A Vegan Thanksgiving With Cory Booker
New Jersey senator is celebrating his first vegan Thanksgiving.
— -- Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., won’t be serving up turkey at his Thanksgiving table. Or Mac and Cheese. Or pumpkin pie.
The vegetarian senator announced on Twitter that he’s committing to a vegan diet until the end of the year.
That means he'll have to find vegan recipes for his Thanksgiving menu and find them fast since Turkey Day (Tofurky Day?) is only two days away.
"For my first vegan Thanksgiving," Sen. Booker said in an Instagram video. "I am now going to transition out of some of my old time favorites. ... I don’t know exactly what it's going to be yet."
Though the 45-year-old politician has been meat-free since before he was Newark mayor, this is the first time he's excluding dairy from his diet and vowing to stick to it. During a question-and-answer session on the site Reddit, Booker admitted going vegan once before, but caving in quickly.
Already three weeks in, the senator, re-elected earlier this month, tweeted that he loves his "vegan experiment" and he's learning a lot. He also has been re-tweeting recipes.
He's even promoting a petition on Change.org to get the Vermont ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s to make a vegan flavor and treating his staff to vegan lunch. The petition for Ben and Jerry's to include non-dairy ice cream options is approaching 10,000 signatures.
For now, Booker joins the ranks of other vegan politicians -- Bill Clinton (though he admits to cheating sometimes), Al Gore, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla.