Nine years ago, my friend Jennifer, a hard-core vegan and then-co-worker at the North County Times, sent out an in-house e-mail challenging her colleagues to lay off the bird on Thanksgiving.

Judging from people's reactions, you would have thought she burned a flag or personally crucified Christ.

One guy responded with a graphic description of ways he planned to torture the turkey before eventually strangling, eating then rudely digesting it.

It's a tough time of year to be a vegetarian, especially an outspoken one.

My wife, Worm, and I would know, as 15-year vegetarians. OK, I can't technically call myself a vegetarian since, over the years, I've made three or four exceptions for chicken or turkey, usually while visiting friends' parents who have cooked a special meal. No red meat or pig, though. Beef and pork definitely aren't what's for dinner.

It's strange how some people, once they learn that I don't plan to indulge in the ceremonial bird or accompanying meats on Thanksgiving, go on the defensive.

"Do you own any leather products?" a critic will triumphantly sneer, as if the rawhide handle on our 40-year-old chest negates any possible benefits of a vegetarian or low-meat diet.

Or my Bible-toting friends will explain how "the Lord gave us dominion over the animals" and how it "matters not what goes into a man's mouth but what comes out of it"; science friends will argue that our incisors, ideal for slicing a chunk of meat, and molars, perfect for grinding it, make us natural carnivores; and comedian friends will tell me that "if God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat" and that a turkey is just a "fast-moving plant." I've even had a burger-cradling 280-pound oaf, with mystery sauce dripping from his mouth just like in those revolting commercials, taunt me: "Sure you don't want some?"

In fact, people - with their accusatory "Why?"s - practically beg me to condemn their meat-eater lifestyles.

And in my early vegetarian days, when idealism still burned hot and wild, I was more than happy to oblige, repeating to them exactly what my earnest hippie friends had told me about huge U.S. corporations wiping out forests in Third World countries to graze cattle just so we can have Big Macs, Whoppers and other meaty treats. About how developing nations' staple crops are exported to the U.S. as livestock feed, while the local poor go hungry. About factory farms where animals spend their entire miserable lives crammed together in disease-prone cells where they are loaded up with hormones. About how, with all of the hormones passed on to kids, there may be merit to granny's claim that "girls grow up so fast these days." About how a handful of huge corporations are pushing family farms out of business and forcing the small farmer or rancher into the role of sharecropper. About how Conagra couldn't have been what "the Lord" had in mind and how there's no way Jesus would be eating Big Macs. About how Americans are fattening themselves to death on fast food. And on and on.

At the end of one of these rants, my grandpa, still baffled why anyone would turn down a good hunk of meat, had a simple question: "Bouillon?"

Right up to his death, Grandpa - who, admittedly, lived a long and healthy life - was basically terrified of any foods other than meat and potatoes.

He is just one of many people I've encountered, including a disproportionate number of diehard sports fans, who've bought into the steak-or-salad dichotomy.

When we embraced vegetarianism, it literally opened up a whole new world of cuisine. We "discovered" Indian and Thai foods, with their myriad curries and spicy vegetable dishes; a million ways to make pasta; portobellos as a substitute for meat; delicious ways to cook tofu; etc.

Despite all of my defenses of vegetarianism, however, I never converted a single soul. So I eventually slunk down off my soapbox (the soap was not tested on animals, by the way), and, these days, I always refuse the temptation to quote from the book "Fast Food Nation" at the dinner table. Holiday meals have gotten a lot easier since I shut the heck up.

In fact, Worm and I have both become so lax that we just purchased a free-range turkey, which we plan to eat. We didn't want to deprive our 19-month-old son of his chance to become a true God-fearing American meat eater. Now if we can only figure out what to do with this dead bird (do we treat it like tofu?) and what to tell our betrayed vegetarian friends, who will soon be all over us with accusatory "Why?"s.

Jennifer's going to strangle me.

- If you know how to prepare a turkey, e-mail scott.reeder@yahoo.com.