A plant and a rant

His name is Seymour. He's going to be made into soup, so don't get too attached.

But you want to, don't you? Don't you just want to establish the Seymour Fan Club? Go around wearing buttons with his picture on them? Such is the life of the fall vegetable. So charming, so photogenic. So...delicious.

Big farmer's market day, even though I'd only planned to get a few things. Rode home with a giant juicy bunch of leeks hanging out the top of the bag. Kitwich went leek-crazy. Managed to tear off a green stalk and chased it around the house. I found it on the bedroom rug.

Last fall it was all about the apples. She'd climb right onto the kitchen table for them. Now she doesn't seem to give a hoot about apples. When she was little she used to chew on bits of kale or collard green that had fallen to the floor. I don't know what she's thinking. When she opens her mouth all you see is fangs - she has no teeth for eating these things.

I thought about my own teeth a few moments ago, how there are, in fact, a couple of stray canines there, which suggest a naturally omnivorous diet, but how I seem to only want to eat vegetable matter. The older I get, the less animal products appeal to me.

It came up last night because I was at a party, and the restaurant had nothing I could eat. I managed to cobble together a few side dishes, and the chef sent out a little bowl of mixed beans in a warm vinagrette as a sort of apology for having removed the only vegan item from the menu. But it was awkward, and wildly overpriced, and I thought some about the social prejudice against people who don't eat meat or dairy.

It's not one of those things that's intentional; it's just ingrained, as if there is a Normal way of eating, and it means meat, with side dishes of vegetables (usually cooked in butter). It isn't that way worldwide, of course, and this city is a lot easier to find vegan food in than most other places in the US. But it's weirdly polarized.

For the most part, there are vegan restaurants and there are meat restaurants. The meat restaurants will often have one vegetarian item on the menu, but it's always full of cheese.

I'm not militant in any way about food choices; I can happily dine with my steak-eating girls without batting an eyelash, and I'd never try and tell someone what they should or shouldn't eat. But last night was frustrating. In all honesty, it made me angry. I didn't have any say in where we were going because it wasn't my party, and I did check the menu online beforehand, and I was nervous about the fact that they had only one thing on the menu I could eat. And that's before we even get into the fact that this was an expensive restaurant, and I am scrambling for rent and grocery money, and then the people who chose the place wanted to split the bill evenly, essentially expecting me to help pay for their appetizers and wine and desserts. Ugh.

I was starving, having ridden a fair amount that day and only having had a snack before dinner, and dinner not being until 9pm. Anyway, blah blah blah, complain complain. But I have to say, if I were asking a friend to join me for dinner at a restaurant where no meat was served, I'd warn them of that in advance, and I'd ask how they felt about it. I don't like being thrust into the role of high-maintenance dinner guest, who's being "difficult."

One of the many things I'm worried about, with bicycle touring, is being able to find food in the wilds of upstate. And last night made me realize I'd better make a lot of room in my panniers for peanut butter.