NEIGHBORS : A True Turkey Day : At one holiday dinner, the gobbler didn’t get gobbled. Appropriately, he was Mr. Thankful.

Ever have one of those holiday dinners where a guest turns out to be a real turkey? Jeannette Scovill of Thousand Oaks knows the feeling.

Last Friday, Scovill invited a bunch of friends to her home for a pre-Thanksgiving vegetarian meal. They included about 30 adults, eight children and one live turkey from Topanga named Mr. Thankful, who mingled with the crowd throughout the evening.

Mr. Thankful should have been. Scovill’s main course was mock turkey logs made of tofu with a seiten (wheat gluten) filling. She also prepared mock potatoes made of millet and turnips, sugar-free cranberry sauce and a pumpkin pie without dairy products.

Scovill, president of the California Vegetarian Assn., has been having turkeys to, but not for, Thanksgiving dinner since 1989.

“The first year, we offered the turkey (not Mr. Thankful) the corn bread stuffing, which of course he liked,” Scovill said. “Then he proceeded to chase me around, knowing that I was the provider of the food.”

While we’re on the subject of food--and what better topic on this day?--the “Holiday Special” issue of “Better Homes and Gardens” includes a section on the best charity cookbooks making the rounds.

One of those featured is the “Only in California” book published in 1989 by the Children’s Home Society of California. And Ventura County’s charitable cooks are well represented: 10 members from the society’s five local auxiliaries have recipes in the book. Copies cost $17.95, and more information is available at 650-9095.

If you can get your hands on one in the coming weeks, you may be able to treat the Christmas dinner guests to some “Pumpkin Bars,” courtesy of Ann Scanlin of Ojai, or maybe to some “Pineapple-Apricot Cheesecake Cookies” from Jo Wilshire of the Santa Paula/Fillmore group.

Final food item: Ventura County Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity Scouts and Explorers collected 52,447 canned food items for local food banks in the recent “Scouting for Food” program. That’s almost 10,000 more than last year.

Back in July, 1990, this section ran a story about the large number of county residents migrating from the area. One of those people was Tom Buford, who moved to Michigan with his wife Lezley and three children.

Yet in the Ventura City Council election early this month, the same Buford was among the winners. So what happened to Michigan?

“After four, five, six months we decided that wasn’t really what we should be doing. We should be back in Ventura,” Buford said. “I had already landed a job. We had a house. But we decided that it was not the right move and the quicker we made the correction the better.”

Buford returned in October of last year and reopened his law practice in January. His wife returned two months later and is now an environmental analyst with the city of Santa Barbara.

County residents seem to be coming home from all directions. Camarillo’s Alan Tratner returned recently from what he labeled “an extraordinary, extraordinary” trip.

Tratner led a delegation of environmentally minded folks on a two-week trip to the Soviet Union. The intent of the group, sponsored by People to People International, was to share knowledge with Soviet citizens.

Tratner was amazed at how bad the pollution situation is over there. “The worst tangible thing we found,” he said, “is that 40% to 60% of their industrial waste is going into the water system.”

Tratner said officials there are anxious to hold a Soviet-American environmental symposium, involving all of the republics. A conference is tentatively scheduled for May, 1992, he said.

“They are all very receptive to renewable energy sources,” Tratner added. “But they lack the money, the technology in place, and the expert training.” In advance of the symposium, Tratner said, he plans to show a series of environmental television programs in the Soviet Union.