Monday, 18th of December 2006 at 04:31:00 PM
… and it’s time to leave the house.
Roughly 18 years ago, give or take a week, was when it started, though I had been dabbling in it for some time before that. I started experimenting with it in High School because this girl I was dating was doing it and I thought it was cool. During college I did it on and off because it kept me from having to eat in the cafeteria. “It” is being vegetarian, of course.
After a couple of years at a college in the middle of the desert, I gave up fish because every fish I had known up until that point was either a fish stick or USDA grade Tainted. Later on I stopped eating beef, and especially hamburger, after a stint working as the fry chef at a local burger shack. As my college career came to a close, I was still eating chicken because, as I tell it, I had something personal against chickens and didn’t mind eating them. After I left my college town and headed west and north, I stopped eating all meaty treats, and at that point you could say my vegetarianism was born.
Along the way I’ve been various degrees of vegetarian: militant, moderate, snide, dismissive, aggressive, vegan, sugar-free, low-sodium, no-sodium, low fat, high fat, high sugar, organic, inorganic, amenable, passive, philosophical, ascetic, and aesthetic and my cholesterol is still in the red zone. I’ve knowingly and willingly eaten meat since then on three occasions: 1) chicken soup base at the Art Institute of Seattle’s Culinary Arts experimental dinner, 2) beef chunks while on a trip to New Mexico at the Owl Bar whilst having their chili cheese fries, and 3) pork soup in the wilds of northern Thailand after having rafted down a river, and fallen in and been attacked by leeches.
So, after 18 years it’s finally grown up and ready to leave the house. And leave it did, in front of a witness and everything, as I tucked into a chicken breast that my lovely wife Jill had prepared on the day after her birthday. I had tried to go out to dinner with her to order something and surprise her there, but forces conspired to keep that from happening so she was convinced that I wasn’t going to “get” her anything for her birthday. So I had to do it at home.
Shortly after, though, we went out for lots of meaty treats. Roast Duck at Brasa, Rabbit at Cafe Juanita, Metropolitan Grill for beeves, Yak at the Stonefest, and on, and on. My cholesterol remains unchanged.
