Happy happy Thanksgiving, friends! I hope you all have great things in store for your day and many things to be thankful for. I know I certainly do. My fantastic family (with a new sister-in-law and a new niece this Thanksgiving!! Yipee!); some fabulous and inspiring and crazy friends; my beautiful, toasty warm home; my sweet and handsome hubby; my job; my health; yoga; and many, many more things.
This is also my first Thanksgiving as a vegetarian! My lentil walnut loaf (courtesy of Oh She Glows) is ready to go, as is the mushroom gravy. We are going to two separate dinners (both families local so every holiday is crazy!) and will be well-fed, happy and content in my choice to shun the turkey! Dare I say I am more excited about this Thanksgiving than any other? Because it’s true! Rather than feeling like I am missing out, I feel like, at the tables at which I am sitting, I am the only one NOT missing out. So in addition to the million other things, I’m thankful for my enlightenment!
In the book Eating Animals (which I reviewed here), Foer has a beautiful statement about Thanksgiving. Because it can just seem so damn American to eat turkey at Thanksgiving, it must be right, right? He says:
“Thanksgiving is the meal we aspire for other meals to resemble. Of course most of us can’t (and wouldn’t want to) cook all day every day, and of course such food would be fatal if consumed with regularity…But it’s nice to imagine all meals being so deliberate. Of the thousand-or-so meals we eat every year, Thanksgiving dinner is the one that we try most earnestly to get right.
…And more than any other food, the Thanksgiving turkey embodies the paradoxes of eating animals: what we do to living turkeys is just about as bad as anything humans have ever done to any animal in the history of the world. Yet what we do with their dead bodies can feel so powerfully good and right. The Thanksgiving turkey is the flesh of competing instincts- of remembering and forgetting.”
I would be lying if I told you I don’t feel a little drunk over how powerful it feels to understand my part in the world in a more meaningful way, especially during a holiday dedicated to being grateful. It is downright magical. 🙂
My lentil loaf admittedly isn’t much to look at (but be honest, is meatloaf??), but it smells heavenly (not sarcasm!) and I can’t wait to dig in! No one admits it, but I will.. I am also very, very thankful for food!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Love to you all!
kellieanne.wordpress.com 
The lentil loaf actually sounds pretty amazing!
And food was on the top of my list of things to be thankful for this year.