An Herbivore's Lament

Living in California makes being a vegetarian easy. In fact, vegetarianism is so accepted and expected here, you forget how different your diet is from most of the rest of the country. And since they are never called upon to think about a meatless lifestyle, when you visit, you starve. I once had a long layover in the Houston airport, and if it had been much longer, I wouldn’t have made it home alive. There’s not a single food item in that state not wrapped in, stuffed with, soaked in, or fried with something that used to be alive. At a “Cracker Barrel” in Tennessee, they were at least trying. A tiny section at the bottom of the menu said, “Vegetarian Entree--pick two items,” and listed a number of bean dishes theoretically herbivore-friendly. When the dishes arrived at the table, however, each plate was crowned with a giant hunk of salt pork to top off the veggie vittles. When we brought the attention of our server to the dead pig parts nestled in our beans, she said, “Well, they’re big pieces, just pull ‘em out.” And thus the glaring discrepancy between California and pretty much everywhere else is clearly illustrated. It’s easy to get lulled into dietary denial here. When we read Rita Golden Gelman’s The Biggest Sandwich Ever, it was weird trying to weed through the tuna, lunch meat and hamburger pictures to find something Scarlett could recognize. Then again, it was published in 1980. And not in California.

http://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Sandwich-Ever-Rita-Gelman/dp/059030559X

http://www.ritagoldengelman.com/kids.html

"C" Is Not For Veggie

Having had children in three consecutive decades, I have seen parenting techniques change significantly over the past 20+ years. One of the changes involves attitudes toward physically disciplining kids--basically, to spank or not to spank. When I was young and, to some extent, a young parent, the question was rarely asked because it was considered rhetorical: a misbehaving child needed an attitude adjustment. My dad’s method of corporal “adjustment” was a strategically-placed middle-finger thump on your head that made your body vibrate like a tuning fork. I would rather have been spanked! It seems the view has virtually completely changed now and the main reason cited for not giving kids physical behavior modification is that it teaches violence as a coping method. It makes sense, but I still never walked away from a thump thinking that I could then behave that way, only knowing I wouldn’t be doing whatever I had done to get it again. I reflected on this change the other day when someone told me (inaccurately, it fortunately turns out) that Cookie Monster from Sesame Street is now called Veggie Monster because of healthy eating concerns for kids. I’m a dedicated vegetarian but that made me feel grumpy. So, when I read Scarlett Cookie’s First Book of Numbers published by Bendon Press and part of their new 40th anniversary set, I was very pleased to see that “Monster Cookie” was his old chocolate chip-chomping, crumb-spewing self--and Scarlett didn’t turn into a crazy cookie fiend from the exposure.