Adventures in Vegetarianism

New Years Day marked the first anniversary of my more intensive foray into vegetarianism. It isn't entirely accurate to call me a vegetarian. I play don't-ask-don't-tell with certain foods, especially in restaurants, with regards to ingredients like chicken broth and gelatin, and I eat fish sometimes, when my other options look bleak. I call this my compromise with the rest of the world. I try very hard not to be a judgmental veg*n, not to try to push my vegetable-based agenda, and not to make myself an impossible dinner guest. But despite that, despite my compromises and my sometimes half-assed attempts, it can be awfully difficult to maintain my diet of choice.

The new year felt like the time to come to a new decision about vegetarianism. Truthfully, being a vegetarian isn't necessarily an inherently healthy diet. True, I haven't eaten red meat in, what, two and a half years, maybe? but in a pinch, fries and a Frosty from Wendy's constitutes a vegetarian meal, and it isn't a healthy one by any standards. Meat has to be replaced with something, and while I very much like tofu, I'm not always willing to make the effort to cook it. So I found myself at a crossroads, and I made the decision to try to integrate the occasional chicken and fish back into my diet, to try to make it healthier.

It took about three days for me to decide that the digestive distress I felt every time I ate chicken wasn't just a coincidence, but as I was deciding whether I wanted to try to continue, I came across this article about animal cruelty at a chicken factory, and that, as they say, was the end of that.

Well, sort of. I'm still eating sushi at Uchi with CY tonight, because this is what Dr. Y and I do when she's in town.

This whole process of examination and reexamination of vegetarianism has made me sort of hyperaware of the issue. When I'm by myself, it is neither quick nor convenient to eat a decent healthy meal, and heaven forbid I'm at someone else's mercy for making meals.

This weekend, for instance, we started the massage practicals late, so the company that I contract for ordered us "a variety" of sandwiches through the hotel for lunch, so we wouldn't have to try to find food during our shortened lunch. This, naturally, gave me a forboding sense of dread, so I wasn't altogether surprised when "a variety" translated to "ham or turkey".

It's a bit interesting how vegetarians flock together in such circumstances. One showed me how she bummed bread, peanut butter, and jam from the hotel staff to make pb&j out of desperation for our poor lunch selection. Practical, sure, but a bit demeaning.

This afternoon, I went to deposit some money that C had sent me into her account, and I caught the end of a conversation between bank tellers. One male teller was saying something about a dish that he'd found in a vegetarian cookbook.

"Vegetarians eat tuna?" asked the other teller, a female, and the first one nodded in the affirmative. I kind of snickered aloud, but I have no room to talk when it comes to vegetarians eating fish.

"Well, I prefer to make tacos with beef," answered the female teller (prompting me to wonder what sort of strange bastardized tacos made of tuna that the male teller found in a vegetarian cookbook, but that's neither here nor there).

"I can't make tacos from beef," answered the male teller. "We never use beef in my house -- only turkey."

"Oh, because your girlfriend is a vegetarian, right?" asked the female teller.

I couldn't even snicker at that.