I spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws in Louisiana.  I love my in-laws, we get along great.  But, this trip was especially challenging.  Not because of the fighting, the hair pulling, or the screaming....oops...I did say that we get along, now didn't I?  Seriously though, the fighting was between me and my jeans.  The stubborn things didn't want to button.  That's enough to make anybody pull their hair out, and the screaming?  Well...let's just say that I had a thing or two to scream about once I realized that the jeans I was fighting with, won.

But it wasn't my fault!  I blame it on the dietary habits of the southern states.  There is absolutely nothing healthy to eat in the entire state of Louisiana.  That's right.  I said it.  NOTHING.  NADA!  They've even found a way to make green beans unhealthy (not kidding).

I'm a pescetarian which, for those of you who don't know, is a vegetarian who cheats.  But, only with fish.  The last time I checked, turkey was not a fish.  With all the food we'd ordered--and yes, we ordered instead of cooked (I'll get to that in a minute)--there would be plenty of side dishes, and there were, just none that I wanted to eat.  I can tell you why in three short words.  Deep Fat Fried.   That's what they did to those poor green beans by the way.  Pretty much everything we'd ordered, no matter how healthy it sounded on the menu, turned out to be bad for you.  Without the pretty much.  What wasn't deep fat fried was covered in ham or bacon, or both.  Forget about the cranberry sauce, the meal should have come with a side of defibrillator and a complimentary trip to the cardiologist.

Everyone else shrugged their shoulders and dug in.  You might be thinking that if I'm the one with all the dietary restrictions, I should have cooked the meal myself, right?  Well, I would have, but my mother-in-law's kitchen is far too, what's the phrase I'm looking for?  Stuck in the 1970s.  Maybe even the late 60's?  At any rate, the oven, while cute in a retro kind of way, doesn't work.  My in-laws are planning to replace it one of these days.  But until then, they've been making do with a toaster oven, a microwave, and an electric cook top.  That's how we heated up all that ordered in food that I couldn't/wouldn't eat. This turned out to be quite labor intensive, because in spite of the fact that we weren't cooking anything, we were still dirtying up every dish and pan we could find.  And here I'd thought that by ordering in nobody would have to do dishes.  And by nobody, I mean me.  It's all about me, but to be fair, this is my blog.  In other words, get used to it!

I didn't want to eat turkey, but I also didn't want to eat vegetables covered in ham, or grease.  So, I did what any other rational pescetarian fried food avoider would do.  I ate pie for dinner.  Actually, I ate it for an appetizer, an entree, a side dish, and dessert.  I know, I know.  It's probably not healthy to eat so much pie.  But it was pumpkin pie, and it was Thanksgiving.  I am a traditionalist what can I say?