when the toaster says "ding!" (and i've suddenly written about being a vegetarian)

This morning I have decided that, if I were not an academic, I would have to be a grill cook. It gives me immense satisfaction to a have a spinach and cheddar omelette slowly cooking on one burner, stewed tomatoes on another, soy patties frying on a third, coffee percolating, and some bread toasting all at the same time and when the toaster says "ding!" the whole meal is ready at once and dished out on heavy blue fiesta ware plates. Mm.

That said, I was thinking, as I was unwrapping the above-mentioned "soy patties" (which are really called "veggie sausage"), about fake meats, especially since Thanksgiving is coming up and, also, because I recently rehearsed the fake meats conversation I have about every year or so with a friend who is not a vegetarian. It's one of those things about which, when i first became a vegetarian (fifteen years ago, now), I was confused. If I have decided not to eat meat, then why would I want seitan-shaped and flavored "ham"? Why the "no-chik" chicken tenders? I don't want to think "Wow -- it tastes *just like* real ham/steak/turkey/duck" when I am eating. The whole point is that I *don't* want to taste any of those things.

You know how it happened, right? I was having really awful, recurring dreams about dead animals. Scary. Violent. Bloody and full of gristle. The nightmares stayed with me during my waking hours, and I realized one evening, while eating cheese steaks with my meat-loving family, that I was really not supposed to be eating animals. I remember trying to just get through the meal, make it through without reacting so I could think about it later. I was not able to do it, and I quietly announced that what we were doing seemed wrong to me and maybe we should talk about it. It felt weird, but correct, and I never looked back. Thankfully, I knew vegetarians and vegans who let me in on the secrets of cooking, protein sources, etc., and who also clued me in to the fascinating politics of meat-consumption, which really helped me see the decision I made (which was not, at first, political as much as it was deeply psychological) with new eyes. (It was harder for some members of my family to understand my vegetarianism than it was for them to understand the gay thing or the literary and cultural critic thing or the anarcho-socialist thing. Although, if you were my therapist, you might point out that they're not all that different.)

For a long, long, long time, I've been enjoying lots of legumes, tofu, nuts, cheeses, etc. And every once in a while, I will eat a veggie burger or garden burger. I don't think of a veggie burger as food that tastes just like a hamburger -- clearly, for anyone who has eaten both, there is a difference. But every once in a while, I get bored. And I want something different. And I pass the weird aisle at the Fiesta where there are boxes and boxes of all different kinds of MorningStar Farms fake meats and I think, "I don't want fake chicken or a no-meat corn dog or a veggie salisbury steak, but hey! What about this fakin' bacon? I could eat that." or "Hm -- I am so tired of my avocado and sprout sandwiches. What if I got these tofu pups? These not-dogs? That might make it so that I am not ravenous an hour after I eat." But I want to stress that, while I enjoy these foods, they don't taste like what they resemble, and I don't relish their flavor because I am wishing that it was really an animal's innards that I am eating. It's more that, after fifteen years of strict vegetarianism in the dead cow capital of the U.S., and being friends with many, many, many "vegetarians" who tell me how guilty they feel because they gorged on parts of a dead bird that was probably raised in its own filth trapped in a cage in a factory farm, I'm going to go ahead and put the soyrizo in my basket and crumble it into my chili.

I know, that sounds mean, but I rarely -- if ever -- sound off about such things. You could come over wearing your fur coat, take me to a French restaurant and order the fois gras and I wouldn't say a word. This is because I don't think that guilt should inform food or clothing choices. That can be really damaging (ask me sometime about an animal rights activist with an eating disorder I knew who had a poster of a vivsectioned monkey on her refrigerator and nothing but bottles of water inside -- true story!). Also, notice I am not a vegan. And I often buy my vegetables from the Randall's grocery store close by (which I do not like) that sells me ginger from China, not locally grown organic stuff from the community. I'm not pure (although I am obsessed with the concept, and wrote many chapters of my dissertation about it), but there are weeks that go by where I realize I have been eating vegan, and being conscious about that is important to me. I would rather not smoke corpoprate cigarettes [or any tobacco, for that matter], but I do that, too -- talk about dangerous and bad for you . . . These are things that, if they are going to change, it's not going to happen because someone has made me feel bad. You see what I'm getting at?

That said, if it's in demand, I'll go ahead and make another tofurkey this year -- from scratch. Since Hank and I have moved in together, I've made a couple of them based on a recipe I got from David E. (true veggie-friend who has a tattooed cow on his back -- ask him if you can see it next time you run into him). It's really easy and a lot of fun, and it makes me smile when it comes out just right.