone is busy. It feel like it was just New Year’s doesn’t it? Can you believe we are approaching 2013? Well on that note I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving Break and I hope to see you all at Chowder Fest and Wassail! Good luck on finals!

Turkey and Family

As the below post suggests it’s that time of the year again. But my mind is not quite on finals yet. Maybe it should be. But it is far too preoccupied with the wonderful holiday that is barreling its way toward us. THANKSGIVING! My family loves Thanksgiving. We always say it’s the time you can concentrate of family and great food, without the stress of presentsof Christmas. While some of you might say 'I love buying gifts', in a family distributed over 5 continents it gets a bit much. We have lists of addresses that are always changing, lists of family that is always growing, lists of ages that are changing… all in all my family is just too big and far spread for presents to be an easy buy. But Thanksgiving, now that we do right!

With this wonderful week already here I am jumping from excitement about going home. And yes part of it is to get away from the cafeteria food. I mean come on! Not only do I get to eat home cooked meals, they are specialty dishes cultivated over generations that we only make at Thanksgiving. How much better does it get! And my family is at its best during this holiday. We are all ready to have fun, and are so in love with being together. As a Russian/Lithuanian/Colombian household we eat a lot, we drink a lot, and we party until dawn. This is the time when I hear stories about how all these amazing people came to America, how feuds were born and solved, and how miracles played a part in our family like no other. This is the time of year when I am so truly fully glad to come from the background I did!

This year Thanksgiving is special for a few more reasons. It’s our first without our beloved Grandma Mamute (Mamute means little mother in Lithuanian). She passed away last winter and it’s going to be a big loss at our table without her. She was the one who told my sister’s then fiancé, now husband, that we will know that he truly loves my sister when he has to change her diapers, she led the family song every year (oh yes we bust out the guitar and sing old soviet songs!), and was our own personal ray of sunshine. For me personally this Thanksgiving is also special because for the first time since I’ve moved to America in 2002 I will not be with my family for Christmas or New Years. So this holiday is my one shot at glory people!

Ok, ok enough about me. This post is supposed to be to remind you all how much we have to be Thankful for this year. Hurricane Irene didn’t destroy our College, the Snow storm of Halloween weekend didn’t dampen our spirits too much, our families are still around us, we’re almost done with another semester, and it’s late November but it’s not frigid cold outside yet! Find your own reasons to be thankful this time of year and cherish your time with the family. Finals are coming up, and as much as I don’t want to admit it we will need all the good vibes to survive those!

The Dog Days of December

Whew! here it is November 26th, and this is only the second post this month. Perhaps that's because these are the days of deep semester: when papers pile up on instructors' desks, and assignments accumulate on students' lap-tops. These are the days of deep semester, when classes begin to run their course, and the combination of Christmas Musak and final papers churn the mind to muck--the Dog Days of the semester, when December looms. I get up in darkness and lie down in darkness, a pale dawn and a too-sudden twilight book-ending the daylight of teaching. Thankfully, we had Thanksgiving recess, during which we try to push off the anxiety of studying, writing, grading a few days, at least.
Mine was marvelously magnificent; I was able to enjoy the days immensely. Perhaps the advantage of age is the cultivated ability to live easily despite the threat that I need the time to "catch up" over the break. Or maybe it's just successful denial. Who knows?
Anyway, I thought I'd ruminate a bit about our company on Thanksgiving, or rather (geneologists, beware! here comes a conundrum) my step-daughter's half-brother Adam. Yes, my step-daughter could visit with both her step-brother and her half-brother together on Thanksgiving night, and was delighted, as were we.
My point, though, is that Adam is an English Major from WashU (St. Louis), class of '06, who was regaling us with his professional stories. Yes, English Majors, there is hope! Having journeyed to D.C. and taking a grunt desk job at MSNBC (recommended by a college friend) answering phones and e-filing, he interviewed with them for a position as political correspondent and was one of eight hired for the current Primary campaign season. He credits not only his writing experience, but his taking an internship at a local St. Louis radio station, where he got acquainted with the skills of deadline writing and interviewing. (And his minor was Psychology, not Journalism!) He's having quite the time traveling between Iowa and New Hampshire, having been embedded with the Fred Thompson campaign, of all people. (The reason he could join us was because NBC was flying him from the mid-west to the north-east, and he had no place to go on the intervening day.) He's glad that Fred finally recognizes him--for six weeks Adam was apparently considered by the candidate an extremely loyal camp follower ("Good to see you again; what was the name?").
He likens the stump speech (as a kind of verbal essay) to stand-up comedy routines: the framework is the same, but there are slightly new or changed sentences to appeal to the particular demographics at a particular location; these are cycled into and out of the stump speech as needed. So what he's on the look-out for is the significantly altered sentence that may signal a change or revelation of policy: what did Fred say about Fox News yesterday? Here's a link to a DailyKos story that cites his column; here's another to MSNBC's FIRSTREAD, where his column appears (Scroll down; if you don't find him, search for Adam Aigner-Treworgy in the search window at the top right of the page).
So much for my inspirational story concerning my Thanksgiving; perhaps later I'll review the first two films I've seen in the theater for the last year. . . .
--Jay