No Meat Week: Days 2 and 3

So I managed to last a day and a half without craving some serious shit. Mostly it's because I've been sitting at home in the comfort of my vegeteria, seeing and smelling nothing but lentil chips and blocks of sharp cheddar cheese all day long. (So thankful I didn't take the "vegan" pledge.)

But it all changed Tuesday when I set out for another jog around the lake, wearing my Spam shirt and the fifteen-year-old sweat pants I've been using since my competitive soccer days in junior high. Right about the time I passed that Terrace Room restaurant, a bewitching smell of carne asada and roasted green onions wafted up. (Not sure why. Do they make Mexican food at the Terrace Room?!) With the regular jogging, my sweat pants had been deteriorating rapidly as of late, reaching the point where the upper thigh section had almost completely worn away, making the area above the knee more like a sweat skirt than a sweat pant.

Some serious chaffing was going down. The blisters and raw underlayer of my skin were so irritated that it actually felt better to run than to walk, which almost worked for approximately one and a half blocks. Anyway, I was sweating and panting and crying, just trying as hard as I possibly could to maintain a half-jog-half-walk, with the smell of beef enveloping me and my thighs metaphorically turning into ground pork.

And at that moment I thought, "I am meat."

And from then on, the serious, almost cannibalistic, cravings began. First it was salami - a thin slice of genoa wrapped around my tongue, a firm hunk of soppressata, a crispy crunch of pepperoni - then pulled pork. Then cheeseburgers, then a pastrami reuben and then shrimp like in gambas al ajillo and then shrimp cocktail and onto shrimp fettuccine. Then the wine drenched ossobuco like they did at NoRTH, then roast beef from the deli and lastly, chicken nuggets.

I think it's because I've been writing this blog, honestly. I'm focusing on it too much. Housten, who's also doing this crap, has been taking it much better than I have. But his one admission was out of frustration yesterday when he simply declared, "This sucks."

So far, I haven't quite lived up to my goal of creating wonderful "transformative" meals. Things and events and life keep popping up and we end up eating vegetarian chili cheese fries, bean enchiladas or shitty pizza. I'm actually worried that I'm going to gain weight. Since I'm forbidding myself the pleasure of meat, I've been more inclined to seek comfort in carbs and fat. It's not even a matter of willpower now, but of selection...

Yesterday, after shoving myself over to San Francisco to see the chef Jacques Pepin speak, I found myself at a hot dog stand with an uncomfortable pang of hunger and a delicate choice. Do I pick the vegan tofu dog or the salt covered pretzel. I'd been eating bread all day and I wanted to try the tofu dog, but to my own surprise, I chose the pretzel.

After a sleepless night and listless daylight hours, I've analyzed and re-enacted this decision enough to understand it. I think I can confidently say that I chose the pretzel out of embarrassment. On the one hand, my psyche sensed that the pretzel vender dude somehow knew me and could pinpoint my hypocrisy, citing proclamations and drunken accusations I've made since the age of 13. But on the other hand, I knew this was bogus and was simply embarrassed anyway.

In America today and even in the Bay Area, is there still a stigma against vegetarianism? Or is it all in my head?

Last night while consuming copious amounts of barley (a good source of protein!), my friend Stella told me about her decision to stop eating meat after leaving small-town Montana where she grew up. Away from the culture of small farms, she felt disillusioned by the lack of intimacy and knowledge of her meat, and rejected the disconnection by going veg for a few years. But when she came back to town, not everyone understood the factors influencing her lifestyle. She brought veggie burgers to a barbecue, and somehow pissed people off so badly that they threw pieces of meat at her.

I'd like to think that myself and other Bay Area liberals are civilized and understand the boundaries of "individual choice" enough to let people make their own decisions. But I don't know. How many times have I felt affronted by someone else's choice to order the bean burrito, the mock duck, the frozen veggie burger... To not eat my pork that I've been roasting all day. To reject the soup because it's made with chicken broth. Have I hurled metaphorical meat at them? More importantly: Were they hurling leeks at me in their mind? Or were we all just hurling, because we just ate three-day old Phillipino curry from a trough in East Oakland, because I'd read they had good something or other but couldn't remember what it was.

Random foodie fun:
Here's a picture of Jacques Pepin from the other side of a window, where I was forced to view him because I didn't arrive early enough. I wonder what he would have thought of this whole episode...