The Seven Day Vegetarian

    Just the other day, yet another celebrity announced the opening of their high end vegan restaurant. For many people this conjures  an image of a large, fancy plate decorated with artsy swirls of soy paste sauce, centered  with a tiny mound of alfalfa sprouts and organic carrot shavings.  The presentation is completed with a bill for $45 handed over by a  skeletal, pasty-faced waiter who hasn't cracked a smile since he last peeked beneath a sesame seed bun.

    It can be a hard sell for many.

    I've mentioned the carnivorous Kev before: a guy whose idea of a vegetable is meat that has turned green and who can't look at a cow without  imagining it between two slices of bread  or a fork in it.  He is one of the great cadre of meat eaters joining  Henry VIII, Attila the Hun and Fred Flintstone in the Meat Eater Hall of Fame. Vegetables have their place...usually in the home of someone else.

    Recently PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) announced an Eat Vegetarian for a Week campaign.   Kev got excited.   I got suspicious.   Kev has little patience for "bleeding heart greenies whinging about animal issues they don't deal with", so why get stirred up?  PETA aside, he saw this as a challenge.  Could he survive a week without meat--of any color?  Eventually assured of his commitment to the concept, we started planning.  First step: eat all the meat currently in the fridge.

   O.K. now we're ready to start.    This requires careful menu planning for meals without meat or fish --he considers eating fish to be 'cheating' by those claiming to be vegetarians.  Pasta, eggplant, bulgur wheat fill out his meatless imagination and cooking ability.  It will be up to me to manage the rest.  It is  imperative that there be leftovers so he has something to take for lunch. Twenty-one meals and counting.  

    Truth is, Kev fared pretty well.  One day I roasted  a whole bunch of root vegetables plus a squash and called it supper. He completely filled up the empty space in his gut and fled the table to distract himself from the missing main entree. Weekends-where breakfast is bacon & eggs- were particularly difficult.  Surprisingly, for a guy who goes through a loaf of bread about every three days, he ate very little bread. No particular reason, maybe just totally tapping into his inner ascetic.  He insists that he never cheated. Not even once.

meatlover's breakfast

    So, what is the upshot of the grand experiment? No grand revelations.  "What's the point?" he asked.  No real protein means no real energy.  "Now I know why (a co-worker) walks in slow-mo all  the time." he said with a dismissive wave of a hand.  The other hand was busy frying up three different kinds of meat for his first post experiment meal.  Not a vegetable in sight.

    

The Aussie Dagwood

    You might ask, does Kev eat any vegetables? Yes, but only couched in the right circumstance.  Like in an Aussie-style hamburger which must include slices of beets and a fried egg. [Actually, a fried egg on anything makes it "Aussie-style".] He'll also slip in a slice of tomato and onion.  Looks more like a Dagwood to me.  Looks like one happy eater.   Bon Apetit!