I'm thinking of starting a journal. Nothing especially deep. I don't plan on sequestering myself in the corner of a coffee shop with a fountain pen and a profound facial expression. But it's recommended that one keep a log when beginning a new project and, if nothing else, it should at least help to keep my mind off meat.
It's been about 12 days since I swore a few brief oaths between mouthfuls of a final lamb kebab and began the chaste life of a vegetarian. Despite a brief phase-in period (a few cans of tuna and a sausage-flavored marinara sauce were grandfathered into the new arrangement), I haven't stopped feeling hungry since.
I don't think it's a case of malnutrition. I've done my homework and should have all my nutritional bases covered, but a hamburger seems to provide a sense of satisfaction that a meatless pasta just doesn't, even after eating a portion intended for a family of six.
My girlfriend has almost a decade of vegetarianism to her credit and recalls having meat dreams"" in the early years. I don't think I could handle that. If meat tempts me during the day, I can clutch a rosary to my chest or chain smoke. If it assaults my impressionable subconscious while I'm asleep, the police will find me 15 minutes later, standing in my underwear outside of the Burger King drive-through window.
Keeping a daily log could help me focus on positive trends and allow me to spot worrying trends before they become utterly macabre:
April 21: Was standing in line at the co-op with a bag of kale and artichoke hearts. Blacked out. Woke up laying on the floor of an Arby's bathroom. Again.
April 26: Became inexplicably hungry today after hearing a guy on State Street playing ""Blackbird"" on acoustic guitar. Spent afternoon gazing longingly at Crock-Pot. Then at cat. Then Crock-Pot. Then cat.
May 1: Finished reading ""Alive"" today. Didn't see what the big deal was. Make note to return ""Sweeney Todd"" on way home.
In a way, I've eased into this change by eating less and less meat over the past few years, but even in the midst of scores of vegetarian-friendly restaurants, meat has served as a familiar landmark, a friendly face among a crowd of soy- and gluten-based strangers.
When ordering food, over 20 years of experience eating chicken allows me to make a fairly good prediction of what I'm going to get, no matter how imaginatively it's described on a menu.
Only the most experienced vegetarians would be able to say the same for tofu, which, like the Second Coming, is liable to arrive in any form and strike fear into the hearts of the unconverted.
Sometimes it's served raw, cubed and wading in a thin, green sauce. Other times it is carved into flat, triangular chips and fried in nutritional yeast powder, a food additive with all the culinary appeal of dust. Why a product intended to replace meat would be so unlike it in its texture and so rectilinear in its geometry is one of the unanswerable questions of vegetarianism.
Just as perplexing are trips through the health food section of the grocery store. Shelves are stocked with such fringe foods as seaweed and bee pollen, and Paul Newman's grinning visage stares back from every direction. Fortunately, a little exploration turns up some attractive alternatives. Seitan (say'-tahn) is a surprisingly delicious and meat-like substitute, though the name does nothing to curry favor with conservative relatives who already equate the vegetarian diet with
occultism.
Explaining this lifestyle change to these people is a prospect I'll have to face eventually, but in the meantime I suppose it won't hurt all that much if I eat a bratwurst here and there to keep up appearances. On that note, I suppose it's probably also fine for me to eat anything that would just go to waste, so if you're not going to finish that veal chop...
Selling carnivore offset credits? E-mail Matt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
