Inisfree’s First Vegan Thanksgiving

“All things happen in threes,” the Chinese say.  So easy is it now for me to see my three very distinct phases of life, and where I am between the latter two of them.  The first phase was pretty horrible, but I managed to get my bearings and stay alive.  The second phase was fantastically better than the first, as I had finally achieved hard-won freedoms, but it still lacked enough that I kept pushing ever on.  Thanksgiving was one of those times during both of those first phases when I remembered my lifelong dream of getting to enjoy it, and every holiday and trip, with my kind of people (something I’d never had before), which everything was coming together to ensure.

This is not your typical “what I’m thankful for” Thanksgiving article.  This is a healthy mix and balance of better-tasting vegan alternatives to traditional Thanksgiving foods, and the reality behind this holiday most don’t seem to even remotely understand.  I’ll say what I am thankful for at the end.  Enjoy.

Traditional Thanksgivings involve mostly middle- and upper-class White families coming together and pretending that their ancestors didn’t massacre hundreds of millions of Native Americans, becoming responsible for the American Holocaust (also called The Trail of Tears), shortly thereafter pretending nothing like that had happened and everything was fine.  They’d actually been “best buddies” with all the Natives in spite of that little misunderstanding, and the Natives had shared food with them when the colonists struggled, sitting down at picnic tables to eat and celebrate with them.  Right.

The holiday has also become very popular with Black families, among others, though those groups had little at all to do with the atrocities exacted upon the Native men, women, children, and elderly for hundreds of years –and still today.  Families with non-White ancestry, like anyone, just like to get together and eat in peace and happiness.  I’m guessing the Native Americans once did, too, before we murdered 99% of their race for being brown and healthy.  It’s just such a shame that Thanksgiving isn’t at all what it pretends to be, and that mourning and reparations, not thanks, should be given.

Going back farther into actual history, we find that people and cultures around the world celebrated and honored the harvest, and the natural forces responsible for it, during this time near the end of Autumn.  It was never called Thanksgiving, of course; thanks was given daily and year-round, so why have one day focusing on it more than others?  The original holiday and festival was called Cerelia in ancient Rome, in honor of the god Ceres, and many other things elsewhere.  Here is a great article explaining more, with a link in it to this.

Each year at this time, farmers and others were doing their best to ensure the last harvest was a good and lasting one; the focus was on farming, harvesting, and over-winter food storage.  Today, that still goes on, but to a far lesser degree; more than half of all Americans used to be farmers, and now it is less than 1%.  The focus leading up to Thanksgiving has become to risk the lives of everyone around you in shopping malls and other stores just to grab whatever you can before someone else does, then cook it even if it is extremely unhealthy and filled with carcinogens, and finally to serve it to an overcrowded house full of immature relatives who can’t get along and who spawn at all costs, even if it guarantees both them and their offspring a nightmarishly impoverished future.  No one knows where their food comes, or what is in it, or how to grow any of its ingredients, much less how to prepare and present it correctly for best results; their connection with nature, time, and patience has been lost, not to mention their connection to their true selves and each other.

As you can imagine from the blunt way I put that, I lived that hell.  In phase 1 of this life of mine, Thanksgiving was always mandatory and full of upsetting tension, as well as unhealthy southern ‘food’.  It wasn’t really about thanks at all; it was about force, the threat of violence, and polluting our bodies as much as the modern made-up religions had polluted my relatives’ long-dead minds.  We showed up and ate together because it meant the least fighting, complaining, and demonizing of each other.  Then we got back to the normal high level of fighting once all the food and drinks were gone.  More than anything, most of us were just thankful when it was over and out of the way, no longer stressing us out.  Nevermind the fact that we spent it (and all other meals) force-feeding ourselves the mangled corpses of tortured animal infants we cared not one bit about.  Gee, I wonder if that had something to do with their alarmingly-short lifespans, and all their panic-stricken, hyper-defensive, violent and default-exhausted moods that whole time.  Hm…

Phase 2 came and went, with me skipping every Thanksgiving and other holiday for years, starting in the military (when things like that were bound to frequently happen; we just had too much going on, and were too far away out there in alien lands, to ever stop or get back together); this indefinite pause in all holiday celebrations (and even in the relaxing enjoyment of weekends) was the prescribed and unavoidable time of healthy detachment, dissociation, isolation, purification, self-amplification, and detoxification from all the bad things which came before, affording me critical and cherished time to review them while developing my own.  There also tended to be no Thanksgiving feasts during this time apart for me, and often little or no food at all; it was as much a time of fasting and appreciating the nothingness, as anything else (and thank god for that! –if you will pardon that formerly-religious expression).  I learned about countless other things to be thankful for, and at countless other times of the year, the nothingness and in-between times included.  (And not having enough food to be a glutton with helped allow my mind to reach these wise conclusions.)  This was the restoration of the original pre-Thanksgiving thankfulness periods, and I was, of course, thankful.

The final phase of my life is when I finally get to hang out and spend each important holiday with people who actually like the real me; compatible people who share my passions, values, and calling, coming together to complete my life’s work, it being one-and-the-same with their own.  I started with the bad people, mindsets, and food; everyone and everything which had –and wanted– nothing to do with me and my purpose, …then transitioned into nothing at all, detoxing from all of them, and am now ready for all the good.  Thanksgivings in my ideal community; Inisfree, are very carefully and lovingly designed to be just that; heaven on Earth –and, boy, have they been a long time coming.

What comes with a perfect grand finale like that?  Perfect food; perfectly healthy and satisfying, that is.  Enter, vegan meals.

First vegan recipe; the turkey replacement.  There are actually a lot of great vegan and vegetarian alternatives out there to everything you have probably ever eaten or heard about.  Check here for the start of the list regarding Thanksgiving’s main staple.

And now for all the rest!

• vegan mashed potatoes recipe
• vegan gravy recipe
• more vegetables recipes
• vegan cheese grits
• vegan cornbread
• cranberry sauce recipe
• vegan dinner rolls recipe
• vegan roasted sweet-potato casserole with praline
• Marvin Woods’s Brussels Sprouts, Red Pepper, and Avocado Salad
• vegan potato and celery root gratin
• vegan pumpkin pie with walnut crust
• vegan drinks recipes
• more vegan pie recipes

As you can see, there are brilliant, delicious, and beautiful alternatives to everything served during Thanksgiving.  They are far, far healthier for you, and your mind and body will thank you.  Try them this Thanksgiving.  You’ll be beyond glad you did.  I know I have been.

(And look at how vegan Thanksgiving feasts look here!)

I wrote all this up, learning a lot of the recipes along the way, and will start to try making them soon.  This is still part of phase 2, by the way, which means there are still a few empty holidays of learning and nothing else ahead.  I’ll be spending them learning the last few things I need to know to make my omni-calendar and all its holiday events a delicious big success.  It won’t be until the onset of the final phase of this interesting life that the people I will actually enjoy sharing Thanksgiving with, and be thankful for, show up and start cooking with me.  I bet they’re out there realizing all this, too, and are enjoying dabbling in the kitchen on their own just like I have been.  It will be really fun to see what we all bring to the table, pun intended, when we finally unite (and reunite).

Am I going to go out and do anything with anyone this Thanksgiving or holiday season?  Hell no; their loves and dining habits do not yet match mine –not even close.  Wisely, no longer will I ever subject myself or acquiesce to such things, nor trouble them with my healthy mindset and words.  Those incompatible beings can just get it right on their own, and request a future date and time with me, or carry on as they have been without my presence, and that is more than fair.  Thanksgiving should never have been about trying to force completely different people together, or about covering up one’s nature, or the nature of the past; it is fine that we have separated, ensuring there will be no offensive lessers around to further delay the right ones from zeroing in and proudly introducing themselves.  Yes, I am keeping all my Thanksgivings and holidays, starting with this one, permanently clear and reserved just for them.

What I’m thankful for:  Native Americans still being around and daring to speak up, telling their important and wise traditions.  I’m also thankful for the Internet, my own website, and those who helped make things like that possible.  I’m thankful for restored global communications, and the ability to translate anything into any language instantly and for free, helping everyone interested notice and grasp my message.  I’m thankful for all the writing I did, which came together in something far more beautiful, healing, and inspirational than just short-stories and a journal.  I’m thankful for where I live and work now, and that it is peaceful; a far cry better from the underground operations I thought would only come from this place.  I’m thankful for having reached one quarter of the Earth’s current publicly-known nations, as well as all the states.  I’m thankful for knowing so much about so many places, which has allowed me to efficiently avoid all those that aren’t compatible with me, while spending more and more time in all those that are.  I’m thankful for seeing my life’s work coming to completion more quickly than ever before.  I’m thankful for discovering how much more delicious a vegan diet is; I thought it would take some getting used to, but no!  I’m thankful for having been intuitive enough to give all my natural emotions and reactions their time, never trying to reprogram myself or focus on just one.  I’m thankful for discovering who the real deities are; the good people still alive and well across this realm.  I’m thankful for a replaced vehicle, and no longer needing gasoline.  I’m thankful for everything that ended up making it into the Inisfree design, and for all the times ahead when I will continue to enjoy those things more and more, until at long last they are my everyday-and-night life.  I’m thankful for all that and so much more; too much to ever type out.  I am thankful.

The first vegan Thanksgiving for the city I designed; Inisfree, is coming soon.  The people who share common loves and goals will be meeting there, some coming days in advance, in order to celebrate for a few days in a row, just like many of the Native Americans did.  There will be representatives from many of the races and civilizations destined to reunite with us.  In the years ahead, many more.  The biggest feasting will be hosted in my private home high on the central mountain of our land –and I encourage you to check out its impressive dining rooms and kitchens here.

To those who celebrate the old ways; to those who give thanks year-round, and for many natural things such as the arrival of useful wildlife, I stand and give thanks with you.  To those of my kind who need a safe place to recover and recharge, I open the doors of Inisfree and give thanks for you.  To those who are reading this and daring to believe it is true, I give thanks for you.  Happy Autumn harvest festival.  Happy Thanksgiving, to you.