Thanksgiving Day 2012...and being a vegetarian

Eagerly awaiting the call for our table

We celebrated Thanksgiving with 200 of our closest friends at Marina Palmira on Thursday. In the past I volunteered to be on the serving committee but this year I wanted to actually eat with Larry and friends, not an hour after they finished, so I volunteered to help prepare 25 turkeys for the ovens. I know, I know, it seems an unlikely job for a vegetarian, but I thought I would just be chopping vegetables to go inside the bird. Turns out that job was completed in about 15 minutes and my next job was patting the turkeys dry after they had been unwrapped and washed. One fellow worker suggested I should just tell the poor birds, "It's going to be o.k."
This part of the preparation was organized by Susan Ross whom I have mentioned in previous blogs. Folks, if you want to get a job done, call Susan. We left the Marina at 6:45 a.m. arriving at Casa Buena a few minutes before 7:00. By 8:02 twenty-five turkeys had been unloaded, unwrapped, divested of giblets, washed, dried, placed in roasting pans, oiled, salt and peppered,stuffed with apples and veggies, wrapped and loaded into another vehicle for transportation to the roasting ovens. Whew!
A fellow worker took a pic of me handling a turkey and I'm looking forward to publishing it as proof positive that I am a team player and a reasonably good sport!
I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for the better part of 24 years, with a few forays into the land of vegan and more recently the addition of the occasional fish dish to my menu. I'm thinking seriously of leaving fish off the plate following a fishing experience during which...well, I was pretty grossed out. I am often asked why I became a vegetarian and the short but rude reply would be, "Well, why do you eat meat?" I usually tell people that I became a vegetarian for health reasons...but that's not really true. I came to a point in my life where I decided that I would not eat something I could not kill...and I could not kill a deer, or a chicken, or a lamb or a pig or apparently a fish. Or to quote one of my daughters who has been a true vegetarian for many years, if it ever had a face I won't eat it. All of that is just a way of getting around saying I don't eat meat for ethical reasons. I've been known to waffle when the subject arises because 1) it's not really any one's business and 2) I am continually amazed at how hostile and argumentative people can become.

Yum! Butternut squash risotto and roasted garlic mashed potatoes

Of course, most people know that Larry is a devout omnivore who likes his steak medium raw! and wonder how we co-exist. Well, it's really quite simple: I have never attempted to convert him or impose my beliefs on him. He knows how I feel and I understand that he feels differently. I rarely cook meat for him  but then he's a better grill master than I am, anyway, and  he enjoys many vegetarian dishes. It could have been an issue between us but we chose not to allow that. After all, I was not a vegetarian when I met and married him and I don't expect him to change in that way for me.
So he served himself a big helping of turkey and gravy and added a few vegetables on the side, I heaped my plate with all kinds of vegetable dishes (checking for the hidden bacon and ham hocks), and we both enjoyed way too much from the desert table. And we were both thankful...and a maybe little bit uncomfortable.