Veg for a Week

Last week I accidentally became a vegetarian.

I never realized how easy it was to stop eating meat. I suppose I mostly just eat chicken and turkey, unless I go out to eat in which case I will order steak or pork or some other red meat, because I never cook it for myself. It's just so much easier to cook tofu or chickpeas or fish. Who has the time to marinate and grill a steak?

I recently got a grill pan for that exact purpose. I've used it a few times when entertaining, but it's such a pain in the ass to clean that it's almost not even worth cooking the damn meat.

Vegetarianism/Veganism is so common in San Francisco, that when you're going away on a camping trip or cooking some sort of group meal, "are there any vegans or vegetarians" is quite a common question. And there almost always is at least one, if not five.

The first time I met my ex-boyfriend, before even asking for my name, he said, "So what are you? Vegan? Vegetarian?" My response: "Ummm, I eat meat." The next day when he called me to ask me out to dinner, he asked me the same question. I suppose he was too drunk the previous night to remember my answer. But his reasoning for asking me, apparently he really insulted some girl when he was out on a date with her and was talking about how annoying it is to date someone who doesn't eat meat.

Whenever somebody tells me they're a vegetarian, I ask them if it's for political or nutritional purposes. Almost always the answer is "both." I think it begins with nutritional, and then when they realize how much they desperately miss meat they have to justify their sacrifice by looking into all the political and economic reasons.

I could never fully give up eating meat because I love it too much. But I must say, going veg for a week was pretty nice. I saved a lot of time and energy (and money) cooking only veggies and some fish. And at the end of the week I felt great. But then on Friday night I skipped dinner and drank from 5pm-12am. I got home at 2am and made the best BLT in the world, using turkey bacon of course.