New Mexico Mercury

I have a Thanksgiving secret I need to spill. The holiday is just about here, and like a stomachful of undercooked turkey, I can’t hold it in even one second longer.

But first, I have to tell you about how I’m a vegetarian. I am a hardcore, diehard non-meat eater. And I make no exceptions, except for a significant cross-cultural experience or when I want a hamburger.

I’m lucky because my family stood by me when I declared my vegetarianism. They love me unconditionally and accept my dietary orientation as part of who I am, at least until Thanksgiving dinner.

As if the fourth Thursday in November is reserved for scarfing a bunch of food we otherwise never nibble, they all inquire if I’ll be having turkey. After all, gobbling the gobbler is to being human what the dictionary is to words: it separates the Americans from the people who spell “color” with unnecessary vowels.

Sure, who doesn’t love spicing up their green bean casserole with a few strips of bird flesh? I know I do. As a condiment for my all-plant diet, turkey comes second only to bacon’s blue ribbon. But if I so much as let the turkey touch my taters, my family will doubt my otherwise devout meatlessness the whole year through.

Thus, my deep dark-meat secret: I forgo turkey on Thanksgiving in order to remain a steadfast veggie man, even at the cost of my citizenship.

This freak show is about to go on the road. I’m having my first Thanksgiving at my soon-to-be in-laws’ house. These borderland folks raised two wonderfully stubborn girls and routinely fight off the neighborhood javelinas with a slingshot, yet my simple decision not to eat one of the seventeen available dishes has turned meal preparation into a reality show.

Here’s a sample of an actual telephone conversation I overheard from the other room on accident:

Mother-in-law: “What will Zach eat?”

Darling Fiancée: “He’ll eat whatever he wants.”

MiL: “But he doesn’t eat meat.”

DF: “Then he’ll pass on the turkey.”

MiL: “I need to make him something else. Can he eat ham?”

DF: “…”

You may not believe me, but I truly don’t miss turkey. The best parts of Thanksgiving dinner are made more possible by NOT eating turkey. These are: 3) sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, 2) pumpkin pie, and 1) those hours in the late afternoon when everyone else is half unconscious on the couch and I can do anything I please in peace and quiet because I’m not all hopped up on the belief that tryptophan makes you sleepy.

That’s right, muscle-munchers: being a vegetarian is stuffed with massive perks. For instance, carrots are cheaper than Omaha Steaks. I therefore save enough money to buy more beer, which doesn’t contain meat, except when it does. No matter how hard I try, I will never forget the Oyster Stout I ordered in a Dublin pub. It taught me that cross-cultural experiences, besides fostering international goodwill, can be really gross.

But at least I didn’t let the Oyster Stout go to waste, unlike a meaty craft beer I tried once in San Antonio. The brew tasted just like your traditional smokehouse wall, only with less plaster and more charred pork scraps.

This is when being a vegetarian comes in handy. A normal human being feels guilty about sending a drink back to the bar, even when the drink tastes like a campfire extinguished the cowboy way. But a vegetarian can politely say, “I can’t drink this beer because of the floating hoof bits,” and the bartender throws out the vegetarian for this personal affront to carnivores everywhere, and the vegetarian doesn’t have to pay for his salad and breadsticks!

Being a vegetarian on Thanksgiving also offers a chance to increase awareness of the conditions of meat farms in America today. Some folks read the Macy’s ads in the newspaper every Thanksgiving; I read a short passage from the book “Eating Animals,” where author Jonathan Safran Foer discusses the potential joys of skipping the modern turkey—a factory farmed animal as recognizable to the first brave pilgrims as a velociraptor or Taylor Swift.

“Would the tradition be broken,” he asks, “or injured, if instead of a bird we simply had the sweet potato casserole, homemade rolls, green beans with almonds, cranberry concoctions, yams, buttery mashed potatoes, pumpkin and pecan pies?

“Or would Thanksgiving be enhanced? Would the choice not to eat turkey be a more active way of celebrating how thankful we feel?”

I certainly think so. I for one celebrate not having to scrape the sack of frozen giblets from the turkey’s body cavity. Mostly, though, I believe that Thanksgiving is all about celebrating our thankfulness for leftovers. Now that I’ve spilled my secret, my stomach and my conscience have plenty of room for Friday’s turkey enchiladas.

(Squashurky pic by Rebecca W / CC)