"Hilarious, but I don't eat anything with parents"
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
At a recent wedding of a college friend, I was astounded to learn how many of my former UCLA classmates had taken the plunge into vegetarianism. They excitedly discussed their reasons for changing, their new healthy lifestyles and their trendy new meal plans. Were these really the classmates I shared chili cheeseburgers with at two in the morning in college? The reasons varied somewhat, but most of my peers were in it for health reasons - part of a broader plan to work out more, eat healthier and drink less.
I am a carniverous lady and I require a meat product everyday at lunch to get me through the day. In high school, while running cross-country, I learned and maintained the belief that the iron gained from eating red meat once a week was essential to maintain an active lifestyle. I learned that meat provides all 20 essential amino acids required by humans which few non-meat food items provide in totality (but which can still be obtained through conscious intake of grains and legumes). I have heard of several turned vegetarians who quickly go back to meat after losing too much weight and energy. I also know being a vegetarian does not automatically equate to greater health: the actual food eaten and ensuring proper intake of all the essential nutrients and vitamins are much more important than the veg/non-veg labels chosen.
Certain vegetarian things are not intuitive to me. I can't wrap my head around how a vegan brownie - in which eggs are replaced with oil and milk is replaced with more sugar, is actually healthier for you than a regular brownie with all of the typical ingredients included. The recent listeria cantaloupe outbreak proves that fruits and vegetables can also pose risks we can't always control. During the week of September 26th, I was better off eating a dirty-water hot dog in the mission than a cantaloupe from a Colorado Safeway.
I am not claiming to say one way or another is the right thing to do, both morally or health-wise, as I know that how we choose to define what we eat is an incredibly personal decision. I know that vast health benefits exist from being vegetarian which I've insolently disregarded. My immediate family always ate meat, but I learned at a very early age, to be sensitive to the vegetarianism in my extended network of family and family friends, which represented cultural and religious ideals. My grandfather knew we ate meat, but we were never to mention it and my peers rebelled against their parents by sneaking hamburgers into their diet whenever they could. I developed an unspoken courtesy with Indian friends and coworkers to always check when eating a meal about their dietary restrictions (which is slowly turning into check with Everyone regarding their dietary restrictions).
Then there is Natalie Portman, who is a 20 year vegan for moral reasons. Few people I know seem to talk openly about moral vegetarian or vegan convictions, maybe for fear of being made fun of? (Don't carrots feel pain when dug up too?). Maybe from knowing that they can't turn ravenous, carniverous, predatory crowds into grass-loving herbivores?
And then there is David Foster Wallace, who has the ability to evoke deep thoughts from our subconscious that we didn't know we had, where they linger on the surface, causing us to reassess the beliefs we've held for 27 years. I recently read his essay "Consider the Lobster", and walked away with this:
"....the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing.
"Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.
"Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?"
There's really no way to argue with all that. As I'm beginning to realize that I will soon be attending/hosting dinner parties where half the group is vegetarian and my future children may one day scoff at grilled chicken breasts and medium-rare steaks, here is my recipe for vegan tofu enchiladas with vegan sour cream on top, which I made last weekend:
Ingredients:
Corn Tortillas
Enchilada Sauce (I like the Trader Joe's brand)
Tofu
Chili Powder
Lemon
A variety of vegetables (I used onion, bell pepper, spinach, corn, tomatoes and roasted green chilies)
Dice the tofu and vegetables and saute in a hot skillet until cooked through. Season with lemon juice and chili powder throughout.
To make the enchiladas, first spread enchilada sauce along the bottom of a large baking pan. Soften the tortillas by heating in a microwave or over the stove. With each tortilla: spread with enchilada sauce, spoon in the tofu mixture and top with vegan sour cream (recipe below).
Roll up each tortilla and place in the baking pan. Cover with the remaining enchilada sauce and dollops of sour cream. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
Vegan Sour Cream (Paul McCartney's recipe)
1/2 lb tofu
3 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon maple syrup
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt to taste
Combine in a blender or food processor until smooth.
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