I am not a fussy eater. I mean, yes, I try to stay vegan, which means there are a lot of things (namely, any and all animal-derived products) I don’t eat, but it’s not because I am fussy about eating-- it’s because I have made a choice about not eating those things, and the choice has nothing to do with taste, texture, Germanic childhood memories of tongue sausage with gleaming white chunks of fat floating amidst the blood pudding filler (I’m not making this up), etc. That is why it makes me crazy like a drunken David Hasselhoff whenever I see, for the eleventy-gazillionth time, hostile comments from trolls on vegan/vegetarian sites asking why we think it’s perfectly OK to eat mock meat when we are supposed to be all, like, you know, anti-meat and stuff, and isn’t that totally hypocritical or beside the point or whatever? Dear troll: I do not eschew bacon because I think it tastes bad. Everyone knows that bacon is the crispy nectar of the gods, but unfortunately it also involves the extremely unpleasant life and death of a pig, and that is something I am not willing to condone just so I can have a cracklin’ good breakfast. Your ethical mileage may vary, but stop giving me shit about my own choices, and judging me for enjoying tempeh bacon or seitan chicken--because much like that unfortunate pig, you do not have a leg to stand on.
Anyway, so when I say I am not fussy, I mean that if something’s vegan, I will eat it. No “Eww, not green bell peppers!” or “Mushrooms are gross!” and so on. But this country is trying my patience, despite its large vegetarian population. Allow me to introduce to you the four Indian vegetarian food groups:
Plain yogurt
Mysterious green vegetables swimming in oil and spices
Yellow legumes swimming in oil and spices
White rice
Oh, and flour mixed with water and fried, sometimes also referred to as bread. So, five.
Since I can’t take this anymore, and because our kitchen equipment both sucks and blows (what’s that dark fleck? Oh, part of the “non-stick” coating! I guess I shouldn’t actually stir my stir-fry), my daily food intake for the past few weeks has consisted almost exclusively of some combination of the following:
Apples
Toast
Tofu
Peanut Butter
Bananas
Cereal with almond or soy milk
Vodka
There are two kinds of vodka here, by the way: locally produced versions of bottom shelf name brands (Smirnoff, e.g.), and Out of Your Price Range (a.k.a. Drinkable). Misti and I bought a bottle of local citrus Smirnoff last month and put it in the freezer. You know how vodka gets sludgy but not frozen, because of the alcohol content? Well, Indian vodka freezes. Solid. And to make up for the almost nonexistent alcohol content, it tastes like shit.
OK, I haven’t actually been drinking vodka for dinner, mainly for the reasons noted directly above (because otherwise I’d be totally on it). But it added a little pizzazz to the list, didn’t it?
Home in 8 days.
5 comments:
soy bacon kicks ass. can't wait till you come home. can you PULEASE come to San Diego so we can try out the new vegan zone in PB?
I like how you subtly target both me and Robin in this post.
(Everyone knows that green bell peppers are disgusting, by the way.)
You thought that was subtle?
Okay, I shouldn't admit this, since I eat meat and live in the first world, but your list of what you eat every day pretty much matches mine, if you substitute "granola bars" for "tofu," because even tofu is usually too much work for me.
If I'd been a little more honest it *would* say granola bars instead of tofu. I go through maybe 10 bars a week. In fact, I am eating one RIGHT NOW.
Tofu involves heating something up. I hear ya.
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