A Meat and Potatoes Kind of Vegetarian

I’m getting completely spoiled by the Bay Area, all this delicious vegetarian food at practically any restaurant.  I’m starting to expect choices on every menu, entrée selections in addition to appetizers and side dishes.  Spoiled and snooty.  But I wasn’t always this way.

You see, I grew up in Wisconsin, in the Midwest, in the land of beef and beef and more beef – and chees and milk, of course.  Us Midwesterners we’re a meat and potatoes kind of people.  I’m a meat and potatoes kind of vegetarian.

Dinner at my family’s house was always fun and the meals were your standard, balanced meals: meat, a starch and a vegetable.  Daddy’s not much of a pasta or rice fan, so we usually had potatoes and some sort of vegetable.  And that’s what I ate, potatoes and a vegetable, with lots and lots of milk.  And it was fine.

As I got older and Mommy and Daddy started to decide maybe this wasn’t a fad, they began to accommodate my diet.  Mommy got some fake meat once back when fake meat was still an experiment.  - It was years before we tried that again. – She would separate out some Hamburger Helper to make for me without meat or leave the bacon sprinkles out of the Suddenly Salad.  Later, when Daddy started worrying about his health, he’d buy veggie burgers for both of us and even started making some of his signature casseroles separate for me, without meat.

Out in Cali, when people invite me to dinner or we’re going out to eat in a group, if they know I don’t eat meat, they ask a whole bunch of questions about what I’ll eat, what can they make, where can we go.  I tell them not to worry about it, as long as there’s something without meat, I’ll be fine.  “I’m not picky; I just don’t eat meat.”  I grew up making do, and even if I’m getting pickier in my spoiled veggie-controlled community, I can still make do.  After all, I’m a meat and potatoes kind of vegetarian.