Evening Plans

Tomorrow evening, some good friends are coming over for dinner. Then we are going to go see A Comedy of Errors being performed by the Flatwater Shakespeare Company. Tonight, I am going to pedal down to Open Harvest, our local food cooperative. I am cooking dinner. In the absence of meat, I hope cheese tortellini, spinach salad, tomato bruchette, and lemon cake will satisfy this group of carnivores. My friends have accepted my conversion to vegetarianism with good grace, but don't seem at all inclined to follow.

I often say I am a 'nominal' vegetarian. The truth is I am a vegetarian raised by a family with a long history of cattle ranching. I like meat. I love a good steak. I accept my omnivorous biology. I simply don't like killing. I also don't like the ecologic impact of modern cattle ranching in which acres of grain are used to fatten cattle in feedlots (where disease spreads more easily and necessitates the use of broad spectrum antibiotics) instead of being used to feed hungry people.

I am also an opportunist. When my grandmother (who says the word 'vegetarian' like it is a curse) makes pot roast, I eat pot roast. When we go to a steakhouse where even the salads include chicken, I eat chicken. However, I don't buy meat at the grocery store and I don't order it in restaurants where any feasible alternative exists. Despite this I usually end up eating meat about three of four times a month.

I never said I was a good vegetarian.