A Holiday Quandary for Vegetarians : Food: Those who eschew turkey are finding solutions to the Thanksgiving problem of keeping their beliefs and keeping peace with meat-eating family members.

The Callon clan once celebrated Thanksgiving ‘round the lasagna.

Later, they perfected what seemed the ideal Thanksgiving feast to this Palos Verdes Estates family: lentil soup, stuffing, yams, a green vegetable, salad and--of course--the mandatory cranberry sauce.

But with a dozen meat-eating guests coming to Thanksgiving dinner this week, Dale Callon has decided that a concession is in order. After all, her turkey-loving father was talking of forsaking the family’s holiday table for a restaurant.

So now a friend will arrive toting a roast turkey--even though most Callons will abstain, sticking with meat-free dishes.

“For whatever reason,” muses vegetarian Dale Callon, who is both wife and mother to vegetarians, “some people want a turkey on Thanksgiving.”

As the only American holiday featuring a bird as its centerpiece--and a dead bird, at that--Thanksgiving poses some thorny questions of morality and etiquette for those who eschew meat.

Some vegetarians recount painful memories of lingering awkwardly over lumpy mashed potatoes or soggy broccoli as the rest of the family joyously downed drumsticks and giblet-laden gravy. After all, with food and family as Thanksgiving’s key ingredients, vegetarians can feel trapped between dietary beliefs and family solidarity.

But today, in the South Bay and across the United States, many vegetarians are developing new Thanksgiving strategies.

Some have launched meat-free bashes, such as a feast last weekend hosted by the South Bay Vegetarian Singles. The meal featured a mock turkey, made of garbanzo beans and tofu and shaped like a gobbler.

And some families, like the Callons, are forging compromises to allow guests with divergent diets to celebrate in their own way--some with vegetarian dishes, others by bringing their own bird.

Dale Callon, a mathematics teacher, cannot remember the last time she roasted a Thanksgiving turkey. She and her husband, Jim, have been vegetarians for years for nutritional and moral reasons; four of their five children, aged 8 to 23, are following suit.

Together, they learned to celebrate the Fourth of July with chilies and other Mexican dishes in place of hot dogs. And for Passover, Dale Callon serves a matzo-ball soup made with vegetable broth.

But this Thanksgiving, vegetarians and meat-eaters alike will gather around the Callon table. When Dale’s father called earlier this month to worriedly inquire about the holiday menu, she assured him that her friend Doreen would be bringing a turkey.

“Good,” he told her. “That’s how I think it should be. Thanksgiving needs a turkey.”

Most Callons, meanwhile, are planning to share a different main course: a stuffing dish made of bread crumbs sauteed with onion, celery and mushrooms, combined with apples, raisins and walnuts.

Stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce--”That, to me, is Thanksgiving,” Dale Callon says.

The Callons are not alone. As more and more Americans shy away from meat and other animal products, vegetarianism is winning new respect, and not just among hard-line ‘60s holdovers and brown-rice zealots.

The allure of a meat-free diet has been heightened in the ‘90s by a mix of social forces: environmentalism, the animal rights movement and the burgeoning interest in nutrition, especially among aging baby boomers worried about cholesterol-rich foods and heart disease.

“People are realizing that vegetarians have lower risks of various diseases. The medical community is recognizing the benefits,” says Ziona Swigart, spokeswoman at the Baltimore-based Vegetarian Resource Group.

Amid all this talk of meat-free living, the Norman Rockwell-style scene of a hungry family gathering around a steaming bird is for many people, well, politically incorrect.

Some view that bird as a victim of a carnivorous society, raised and nourished simply to be slaughtered. Viewed in that light, Thanksgiving can be downright unpleasant.

“There’s got to be millions of birds that are killed. The last two or three days before Thanksgiving have got to be real murderous,” says Janelle Brown of Redondo Beach, who gave up meat eight years ago and is now South Bay liaison for the Vegetarian Society.

Brown’s ideal Thanksgiving would be “turkey-less, no killing involved. We’re giving thanks, so I think violence should not be part of that.”

So strongly does she feel about a meat-free holiday that she traveled with five friends to Northern California last weekend for a Thanksgiving dinner sponsored by Farm Sanctuary and featuring 30 turkeys--live turkeys--as guests.

Others are planning turkey-free feasts at home, with recipes gleaned from vegetarian cookbooks or magazines. The November issue of Vegetarian Times, for instance, published recipes for “a Native American Thanksgiving,” including Anasazi bean soup, corn pone, winter squash stuffed with wild rice, gingered beets, broiled Jerusalem artichokes and Indian pudding.

“One can either overlook the bird, in the name of civility and family harmony . . . or you can make a perfectly lovely dinner without the bird,” says Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, Vegetarian Times senior editor.

For her first vegetarian Thanksgiving, Lisa Richards of Redondo Beach has settled on a recipe for “Veggie-Key” from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Venice.

Richards went shopping for ingredients last week, bypassing the meat section and heading straight for the grains and produce. A vegetarian for only 10 months, she says she initially felt a slight twinge of apprehension as Thanksgiving approached.

“There was almost this little feeling of ‘What am I going to do without a turkey?’ I got over it very quickly when I began thinking of all the turkeys that die,” Richards said. “When I think about the suffering and violence that all the animals go through just to give us a few minutes of pleasure. . . . Thanksgiving isn’t about turkey, but about giving thanks.”

Now the “Veggie-Key” will be the centerpiece of Richards’ Thanksgiving table, accompanied by sweet potatoes, fresh fruit, home-baked bread, green beans with walnuts, a vegetarian Caesar salad, pumpkin-tofu pie and a bottom-crust apple pie.

The “Veggie-Key” recipe calls for whole-wheat stuffing surrounded by a lentil, rice, and walnut mixture and garbanzo beans. Tofu is sliced thinly, laid atop the loaf, affixed with toothpicks and spread with melted butter. The entire dish then is baked and served with soy-stock gravy and cranberry sauce.

While eating such Thanksgiving Day creations, some vegetarians find comfort in numbers.

About 45 people showed up Nov. 14 for the holiday potluck sponsored by the South Bay Vegetarian Singles. The group formed in 1989 after one vegetarian placed a classified advertisement in the Easy Reader, searching for other vegetarians to dine with; today it boasts a mailing list of several hundred.

With the help of such groups, vegetarians can exchange recipes or even tips on how to maneuver through a meat-eating holiday.

Indeed, a whole new etiquette appears to be springing up around vegetarianism.

Linda Dillon of Hermosa Beach, a founder of Vegetarian Singles, cautions that non-vegetarian hosts should not make the common mistake that vegetarians eat only vegetables. Instead, such hosts might suggest that vegetarian guests bring a dish of their own choosing.

Dillon herself has brought the “Veggie-Key” to non-vegetarian gatherings. “People are always amazed--’Eeecch, tofu’ --but (they find) it tastes very good. . . . I don’t know if it’s won over 100% of the people, but it’s won over a few.”

Vegetarians, in turn, may find that the Thanksgiving table is hardly the ideal spot for sermonizing.

“I personally don’t feel it’s fair to lay a guilt trip on anyone,” Dillon says. “The deed has been done. The turkey is dead. I don’t think it’s fair to go into a long, haranguing discussion.”