Books I Almost Couldn't Finish: Death Comes to Pemberley (but not fast enough)

I'm not a fan of Jane Austen. Archaic courtship rituals and Regency attire just don't butter my skillet, and aside from Northanger Abbey (a delightful send-up of Gothic novels), I haven't enjoyed any of her work. Frankly, I read P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley solely because homicide and Jane Austen seemed like a damn good combination.
Wandering Coyote has already written an excellent review of this book, so I'll restrict myself to the main beef I had with this "mystery" novel. Yes, the characters are about as interesting as lettuce, and the pace is sluggish, and you have to suffer through a rehash of Pride and Prejudice.  But the real problem is this...

The key questions:

Who slaughtered a man in the forest near Pemberley? How did they do it? And why?

The questions that are actually asked:

Whatever will the neighbours think?
Are there enough savoury tarts to satisfy Sir So-and-so and Viscount Such-and-such?
Shall we take the the coach, the carriage, the barouche, or perhaps a hackney chaise?

"What do you eat on Thanksgiving?"

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian peeps!

Needless to say, there won't be any turkey or bacon 'round here. So, what do vegetarians eat on holidays?
Well, the ever-popular Tofurkey kit seems like an obvious choice, but we tried that a few Christmases ago and found it about as tough and tasty as charbroiled boot leather. Werner Herzog has nothing on us.

Luckily, we live close to Chinatown, where wacky Buddhist foodstuffs are plentiful. For the past five years, we've been enjoying seitan chicken that even (sorta) looks like chicken. Or like the Play-Doh version of chicken. Don't let the goofy appearance fool you, though - this stuff tastes like tender, white-meat chicken!

A year or two ago, my fave Chinese grocery stopped carrying seitan chicken. Since then, we've been eating a soy-based "chicken ham" product every holiday. Its pasty, tubular appearance wasn't too promising, but I was relieved to find it tastes almost exactly like the chicken-shaped stuff. As for why it's called "chicken ham" or "ham chicken", I still don't know. My brother once pointed out, "That's way too many animals for something that has no animals in it."

This is today's "chicken ham", nicely defrosted and waiting to be cooked for about 45 minutes. That's one lovely thing about being veg: Holiday dinners are not day-long ordeals involving arcane equipment, gigantic knives and rubber gloves.

"I'm not a ham, I'm a chicken ham!"

Side dishes will be old-school: My own traditional stovetop stuffing made with veggie broth, mashed taters, wild mushroom gravy, scalloped corn, and mixed greens.