Veggie roadkill

This road trip to my wife's alma mater has driven home the point of having to really mean it to be vegetarian. I didn't really want to carry a cooler around during the trip to keep food in so I was gonna be going wild and crazy from a dietary standpoint.

I do eat fish so if pressed I can always roll through a fast food drive-thru and pretend I'm eating a decent meal. Yes, I know they have salads. Most of them are...well, just not too good. I'm sure they're better than the processed fish thing on a bun but some times you just have to damage your body for the sake of keeping the damn car moving down the highway. Luckily, my wife is pretty understanding about my strange eating habits so we compromise on Subway whenever possible. At least when I order a veggie sandwich they know what to put on it.

Pit stop on the road. Twizzlers are a vegetable, right?

 The most interesting part of this weekend should be the various get togethers, especially the Chili dinner at one of the coaches houses. I don't expect folks to go out of their way to accommodate my veggieness, especially folks I don't know who I'll probably never see again. There was no box to check on the are you coming form for, “my spouse is a veghead”. I've already lost the ability to process animal proteins so I'm not just gonna plunge in hoping for the best (that was not a pleasant experience when I discovered that little tidbit of knowledge). Anyone who's been vegetarian for a while knows what I'm talking about. You find yourself wishing you had more reading material in the bathroom.

The first time I was vegetarian I went to a family gathering at my Grandmother's house. Now, my Grandmother was an old school central Ohio granny who didn't do vegetarian. Salad was what your dinner ate. PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. After a long discussion, actually more of a negotiation, about what exactly I could eat during the visit without having to live in that little bathroom by the backdoor of her house for a day or two, we settled on spaghetti. Now that should be fairly harmless, right? Grandma was known for her delicious meat sauce so that was her go to option. I had to explain to her that no matter how little meat she put in it (“Grandpa will raise a stink if I don't put enough in,” she said)I would still get sick. I finally, convinced her to just make a small pot of plain sauce for me.

I'll never forget coming into the kitchen through the back door and smelling that awesome aroma that only your Grandmother's cooking can generate. I can still flashback to that moment in my mind the smell was so incredible. My aunt gave me a big hug and showed me to the stove when the sauce was bubbling away like some magic pot of goodness. She pointed out my small pot of veggie sauce and the massive cauldron of the “real sauce”. The cauldron had an inch or so of fat from the pork and beef that was simmering away in the depths of the sauce. As I turned away my aunt tasted my pot and said it needed, “something to pep it up”.

The next few seconds were something like the slow motion beginning of an action movie where the hero is helpless to stop his best friend/wife/child/parent from being killed by the bad guy who gets it in the final scenes. As I turned to greet the rest of my extended family I saw my aunt grab a coffee mug and scoop just the fat from the cauldron and pour it into the pot of veggie sauce. “There,” she said, “that should pep it up.” When my anguished cry stopped she asked as innocence as a babe, “What's the matter? I didn't add any of the meat.” So, instead of awesome sauce sans meat it was plain spaghetti with butter and garlic for me.

Let's hope things go a little better for me the next couple of days. At least there's always a Subway nearby in big cities.

Do you have strange eating habits that make travel more interesting?

Are Twizzlers a vegetable?