Confession: I'm a Vegetarian Who Loves Turkey

Thanksgiving used to be about things like peace, Pilgrims, and Native Americans. Somewhere in recent history, it became a holiday devoted to hating on turkey.

This time every year, bloggers come out of the woodwork to stir up a stale debate. Turkey tastes bad, they write. There's a reason it's only eaten on Thanksgiving. It's inferior to chicken. The late Joshua Ozersky once said brashly of Thanksgiving turkey:

"It's as if we invited an angry, abusive midget to our home to call out everyone's secret sins and then defecate on the carpet, and then invited him back the next year."

I, for, one am a turkey defender, and it feels like a lonely club to be in. Even Google couldn't help me. While conducting research for this article, I learned that the reasons people love turkey are as follows:

1) It's not quite Europe, yet not quite Asia.
2) Istanbul is beautiful.

So let me go out on a limb and say that Thanksgiving will be one of the hardest meals of the year for me, because I'm a vegetarian and I love turkey. In fact, I stopped eating meat seven years ago this week, with the thought that if I could resist a Thanksgiving turkey I could make it as a vegetarian.

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There are a number of reasons why I think turkey is the king of fowl (I never really liked chicken, which I consider to be turkey's bland cousin). For one, its meat has an intense flavor; the legs and thighs, if cooked in the right way, can be juicy, salty, and fatty like a tonkotsu broth. The skin, depending on technique, can be crispy or melt-in-your-mouth buttery.

Second, turkey isn't an everyday bird, and that's part of what makes it special. According to the National Turkey Federation (yes, America has a turkey lobby), nearly one-fourth of the 200 million turkeys we eat every year are consumed on Thanksgiving. Christmas and Easter together account for another 20 percent.

Growing up in a Jewish household, turkey was a once-a-year event. The entire holiday basically revolved around the bird. My father, who doesn't typically spend a great deal of time cooking, would start Thanksgiving one or two days before everyone else, cleaning out an ancient cooler and preparing it with salt, spices, and other special ingredients to serve as a brine bath. Some years when we had 20 or more guests, he would prepare two turkeys in different ways. And then of course there's the performance of cutting the turkey (how many meals today involve such a build-up?).

This is all to say that turkey on Thanksgiving is an unusually anticipated meal. It's also a weird meal: For most people, it's the only time that cranberry sauce and stuffing is on the menu. At my house, it's the only time my mom will pick apart her favorite food—turkey neck—and share pieces of it with our odd cat (my family is full of turkey lovers).

So while this will be another Thanksgiving without turkey on my plate, I can say without a doubt that it's the one meal I miss the most. Let's end the turkey hate.

Do you love turkey or do you hate it? Share your feelings in the comments.