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Gormless

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Vegetarianism: The grass is as flesh, some folks say**

I'm committed to the idea of vegetarianism. Diets high in roughage and beta carotene help prevent common cancers; horticulture is a cost effective way to sustain the burgeoning human population of old planet Earth; and besides, my significant other won't sleep in the same room with me when she detects meat on my breath. Although she's a successful, professional vegetarian, I have to report that my commitment remains fairly theoretical--a firm commitment to the idea, as I said. I've found I can live without veal, but ply me with a nice coq au vin and you can play me like a violin, especially if you set aside an extra glass of burgundy.

But I keep trying and I think I'm making progress. Two years ago, for instance, it would not have occurred to me that I would be writing checks to organizations that send me alarming broadsides with blurry photos of men clubbing baby seals; now I look forward to the next issue. And consider that for our last big party I made a quadruple batch of meatless "chili." We ate it for six weeks and a vat still lurks in our freezer. (Hint: To save money when entertaining a large number of carnivores, cook a traditional dish using delicious and undetectable substitutions such as tofu for chicken or bulger for hamburger. If you have twenty people coming, you need only make enough for seven; if you have ten people coming, make enough for three; if you have five coming, don't bother to make anything at all because they'll say they aren't really hungry once you tell them what's in the chili.)

When I went to a week-long conference in Dallas a couple months ago--remember, this is Dallas, home of the longhorn cow, which is not a dairy animal--I told the organizers I would prefer vegetarian food. Night after night a bevy of tuxedoed waiters swept into the dining room burdened with trays of sizzling fajitas, juicy tenderloins and scampi the size of your thumb. And at the rear of this entourage would totter the chef's bibulous brother-in-law, recently paroled and sniggering beneath a load of pasta primavera which he'd roughly deposit in front of me before disappearing forever with the extra steak and shrimp. I was caught in my own lie and in the end I could only swallow my pride and my crucifers.

But I remain a kind of gormless vegetarian dilettante. Ask a Real Vegetarian why she's given up the pleasures of the flesh and you're likely to get a disingenuous answer such as "I like animals." Oh, you've met these people. They have didjeradoos on the stereo and recycled toilet paper in the john. They bake their own dog biscuits using ingredients from their pesticide-free gardens. When you stomp down their cellar steps to help them move a table, they cry out, "Be careful! You almost crushed that brown recluse!" and begin rummaging for a broomstraw with which to usher the chummy arachnid out without undermining its self-respect.