Emma Gase
Thanksgiving was almost a week ago, and like all the best holidays, it’s festivity and inevitable family fosters a universal tendency toward self-reflection. Now as much as I have renounced my Beige Diet tendencies, my bleached-white flour past still haunts me in my vastly improved culinary present. When I think today about how I used to eat even just four or five years ago, what stands out most is the constant litany of judgmental reactions I would get from my friends and family circa the holiday season. The incessant nagging ranged from the bearable “Em, you’re so picky!,” to the annoying, “Try it! Oh, c’mon! You might like seafood,” (I HATE seafood, and will, forever) to the dreaded, “No dessert until you finish that [non-specific green vegetable or unappetizing legume]!” And when I ponder these sepia-toned childhood memories growing up in the South Bay of Los Angeles, I remember exactly one food experience per year where I felt as liberated as a vegan in Portland. For is there anything better for a cheese-and-carbo-tarian than the one sweet, sweet day a year where most of the food you are supposed to eat is….beige?! The answer is nay, there is not.
Since my earliest picky-eating days, Thanksgiving has always stood out as the one day a year when I was free from the scrutiny of the green-eating Gestapo that was oh, just about everybody in the world except me. Could a veggie-phobe want anything more than a day where it is not only socially acceptable but actually encouraged to eat stuffing (beige), turkey (beige), mashed potatoes (light beige…ish) and gravy (beige!) all in one bite? That, to me, was reason enough for a national holiday.
For years, I savored the magical Thursday in November when—disregarding all sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, and basically anything that wasn’t turkey, gravy, potatoes or stuffing—my plate basically looked like everyone else’s. On Thanksgiving, I wasn’t a picky eater, or being difficult, or frantically searching the menu at Trader Vic’s for a grilled cheese. Instead, while everybody else was concerned with being grateful for their families, or cherishing each other and honoring the pilgrims for slaughtering the Indians to make this Amurican land our own, etc, etc, I was busy thanking my lucky stars that I got to eat all this beige food with no judgment or restraint. Conformity tasted better than the choicest morsel of dark meat perfectly proportioned with some garlic mash.
But this year, I looked upon Turkey Day anew. As I admired my large plate loaded with enough food to feed a small Eskimo tribe, I noticed something slightly different from the other years. Last Thursday, my plate had all the requisite beige favorites, but a coup d'état that I didn’t even notice until now had taken over. What piled my plate, but all of my childhood rejects: brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes and mushrooms and water chestnuts and carrots. Who am I? I wondered, as I steadily but surely took down basically all the brussel sprouts in the serving platter. As much as I enjoyed my multi-colored plate, somehow I didn’t feel the pride and liberation I normally feel when I still occasionally (re: everyday) revel in (and brag about) my newfound foodie horizons. Even with the green addition, I didn’t feel any different than I did on any other Thanksgiving. Did I eat any less than I did when I was a disciple of the Beige Diet? Probably not. Did having green on my plate make me proud? Not particularly. And that’s when it hit me.
It really doesn’t matter what you eat on Thanksgiving. Foodie or Beige Dieter or Vegetarian or Gluten-Free, or whatever gastronomic gospel you abide by, the point is not proving your discerning tastes, but first and foremost, heartily indulging yourself. Because that’s what Thanksgiving is: a judgment-free eating day. Portion-wise, carbohydrate-wise, pie-wise, butter-wise—even if your family goes out to a restaurant, or orders pre-made catered food that night—no one is allowed to feel ashamed about how and what they eat. It really is a beautiful thing. There is nothing quite like the solidarity that bonds a family after they eat themselves into a lethargy that induces them to watch twelve straight hours of college football the next day. Now that is something I can be thankful for.
