lunch items

Incidentally, the lunch items were interesting today:

*a hollowed-out cantaloupe with a bit of port poured in

*mixed potatoes and vegetables

The latter item is amusing only because the first time I had lunch at Latour’s, I was in the embarrassing position of having to decline the potatoes, which he had cooked together with rabbit for himself. Sometimes, non-vegetarians just don’t get vegetarians and our hangups…

Actually, for those few who have been solo vegetarians since early childhood as I have (age 7, years before anyone else in my family, let alone outside the family) life feels from early on like a social minefield. Every time you get invited somewhere for dinner, you have to worry about a faux pas of some sort, or about coming off as ridiculously finicky. There was one birthday party at about age 9 when my friend David’s father tore into me because I refused to eat from a pizza that was half pepperoni. He didn’t understand why I wouldn’t eat the non-pepperoni pieces. Not a nice thing to do to a 9-year-old kid who’s trying to enjoy a birthday party. He then ordered me a pizza just for myself and made me eat it, after a few choice sarcastic remarks about how special I was. (And this guy was a university professor of mathematics, not some redneck.) Utterly mortifying, though he was always sort of like that. But the 1970’s were still not very vegetarian-friendly, and so I probably came off as a legitimate weirdo.

But perhaps even worse is when people overcorrect for your vegetarianism and prepare some incredibly ornate dish with hyper-exotic vegetables. I’d rather just have some low-profile rice or potatoes or something, though I appreciate the effort. Dinners ought to be an easier part of life than that, and I’m sure this long history has left some sort of permanent mark of apprehension on my character.