The Vegan Wars

It is the not the first time in my life that I have been "meat" free. For a brief period during my adolescence I flirted with a yogurt, diet soda and cigarette diet that infuriated my (somewhat anorexic herself) mother and found me in the family doctor's office for a stern lecture on lungs and lbs. I vowed to not repeat that mistake and over the years learned to become more covert in my dietary madness.

In college, I became a vegetarian out of necessity. The meals at my fine old Alma mater were stick to your ribs menus of the meat and potato variety geared more toward the 2000 males on campus and less toward we 200 women. They would not install a salad bar (a food phenom of the 70's) until well into my junior year. By then of course, I had discovered that coffee, one cinnamon dough nut and a slice of pizza a day was the way to go. I am not a pepperoni fan and since the only two pizza choices at my school were plain or pepperoni, I found my way back to a non meat eating diet.

By graduate school I had moved to New York City and was soon initiated to the diet that every sophisticated NY twenty something knows: the Diet Coke, Snickers candy bar and handful of wheat thins diet. Now grant you, there is milk in those there Snickers bars but the object then was not predicated on reducing cruelty to animals so much as it was how many articles of size 2 clothing you can fit into those tiny little NYC closets in those little shoebox apartments.

At various times during my adult life, meat became unappealing. My trek through Asia is one case in point. I started out by eating steamed vegetables and white rice, ever fearful of stories about Peking Dog and General Chow's Kitten. I had a dog at home in the US and he was not going to smell puppy on my breath when I returned. After a traveling colleague talked to me about how Asians fertilize their crops I was reduced to the ever nutritious: Chips Ahoy cookies, Snickers candy bar and Diet Coke diet, a variation on my earlier meatless forays into vegetarianism. It was not the healthiest diet and I did gain a few pounds, but my conscience was as clear as my meatless palate. No family pet had crossed these lips.

Some time ago, a well meaning friend sent me a documentary about animal abuse. He knew his target well and was raising funds for a charity dedicated to helping animals in distress. It is well known in most circles in which I travel that if you show Cathy an animal in distress, Cathy will empty her checking account to try to save that animal.

The documentary that I was sent got me right at the start. The first segment was on cruelty to pets and I started sobbing at one minute and twenty seconds into the film. By the time we got to slaughter houses I was blathering and weeping and my pet dog was trying to lick my hand to calm me down.

I have no great fondness for cows and pigs and frankly have not known any one single pig or cow my entire life. I was aghast at the treatment that I saw and suddenly rallied for the poor defenseless animals and decided right then and there I would no longer contribute to what I saw as outright savagery.

I canceled my order for my summer handbag because it was accented in leather and then I promptly gave away all the meat in my fridge and freezer. This was the easy part. Every time I thought about those cows and pigs I felt myself gag and so going veggie was no big deal.

I have not had actual cows milk since I was a child so I checked my soy milk label carefully to be certain no bean udders had been harmed in the making of my milk. I wondered about the eggs a lot, but had turned off the documentary before the poultry section came up as I was too overcome. For now, I thought I would stick with eggs, soy milk, soy cheese and tofu.

Four weeks passed and I was content with my garlic broccoli and white sticky rice take out. I can eat pasta every day and never imperil livestock. I am an outstanding cheese sandwich chef and rather good with peanut butter and jelly and I eat a lot of greens in salads that are smothered with animal cruelty free dressings that called mostly for the demise of olives.

While I was not missing meat in the least, I had to test myself. So one day about a month after I banned animal products I took myself out to lunch to "test" the meat infested platters of dining. I chose to order a meatball parmigiana dish with spaghetti because frankly I really did once like meatballs and I can always go for some spaghetti. The waiter brought me a nice salad doused in my choice of demised olives oils and some vinegar and a basket of bread made from wheat and not any wheat stolen from an animal.

When my lunch arrived the plate looked so delicious that I thought I would revert back to my carnivore state and not look back. I had already toyed with fish and if you live in New England, as I do, it is nearly impossible to get through the summer without indulging on a nice bucket of steamers or boiled lobster with drawn butter.

I moved my plate around in a circle eying the four huge meatballs drenched in tomato sauce and dripping with melted mozzarella cheese. I then, sliced off the tiniest piece of meatball, swirled it in the tomato sauce and covered it with the melted cheese. I bit in and promptly spit out the biggest piece of animal cartilage I have ever seen. I am somewhat prone to exaggeration in some of my stories but here's the thing...this piece was so large I could not get it out of my line of vision even after I piled three meatballs in front of it.

The waiter asked me if he could wrap the leftovers and I said no thank you. He never asked me if something were wrong and I never told him. I will never again dine at that restaurant,even if they do make one very nice spaghetti marinara.

My clients are amused no end by my various quirks and this vegan war is perhaps by far their best entertainment. I work with very poor people who like to prepare food for me and bring it as a thank you gift when they visit my office. So one day a few weeks back, a long term client of mine, who happens to be an expert grill chef during his summers, informed me that he was grilling up a pork shoulder. He let me know he would be by the next day to drop off a few plates for me.

I refused of course and ever so politely informed him that I was off meat, back on veggies and had no intention of eating meat again. He looked at me incredulously and thought for just a moment about what I had said. Then he sighed and then suddenly his eyes brightened and he asked me "What about turkey Cathy"?

Check back with me in November on this, okay?