A Vegetarian Thanksgiving Tradition

"You don't even eat turkey for Thanksgiving?"

"I couldn't have Thanksgiving without turkey. So, do you eat tofu and bean sprouts and all that health food stuff?"

I've fielded these questions for years from the curious. I'm a vegetarian. In fact, my husband and children are vegetarians as well. The technical term for our family's diet is lacto-ovo vegetarian, which means we eat dairy products and eggs but no meat. Most of the time, it doesn't cause much comment from other people. Then November rolls around and suddenly our meatless diet causes a stir among friends and strangers.

Most Americans assume that you can't have Thanksgiving dinner without a big, cooked turkey gracing the middle of the dining table. A few people are even suspicious that there's something vaguely un-American about having a Thanksgiving feast sans turkey meat. After all, turkey was eaten at the first Thanksgiving meal, wasn't it?

And so begins a family tradition for our family. It's not a tradition we sought out but our varied diet from our fellow Americans has caused all of us to become amateur historians. In answering questions about our Thanksgiving meal, we end up educating our interrogators. The short answer to the question about the first Thanksgiving feast is that there is no proof that turkey was served at the famous meal between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. For that matter, there was no cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie either. There was plenty of eel yet no one seems to be clamoring to serve that on today's Thanksgiving menu.

Of course, since our family lives in Florida, we could also make the point that a Thanksgiving meal was served in St. Augustine 56 years before the Pilgrim celebration. There's no proof of turkey being served at that first Thanksgiving meal either. Cocido, a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and seasonings, was most likely the main dish. Alligator may have been provided by the Timucua.

It's not our family's desire to mess up anyone's Thanksgiving dinner plans. We don't start these conversations but we have been told, in arrogant tones, that our meal doesn't "count" or it's "not really" Thanksgiving because there's no cooked bird. It's only natural to want to set the record straight.

So what do vegetarians eat on Thanksgiving? I can't speak for any one else but our family has as rich a food tradition as our omnivore neighbors. The day before Thanksgiving is baking day. We make the usual dinner biscuits and pies but the most anticipated baked treat is cinnamon rolls. Using a recipe my mother and I created, we make dozens of cinnamon rolls from scratch. We start by grinding our own wheat and spend most of the day mixing and baking. By evening, the whole house smells like cinnamon.

Cinnamon rolls are the star attraction at our Thanksgiving breakfast. We eat them while enjoying another Thanksgiving tradition: watching the parades on TV. It's disappointing that we have a smaller selection each year as more stations opt to show only the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Still, we enjoy that parade a lot - each year, we watch to see when the Rockettes will appear and which giant balloons made it in this year's lineup.

As the parades wind down, we begin another tradition which I have come to appreciate: my husband starts cooking dinner. I'll pop into the kitchen from time to time and offer my help but my husband usually shoos me away. So, it's back to the cinnamon rolls and the largest newspaper of the calendar year. Have I mentioned that Thanksgiving is quickly becoming my favorite holiday?

My husband prepares our feast which includes many dishes which are familiar to Thanksgiving diners. We have stuffing, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes. In place of the giant stuffed turkey, we have giant stuffed shells. My husband makes a delicious dish of cheese stuffed shells topped with a rich pasta sauce. He also makes a broccoli and caramelized garlic dish which is the perfect complement to the stuffing.

For dessert, we have pies with whipped cream. We have the usual selection of pumpkin, apple and pecan then we often choose another flavor. We've had cherry, sweet potato and chocolate pies. We don't always get together with other family members for the holidays but when we do it's usually for dessert. My mother makes fudge and the our children always choose that over pie!

Even though we peruse the many sales ads which come with the Thanksgiving newspaper, we resist the urge to go shopping. Sometimes we join the "Black Friday" masses and other times we sleep in but we never shop on Thanksgiving day itself. For one thing, it's a day for our family to be together. For another, we don't want to encourage stores to open. Everyone should have the day to be with loved ones so we don't want to make someone work at store just so we can shop a day early. Anything that's on sale that day will be available again later.

Every minute that we're not eating is devoted to stringing popcorn. We start the strands going while watching the parades and the stringing continues as we visit or watch Thanksgiving specials. Our family puts our Christmas tree up over the long Thanksgiving weekend so we need the popcorn garland before we can hang the ornaments.

We have considered spending our Thanksgiving holiday working in a shelter to serve food but our children are still young. Our younger children don't meet the age requirements for many organizations. We hope to add a service tradition to our Thanksgiving holiday in the future. In the meanwhile, we contribute to a few different charities meant to help those who need food. After all, who else would donate vegetarian vegetable soup to a food bank?

Go to www.jamcat.com/jcthanksgiving.htm to see pictures of our vegetarian Thanksgiving meal or to get the recipes for the dishes in this article.