Life as a Vegetarian

I've been making a slow movement towards vegetarianism for years now, and let me tell you--it doesn't get easier.

My journey began in October, 2001. After reading an article in Consumer Reports about beef I decided that I was no longer going to eat beef anymore. The article wasn't about the mistreatment of animals or anything like that. The article had a title something like, "How Safe is Your Beef?" but in the process of discussing safety issues with beef the article discussed the life of an average beef cow. I don't want to get into the details because I know most people still eat beef; just let me say that much of a beef cow's life is not spent grazing in the grass. So I quit eating beef (A few months later Natalie and Meredith BOTH quit eating animals entirely).

A few months later I quit eating ALL mammals, and that was how it stayed for a number of years. I'd eat chicken or turkey or other poultry, and I'd eat fish (and I guess I'd eat insects and reptiles, too, if the opportunity ever arose) but I wouldn't eat mammals. I always knew that I was sort of sitting in never-never land between being omnivorous and being a vegetarian, but I never had an impetus to push me one way or the other.

And then in February of this year my school district received some recalled beef. My superintendent asked me to write a press release on his behalf and a letter that could be sent home to parents. In the process of doing research for those pieces of writing I read about slaughtering practices in the United States and decided at that point that I was giving up all meat entirely! Except fish. A guy's got to have some protein!

So it's been about four months now, and I have to say this: It sucks.

I am so tired of eating the same things over and over. I don't see how Meredith and Natalie have done it for all these years. We pretty much are limited at home to the following main dishes: 1) Pizza, 2) spaghetti, 3) tortellini, 4) macaroni and cheese, 5) Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 6) Cincinnati chili made with soy meat, 7) traditional chili made with soy meat, 8) enchiladas, 9) tacos with soy meat, 10) bean burritos, 11) taco salad. It doesn't sound terribly monotonous until you look at the list more closely and realize --when you get right down to it--numbers 1-3 are really the same dish, as are 6-7 and 8-11.

We eat a lot of soy. We eat a lot of salad. And I'm really getting tired of it.

Maybe if I liked vegetables being a vegetarian would be easy. But you know what? I don't.

I know any discomfort here is self-inflicted, so your sympathy is probably pretty low. I'm just saying how I feel right now is all. I don't even know what I would want. I don't really even like the taste of meat anymore, either. I'm just craving something different.

I still eat fish, and I order it pretty much whenever we go out to eat. I love grilled fish. But I can't cook it myself. The very first time I ever tried to grill fish I did it perfectly. I grilled salmon I had basted with a sauce I purchased at Kroger, and it was as good--if not better--than anything I'd ever had at a restaurant. But I've never gotten close again. I've tried maybe a dozen times since then, different fish, different ways of cooking, different ingredients. I never get it right. I either overcook the fish until it's this dry, chewy thing, or I serve this undercooked, slimy, nasty dish. I just don't have the touch.

If I ever gave up fish, too, and became a complete vegetarian, I think I'd be miserable.

This all sounds pretty whiny to me. I'm tempted to backspace over the whole thing and start over. But I won't. Instead, I'm going to punch that "Publish Post" button right below this line and then go downstairs and look in the kitchen cabinets and see if there's anything in there besides dried cranberries and pasta. Maybe there'll be a bag of pork rinds in the back. Or some beef jerky.