What happens when a girl from Miami and a guy from Chicago move to a 118-year old house in small-town North Carolina and care for our rescued chickens.
This year is going to be our 5th year having a vegan Thanksgiving. And I'm thankful for that every single day!
Turkeys are such wonderful, sweet, compassionate animals. It's so horrible to think of the abuses they go through - not only through genetic manipulation but how they are forced to live, that they are killed early and the actual gross physical abuse they are subjected to at the facilities.
I'm so glad we have our beautiful boy Jake with us. He is a great reason to be thankful too!
Each year about 45 MILLION turkeys will be killed for this "holiday". That's a lot of violence on a day when we are meant to be expressing peace and gratitude. The great thing about traditions is that they are so easy to change and/or create. Do something more than once and you have a new tradition! We've had a compassionate, no-turkeys-or-other-animals-killed meal for going on 5 years now. Our
meal includes: stuffing, root veggie mash or mashed potatoes (or both!), asparagus, Brussels sprouts, salad, pumpkin-herb rolls, gravy, fresh orange cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, apple pie and ice cream. Our "centerpiece" food have been Field Roast's Celebration Roast and their Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute. This year we are going to add stuffed, maple-glazed roasted acorn squashes.
Just sub out a few ingredients and 1 item and your celebration becomes thankful, caring and compassionate. A TRUE celebration for the season.
Check out the New York Times promoting a veggie Thanksgiving. They are going to have THREE WEEKS of veggies recipes online. As I plan my Thanksgiving dinner, I'm so going to be checking this out!
We did this last year, and I'm happy to say we are participating again. Farm Sanctuary does amazing work, and in honor of Jake, Meg and Gertie, we're sponsoring two turkeys this year. I'm very thankful for the opportunity and for what they do to help animals.
Turkeys are cruelly abused for our "celebration" each year and as the caretaker of one of these gentle souls, I can't image the horror millions of turkeys go through, just to be a centerpiece on our table.
You can see the aftermath on the bodies of some of the animals that have come to the Farm. Beaks cut and their snoods sliced off (without any care or anesthesia) as well as feet and toes docked. Not to mention the day to day conditions they are bred into and forced to live in.
Here are our new adopted friends - Jordan and Kima.
Jordan reminds me of our Jake and Kima looks like a sweetheart.
This year consider creating a new tradition and have a true Thanksgiving - spare the lives by taking animals out of your meal and then adopt a rescued animal at Farm Sanctuary (or donate to your favorite shelter or rescue group!)
I'm thankful that he was rescued from an abusive neglectful situation by Red Dog Farm.
I'm thankful he came to live with us.
I'm thankful for his calm presence, sweet personality and beautiful feathers.
I'm thankful for how he likes to follow us around the yard and how he protects the girls.
I'm thankful for food that brings me comfort.... because no animal was hurt or suffered or was killed just to fill my plate.
I'm thankful this lovely bird will never have to live in the horrible conditions or suffer the abuses so many millions of other turkeys do just because people feel they can kill them without remorse.
I'm thankful more and more the people are becoming aware of these issues and many are making changes that hopefully someday will end these horrors.
But the biggest change has been adopting a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle. We are still figuring out what all that means to us, since it varies from person to person, but as I've said before, it has been great.
And when I talk about this "change" I don't mean just the way that we cook or the foods we choose, but really a whole mentality. We've learned a lot about the health benefits of cutting out animal-based food, the disgusting facts of factory farming and really just made a lot more connections that should have been obvious to us before.
Even though I've worked with and cared for animals all my life, it took the traumatic incident of the attack on Napoleon to really open our eyes and spur us to action. Thank goodness he has had a 100% recovery but how could we care so much for this one and then contribute to the torture and slaughter of thousands of others? Oh, and by the way, since so many people have asked... I didn't pressure the hubby into this change. He actually was the main driving force, for which I will be forever glad and thankful.
So yes, we had trauma and, yes, we have learned some sad things that reinforce our feelings but this holiday should be about joy and Thanksgiving. And this year we, I feel, finally celebrated in a way that supported that. While a few turkey's are "pardoned" (like other innocents who are spared from execution in the nick of time), 72 million for this day alone are not.
We got a few questions, which we were happy to answer, including "But what will you eat on Thanksgiving if you aren't having a turkey?" Well, I never really liked to eat turkey or ham. And I got an upset stomach from all the butter and fat every year, so I wasn't going to miss that. What we were having were all of the other amazing traditional foods with only a few ingredient changes and one substitution.
We had a Celebration Roast from Field Roast for our main. These (and their sausages) are so delicious I wish we had started eating them in general years ago. We also had an Apple Sage Mushroom stuffing, asparagus, a fresh field green salad with pecans, sweet potato biscuits, gravy and the hubby's famous roasted root vegetable mash.
This is one of the best things he makes. You chop up and roast any mix of veggies but we used: butternut squash, turnips, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, russet potatoes, parsnips, carrots and rutabagas.
Prep the veggies by seeding and peeling as needed.
Then we chop them up into equal size, sprinkle with some olive oil, salt and pepper and any herbs you may want. Then they pop in the oven to roast at 400 for about an hour or 1.5 hours until they are crispy yet tender. You then can food process them or hand mash them. We add some broth and EarthBalance and you are done!
I also made a (vegan) pumpkin pie with a pecan crust which may have been the best pumpkin pie I've ever made. I could not stop eating it.
Unlike previous years, I came away from our dinner with a feeling of actual thanksgiving and a lot of hope. It really confirmed that you could eat amazingly (which we kind of already knew) and traditionally but still in line with our goals. We could have people over for a holiday meal and know that no one would leave missing anything from a taste or emotional level. I think food speaks to us on both planes so knowing that we could still fulfill that meant a lot to me.
Many people may have seen this video of Palin and thought it was pretty bad but I'm not sure it really opened any eyes. The whole "pardon a turkey" thing is sort of a joke.
There are so many people out there who care about animals and the environment. The Prop 2 victory is evidence of that and a great start to what I hope is a wave of change. In this new world, this paradigm shift, I hope that awareness will continue to grow and an openness will find new paths.
I hope our experience will inspire you to think beyond what has been taught to you in the past and to seek new information and try new things. I'd love to help answer any questions or talk through your thoughts.
