home for the holidays (oy)

So! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which of course means that the library and the bookstore where I work are deserted. Outside, despite the fact that it's an astounding 67 degrees, it looks as if it's about to snow. Miserable weather, no classes - yes, it's going to be a slow day. On the plus side, that gives me a lot of time to think about recipes for tomorrow. It's tough sometimes being the only vegetarian, especially during these holidays so dedicated to meat. Last time I was home for Thanksgiving, my relatives forgot not to include bacon in the green beans and chicken brother in the mashed potatoes, so I was stuck with a small portion of salad and a hastily microwaved potato. Wasn't feeling a lot of peace and love, I can tell you. It's hard to feel included when you're an afterthought.

Thanksgiving in India and France was a lot more difficult. In Madurai, for instance, it was easy to get potatoes, butter, and pumpkin, but the only turkey available in all of South India had to be ordered from and cooked by the city's biggest hotel restaurant - there simply wasn't another kitchen equipped for it. We cobbled together a pie, but we had to get the servants to show us how to work the SITA Center's oven. It's not as if improvising reduced the quality of the meal: subbing in an Israeli-style salad for green bean casserole and all the fixings was probably healthier.

In France, the only problem was that turkey's expensive. I think Anna spent 35E on a 12 pound bird; Mom sounded so shocked when I told her. We had mashed potatoes and green beans and stuffing (always the surfeit of stale bread! I made stuffing a couple of times a week for about a month at one point, it felt like) and pumpkin pie (which perplexed the little old lady at the vegetable stand) and Matthias the Austrian carved and we all said things we were thankful for. I was thankful that it was a lot easier for the other non-American assistants to understand the point of Thanksgiving than it was for my blank-faced students. Apparently, Pilgrims don't make a lot of sense to other people.

This year, Mom and I are taking special care to have plenty of food that I can eat (I don't enjoy being irritable at family holidays, but when the point of the day is a meal I can't eat, gratitude runs short). It's so easy to have Thanksgiving here, but sometimes it's less easy to remember what I'm thankful for. Daily contact with the ones I love tends to inure me to their charms and instead highlight their irritating habits, but I'll take a day or two to remember why I'm glad to be home.