Not to spoil your holiday, but there is a dark side of this day.  Turkeys raised on corporate game farms, hatched and caged in a production oriented environment, trapped in tiny cages, tubes jammed down their throat and force fed a carefully devised diet that fattens them up faster than you can say “gobble, gobble.”  

The cages they’re kept in and spend their entire life in are no bigger than their unnaturally fat white meat breasts because this keeps the meat tender.  Hormones have been eliminated from the diet because consumers now shy away from this additive but who needs hormones when you can force feed and confine? Sitting on your best china serving plate dripping with golden juices, stuffed with a family recipe stuffing and trimmed with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and followed with pumpkin pie, who stops to think of how our supermarkets are able to obtain enough delicious holiday turkeys for a nation of hundreds of millions of drumstick preferring people?

If you do decide to give up the turkey this year you will find you are a part of a growing number of caring intelligent souls that not only show their compassion for this doomed species but find themselves sitting in front of a far healthier meal also. 

There is a wide spectrum of alternative recipes for the main course on Thanksgiving.  In this time of economic struggle this change will also bring a fair savings for your efforts.  That is what I call a win-win situation!

 Passing on the traditional holiday turkey reduces the number of birds hatched and raised in deplorable conditions, most likely being replaced with a healthier main course like a vegetarian substitute and saving money to boot. Wow! Going green can be truly beneficial.

But wait!  There’s more.  

Try recycling and reusing.  Adding these much advocated activities to your green Thanksgiving adds to the environmental cause and also – again! – saves you money.  Big family get together?  Don’t reach for the paper plates and plastic utensils; instead use the tableware to its limits.  Fancy turkey depiction adorned red and brown and orange napkins by each setting?   Take out the cloth napkins instead. 

Most of all don’t go all out in setting the table.  Many families tend to spend days in the kitchen cooking so many different courses that no sane person would try to eat some of each and yet we all do.  The next day stomach aches abound and the left-over side dishes pack the refrigerator.  Leftovers are served for the next week or so and eventually a lot of food finds its way into the garbage – because it was simply too much.  Cut back a little this year; eliminating waste is the first maxim of living green.