More than 45 million turkeys are cooked and 525 million pounds of turkey are eaten during Thanksgiving, according to Baltimoremd.com. As a new vegetarian, I am facing my first meatless Thanksgiving and I am asking myself what in the world am I going to eat this year?

I was born to a family of meat eaters in the heart of Southwest Virginia.

We weren’t just any family of meat eaters. We raised our own pigs for slaughter.

I have not been to a family dinner since transitioning to vegetarianism in September.

The fact that I am the only one in my family who does not eat meat has not been an issue yet.

But I am envisioning being with my family on Thanksgiving day and sitting down to the turkey, honey-baked ham and roast.

It turns my stomach.

Being tempted by the many different meat choices on the table isn’t the biggest dilemma I’m facing.

It’s that my family does not embrace the fact that I have given up meat.

Even if they had, they probably think tofu is something you plug a flat with, or that hummus is the newest Lady Gaga song.

I know this year’s Thanksgiving meal will not be totally wasted on me.

I will still have sides and such to choose from to fill my plate but it will just be so different than Thanksgivings past.

With my family’s view of vegetarianism, I would be just as apt to go to Thanksgiving Dinner in drag than as a vegetarian. Different things entirely but they’ll get the same reaction from my parents.

They will never actually come out and say anything about my vegetarian lifestyle but the nonverbal communication says it all. Not eating meat makes me weird, an outsider.

Despite being tempted by the turkey and the uneasiness with my parents, I’m sticking to my convictions this Thanksgiving.

James Cromwell, an American film and television star, summed up his idea of vegetarianism in this one sentence: “We don’t need to eat anyone who would run, swim or fly away if he could.”

This, and all of the other things I’ve learned on my vegetarian journey, is what I am depending on to get me through the big T-day.

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