The first of many about food, I do believe

In a fabulous merger of childhood desire and adult responsibility, Vons, as part of their organic line, now carries 100% juice, no sugar added, organic silver pouches that are impossible to poke through with a straw. That’s right, Capri Sun for grown-ups, and I couldn’t be happier.

I love food. I have no idea where I got that, as I have two of the pickiest parents in the world. I recall a lot of those Birdseye frozen vegetable squares from childhood (carrots, green beans and corn, oh my), along with Shake-n-bake, Campbell’s soup, and cucumbers covered in that gelatinous Wishbone Italian dressing (do you think Italy is aware we’ve sullied its good culinary name with this crap?). Usually my mom packed our lunches, including a Hi-C juice box that was never thawed by lunch, soup or sandwich, a fruit roll-up or a baggie of chocolate chips and raisins, and a quarter taped to the inside lid of my lunch box for an ice cream (the pink and white kitty litter-looking one). We were allowed to buy lunch on days it was something we liked, which was maybe twice a month. The divorce years, starting at age 9ish, through a combination of parental guilt and neglect, involved a whole lot more junk food. In other words, I had an unremarkable childhood, food-wise.

Just after my 14^th birthday I became a vegetarian. As of my past birthday I’ve been a vegetarian for more years than I haven’t (ok, well, I guess as of my 28 ½ birthday, but since I’m not 7, I don’t hold up halves of fingers when asked how many I am). Why? For the same reason you do anything else at 14; because all your friends are doing it. I went to an alternative school; all my friends, elders and teachers were hippies. It started as an animal rights/peer pressure thing, and has evolved from there. I kind of hate it when people ask me why I’m a vegetarian. Usually I say “’cause all my friends were doing it”, we laugh, and I change the subject. There are those who ask because they’re genuinely curious, and there are those who ask because they want to pick a fight. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t preach or guilt trip, I don’t insist we eat at vegetarian restaurants, I don’t moo when you take a bite of your burger, I’ll buy meat at a store if you ask me to, I’ll flip burgers while tending the grill, just not with the same spatula. So why you gotta hate?

Woo, this blog took a different route than I expected. I think I touched on exactly one of the maybe 5 bullet points I had emailed myself as a reminder (which was Capri Sun, bee tee double-you), which I guess means I’ll be blogging about food a lot. So why am I a vegetarian? At this point I have nothing to lose. I haven’t had meat in 15 years; I honestly don’t remember what it tastes like. The smell of bacon or chicken wings still makes me salivate, but their Morningstar counterparts, to me, are meat. I’ve weighed the same since probably at 18, and while I’m lucky to crave salad-oriented foods anyway (Hi Brooke!), I don’t feel like I need to deny myself the bad food I do sometimes want. It requires a lot fewer acres and resources to feed a vegetarian than to feed an omnivore, and produces a lot less waste (poop!). I couldn’t kill an animal myself, so maybe I shouldn’t ask others to for me (dear farmers and hunters, eat all the meat you want). I would love to be more connected to my food than I am. I buy organic and/or local when it’s convenient and cheap (do we all work for non-profits? You can relate.) but I rarely go out of my way to. In a society where we’re all meant to feel guilty about every calorie we eat, I feel like I’ve got a pretty good relationship with food. I’d totally split a Best Friends heart-shaped necklace with it.

Wow, finishing a blog is nice. I wish I smoked so I could have a post-blog cigarette.

-Melissa