When I last left off ruminating on Friday, I was on the brink of recalling the challenges of being vegetarian in West Virginia. If any possible reader has seen the show "Food Revolution," that was shot in Huntington, WV which, with all the vertical miles one would have to travel to move between it and Green Bank, is about 4 hours west of my old location. I watched the whole "Food Revolution" series - both because I'm in favor of Jamie Oliver's stance toward overturning our cultural laziness about eating crap instead of food, and because it was shot not all that far from where I used to live, and boy, did watching it bring back memories! I thought the representation of people was not off from what I experienced - good folks, but working with incomplete information and tools, and yet sensitive about being thought of as ignorant hicks.
In Chicago, going meat-free is no big deal (believe it or not; I know it's the land of (ugh) Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, but of course that's not all there is to food out there). In Green Bank, it was more of a challenge. But I think it turned out to be an excellent exercise that taught me a habit that persists to this day of examining and asking about what I consume. I mean, going vegetarian always means to be ingredient-conscious. But living in a land where meat scores higher than fruits and vegetables, and asking for a veggie sandwich gets a quizzical look and two slices of bread with iceberg lettuce and tomato, it was also an interesting experience in vividly willing, every single day, to BE a certain sort of way. It wasn't like running on autopilot, as can happen.
And, I maybe I'm totally imagining it, but I also like to think of the experience as a little exercise in consciousness-raising. I mean, in asking for something vegetarian-style around Green Bank would usually elicit a response of complete bewilderment. I imagine the staff talking behind the scenes: "She doesn't want meat? What else can we put in its place?" And their having absolutely nothing in their imagination to work with: hence the two slices of bread with iceberg lettuce and tomato. What I'd do with that, is have a conversation with the waiter, and ask what other kinds of stuff they had going on back in the kitchen that maybe they wouldn't conceive putting on a sandwich, and ask them to whip that up. I'd like to think I enabled, or at least opened up the possibility of, their thinking more broadly about what "serveable food" can be.
Or maybe not. Maybe they just brushed me off as some out-of-town whack job.
I also remember the ladies in the NRAO cafeteria, who, bless them, did their best to occasionally accommodate what I think appeared to them as a weirdo diet. So I'd be going through the line, and one of the ladies would say, "Hey, Michelle, we made a vegetarian soup just so you could eat it - there ain't no meat in it!" But of course I'd have to ask what they used for the broth, and they'd look at me as though to say "duh!" and report: "chicken broth." And it really pained me to turn it down, because I was (1) hungry, (2) touched by the gesture, and (3) didn't want to come across as a food snob. But as nicely as I'm capable, I'd explain that the question I always had to answer before I ate what they served, was whether an animal had to die to make the food possible. So, I mean, we worked with it; I think they thought I was nice enough that they didn't take me wrongly.
"Did the animal have to die?" was the lowest-common-denominator way of putting it. And that was the right way to go about it in that situation; I hope I never forget one of my favorite memories of standing in line at the cafeteria behind a stream of folks on hamburger day. I heard, over and over, the question "what kinda cheese you want on your burger?" Curious, when I came to my turn at the counter and I grabbed my salad or whatever, I just had to ask, "what kinds of cheese do you have here?" Again the look that said, "duh!" and the response: "we got whait cheese, an' yallow cheese."
At at more elaborated level, to my mind at least it wasn't just the dying part at issue but also the factory-farm misery and suffering factor that matters as well - such that I even considered, ever so briefly, going vegan because eggs and cheese and milk coming from animals that maybe wish they WERE dead.
But I never went there. And when the warmer days returned to Green Bank, the Texan in me started yearning to barbecue, and upon the acquisition of a wee little Weber grill I quickly went the way of big, fat steaks because to settle for grilled eggplant or zucchini or whatever, well, it just wasn't right. Not tastey enough. Thence ended my year-long experiment with vegetarianism. But I think I still maintain a general preference for vegetables over meat. And in my approach toward consuming protein, I do strive to be as sustainably-minded and anti-factory-farming as I can.
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