Arby'sToday is World Vegetarian Day; a day to celebrate all the brave souls who choose to swap meat for tofu on a daily basis. Which means it's probably a good time for a confession: I have never eaten meat.
Zero, zip, nada, not once.
Now before you write me off as some sort of kale-worshipping witch, let me just start with the disclaimer that this wasn't really my choice. I, like many millennials, was born to card-carrying hippies. Except unlike many millennials, my parents chose to extend their draft-dodging, peace-protesting ways well into their settling-down years and became premiere members of the food cooperative-hemp diapers-no television club.
That meant that among the many things banned in the household of my youth were: Any political candidate that wasn't Ralph Nader, any radio station that wasn't NPR and, yes, meat. Why contribute to our society's over-reliance on the resources needed for livestock production when you can eat fake hot dogs that taste like Styrofoam? Most people will wonder why I didn't just start eating meat myself, but once I got to the age where I started to care about buying or preparing my own food I just figured...meh. If I can make it through my day with one less vice, why not?
Now that's not to imply that being a lifelong vegetarian is all lettuce fun and Boca games. Sure I have, like, fabulously low cholesterol or whatever, but there have been many times over my relatively short life when eating meat-free has been nothing but a real pain in the a--. So much so that I've thought to myself, "Self, godd--nit, why don't you just eat the stupid Big Mac?"
Let me enlighten you.
1. Any tailgate, ever. I love football, but can you really enjoy the game if you can't start things off with a big piece of animal carcass fresh off the grill?
2. Thanksgiving. You can easily make a full (and delicious) meal out of all the sides, but post-holiday leftovers are never very exciting. Every year on the first day back at work I simply watch everyone crafting their turkey sandwiches and mourn my inability to ever experience the Moist-Maker (TM).
3. Every time I went to McDonald's as a child. "Happy Meal"? Try "Disappointment Meal." For some reason every McDonald's employee in the mid-90s failed to grasp the concept of ordering "a burger, but without the patty." I just wanted to collect my Teenie Beanies like every other kid.
4. Every lunch hour from the years 1992 to 2005. Yes, I'm talking about school lunch. Could we get a vegetable every once in a while? Luckily for me my mother was a highly-skilled chef who made me hand-crafted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Every day. For 13 years.
5. Traveling. I've been blessed enough to go all over the world, and I've also been blessed enough to eat plain loaves of bread all over the world. There's nothing like eating a baguette out of your purse in Istanbul's finest kebab shop!
6. Eating in other people's homes for the first time. I'm pretty sure I'm the first vegetarian that my boyfriend's mother has ever met, and trust me when I say that she starts panicking about what to serve me approximately six months in advance of any visit. Being a meat-free person in an all-meat household goes one of two ways: You either don't tell them you're a vegetarian and pretend to like the pork chop via a very strategic process of cutting and rearranging garnish, or they prepare you some sort of god-awful vegetarian-only dish that you pretend to like via a very strategic process of cutting and rearranging garnish. I still have nightmares about a particular mushroom casserole.
7. Anytime Trader Joe's has free samples. For a relatively healthy and organic-leaning grocery store, they sure love to serve up ground beef to its ravenous shoppers.
8. Hangovers. Each Saturday morning when I stumble into my local bagel shop I actually salivate watching the meat-eaters of the world soaking up their alcohol with the world's largest bacon-egg-and-cheese.
9. The time I went to a preschool that had never heard of vegetarianism. Let's just call this childcare selection a misfire on my parent's part, but it culminated in my four-year-old self creating all-art anarchy by refusing to eat a lunch of cubed ham that was being forced on me. Don't think I've forgiven you, Miss Tanya.
10. Brat Fest. My hometown plays host to the world's largest festival dedicated solely to the consumption of bratwurst (yes, that's really a thing). I think you get where this one is going—luckily they do serve beer.