I concede defeat

I guess I am really not going to be vegetarian this summer after all-- I am going to be a flex- pescatarian. Do you want to hear the trials and travails of my arduous effort to convince my mother that fish are animals?

Here's an example conversation:
MOTHER: Oh, yeah, I told all the girls at work that we're going vegetarian this summer and I asked them for their best fish dishes!
ME: Mommy, you know that if you eat fish, you're not a vegetarian.
MOTHER: What do you mean?????
ME: Fish are animals. If you eat fish, you're not a vegetarian. If you eat fish, you're a pescatarian.
MOTHER: ...........

I respect those who choose to eat only fish just as much as I respect those who eat only eggs or no animal products whatsoever. They are all furthering the greater good of environmentalism and improving the health of Americans at large. Frankly, it would be silly of me to judge those who choose to eat only fish when up until only a week ago, I indiscriminately ate everything I could get my mouth around. But the fact of the matter is, vegetarians do not eat the flesh of any animal, and that includes fish.

But anyway, the point of my story is that I am going to end up eating fish once in a while. And I ate it last night. Story after the jump.

Veggie Burgers

I desperately need to go grocery shopping. It's only been 3 days and I've already veggie burgers for half my meals. Yes, I do prepare them in a manner that makes them delicious as well as nutritious, with dill relish, horseradish mustard, and multigrain bread, but I'm sure that there's something bad going to come out of eating them so often.

Luckily, we have two kinds in the house-- the Boca vegan burgers, which are fake meat patties made out of soy, and the Garden burgers, which are shaped kind of like hamburger patties but are much more obviously not attempting to imitate meat.

I prefer veggie burgers to regular burgers, really. I never ate hamburgers much as it was, but when I did, I put every single condiment on in the house so it was absolutely dripping with mayonnaise and ketchup and all manner of indelicate substances. My manner of dressing the veggie burger is much more subtle, and it takes it well. Long live the veggie burger!

My first official vegetarian meal

On Friday, the very first day, I was busy packing to come home from school and we ate on the road. We stopped at the Westborough Plaza on the Mass Pike; my mother said , "OOH, D'ANGELO'S!" We went in and looked at the menu. There was one item available for vegetarians... and it was disgusting. There was one ingredient that I didn't hate on it. Therein lies the issue: American food is not vegetarian-friendly.

So we went over to the next place, with the friendly yet seemingly-false moniker of "Fresh City". I doubt its freshness. Really, we're at a rest area on the longest highway in America. It's probably not fresh. So I ordered the "burrito grande" which boasted a lot of rice, black beans, gross salsa and not enough cheese. I really am a fan of salsa in its many variations, but this salsa just smelled wrong.

So there's my first meal as an official vegetarian. Rather inauspicious, really.