The Curse of Middle America

   Most of the time, I have very few complaints about being a vegetarian in small-town America. I'm not picky about what I eat, and I have no problem eating the same thing 4 days in a row. The only thing I ever have a problem with is my limited choice in quality shoes and handbags. And even then, I can find enough stuff to keep me satisfied. But today, I just got fed up. My family was deciding where to go for dinner, and made a specific point of asking me. Naturally, I wouldn't have minded staying home and making my own food, but my family being "traditional" we had to eat together. So of course we had to go to one of the mediocre family-style restaurants in town, the kind of place that thinks mashed taters, fried chicken, and a tiny bit of corn constitute a well-balanced meal. And, as usual, I managed to scrape together a decent meal from the scant offerings, but I'm getting tired. I can't live forever on mashed potatoes and wilting salad bars! Every time I eat out, I can't help but remember the offerings at Brown University's cafeteria... curry, tofu scramble, "chicken" nuggets... my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
   Aside from delicious vegan food, it's not that hard to make food about a million times more veggie-friendly. Vegetable soup should be made with vegetables. Only vegetables. Mac-and-cheese shouldn't have bacon in it. Double goes for green beans. And you know what? Take the goddamn marshmallows off the goddamn sweet potatoes!! I like sweet potatoes. I want to eat sweet potatoes. Can someone make that possible, pleeeaaase???

See? (Okay, not Brown's cafeteria food... but doesn't it look amazing?!)

And this? I think I'd rather leave it to the buzzards, thank you very much.

A few images from The Land Before Time came up when I searched "anti-meat". I like The Land Before Time. My friends and I once got up at 8:00 AM, crawled over to the nearest TV, popped in The Land Before Time, and watched the movie in it's entirety before we said a single word to each other. It was an interesting experience. Reflecting, it kind of feels like something a hipster would make up on the spot to impress his pseudo-intellectual friends. But, ah, well. Everyone has a hipster moment. We just must learn from our experience and move on.