My Plant-Based Diet of Delusion

I’ve always been such a wannabe. It’s totally disgusting and I’m often filled with self-loathing because of it.

Twenty years ago, my ex and I went down the vegetarian path. It was a time of crystals and past-life regression therapy and hands-off chiropractic where one’s aura was manipulated and one’s insurance company charged. At home, we made the decision to not eat anything that had a face, which wasn’t easy since I was working for Dean & Deluca at the time, and my lunch of choice often involved a three-meat sandwich consisting of speck, bresaola, and Prosciutto, depending on what bits and ends were left over from a morning of high-class deli slicing.

“You could go next door to Whole Foods and have a salad,” my ex said, but I was constitutionally incapable of buying my lunch and my colon cleanse in the same place.

One night, we went off to a local vegetarian cooking school, which every week opened its doors to the public for dinner and an evening of music. The food was brown and bland and covered with a spackle-like sauce the color of a Crayola Burnt Sienna crayon. The music was provided by one man, his electronic keyboard, and a drum machine that went BOOM chunka BOOM chunka BOOM in the background, regardless of what song he was playing or its rhythm, and which continued long after the tune was over and the music man was standing over at the bar, sipping a glass of non-alcoholic cider.

But still, we tried. I bought felt Birkenstocks. Wherever I had to replace meat in a dish, I used cheese. My cholesterol skyrocketed to over 200. As a Christmas gift that year, we were offered the keys to our friend Tim’s cabin in Woodstock, New York while he and his partner Peter went off for a week to study with Louise Hay. We were given the strict orders not to cook any meat in the stove, for fear that its karma would seep into the walls and rafters. After six days of eating rice and beans, we went into town and bought a roast, a can of oven cleaner, and a smudge stick.

We made a nice dinner. I ate. She cried.

A while later, we broke up after I unearthed a used Gray’s Papaya napkin from the bowels of her acid-washed jeans’ pocket while doing the laundry; she accused me of being too judgmental. I took a cab to Peter Luger‘s, where I ate the porterhouse I’d been dreaming about for two years.

So, living a plant-based lifestyle and I got off to a rocky start. But here I am, 20 years on. I’m a food journalist. My cholesterol’s through the roof. I’m about 15 pounds heavier than I should be. I have a mostly rare, recently-diagnosed heart thing that’s controllable only by an extreme blood pressure reduction. And every January, Susan and I announce to each other that we’re going to eat a plant-based diet. We spend weekends pouring over piles of vegetarian cookbooks, and by the end of February, there’s so much meat in the fridge that the sausages clog up the vegetable drawers.

But I get it. I really do. And that’s what makes it so hard, even for me, the daughter of a furrier and the great granddaughter of a butcher. I understand it, ethically speaking; it makes sense to me from a global-warming, farmer-supporting, vegan shoe-wearing, earth-dying point of view. And certainly, from a me-dying point of view. But I’m in my forties, and like most Americans my age, I grew up eating my weight in hamburgers and hotdogs, fried fish and grilled cheese with bacon; when the ’80s rolled around, I ate things like foie gras drizzled with Silver Palate raspberry mayonnaise. In the ’90s, there was a ton of Italian food, and dinners at Danny Meyer’s restaurants. And now, I’m on a near-constant search for dishes that will allow me to do the right thing because I really want to do it for more reasons than I can possibly list: I really want to be a vegetarian.

I’ve read Mark Bittman’s book countless times, and honestly, I can’t get my brain around his doing the vegan-till-six thing so willingly, unless a doctor said to him “you’re gonna die if you don’t stop with the pizzocherri.” It’s just so not Mark Bittman. It’d almost be like Bourdain doing it, and that would never, ever happen unless someone said to him “You know that hottie wife you’ve got? You know that two year old daughter you’ve got? You won’t be around to see either of them in ten years unless you start eating differently.” Then, maybe.

So what’s with the delusion? If I’m acting and functioning like a vegetarian most of the time, can I call myself one? No. It’s like being a little pregnant; either you are, or you aren’t. It has to do with the fact that it’s human nature to love labels, and to desperately want to categorize ourselves amidst the disorder and confused throng of everyday life. The fact is that any of us who want to be something we’re not simply cannot just wake up one morning and in clear conscience give ourselves a label unless it’s true.

Listen up: you’re not a vegan if you’re an almost-vegan. You’re not a locavore if 80% (or 50%, or 20%) of the stuff in your kitchen is imported from Parma by way of Costco. And, like me, you’re not a vegetarian if you still eat your bubbe’s kreplach, which I do and likely always will, even if it’s just on occasion, and even if it’s made with grass-fed beef. Note to self: Grass-fed beef is not a vegetable. Not. A. Vegetable.

But having said that, are there ways of making a significant change without going whole hog? Yes. Will there be a time when you wake up one morning and actually crave vegetables and grains? Yes. Maybe not every day. But sometimes. And that’s okay. Entire tomes have been written on the subject, which I’m not sure I understand. For one thing, where do bookstores shelve a volume that is mostly vegetarian except for the odd steak recipe? It’s a practical issue, when it gets right down to consumerism. Why not just buy the best of the best of vegetarian cookbooks instead, like my friend Deborah’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and dip into it on a regular basis?

Anyway, here are a few things to note as you travel down the wannabe plant-based path of glory alongside me:

1. It’s not your college tofu anymore. The tofu of the 80s was so rubbery it could be used as a squash ball and so bland that you had to infuse it with buckets of fat (sesame oil, marinades, etc) to make it taste like anything other than wallpaper paste. Buy good tofu. It’s out there. I buy artisanal, traditional Japanese-style tofu made in Middletown, Connecticut. It comes in one density: firm, and it’s made from non-GMO soybeans. I wrap it in paper towels and press it under a heavy cast iron pan, and then lightly pan-fry it in a little oil. For more on this subject, look for Deborah Madison’s stellar, stealthy This Can’t Be Tofu, a small book that’s worth its weight in gold.

2. Learn to love ethnic food. If you do, you’re already halfway there, especially if it’s Indian. Granted, not all Indian food is vegetarian, but when it is, it manages to marry booming flavor with incredible texture, which is my next point.

3. Understand texture: You know what it means to overcook vegetables, right? You get slime. If you’re making, say, a pile of greens for dinner, add other textures to it. Put braised hearty greens on top of a crusty piece of toasted sourdough bread. Give it a shave of Parmigiana Reggiano or a dollop of harissa. Top a bowl of soba noodles with a crispy-edged fried egg, a triangle of golden-brown tofu, and slivers of scallion. If you master texture, nothing will ever be—or at least feel—slimy again.

4.If it’s all brown, something’s seriously wrong. Vegetables are, and should be, colorful, as should their sauces. Nothing is more appealing than a bowl of braised vegetables and beans; nothing gives more flavor than a well-executed sauce, like a nutty romesco or a wildly pungent, mouthwateringly herby chermoula, both of which can be used everywhere from garlicky croutons to steamed cod (remember, I’m not a vegetarian) to roasted tofu.

5. Learn to cook grains. Grains don’t start and end with your grandmother’s kasha varnishkes. Learn how to make them, and then go wild: turn them into croquettes; stuff them into a small Delicata squash, sprinkle with some feta, and then roast; mix them with beans, add a little stock, a few tomatoes, some leftover greens, and call it a soup. Add some diced ham if you must.

6. Make meat a side dish: Everyone’s saying it these days, but it works. If you grew up in the ’60s the way I did and spent every dinner eating a meat and two sides (one potato dish, one flaccid green bean dish), rotate the plate and make the sides the main, and the main the side. And by side, I don’t mean considering  macaroni-and-cheese a vegetable side the way they do in the south, just because it has no meat in it. Sorry.

7. Don’t make any great declarations about yourself: It’s so bloody tiresome and nobody really wants to hear it. Do what you can do as you can do it. Sometimes you’ll eat vegetarian for weeks on end, the way I do, and sometimes you won’t, the way I do. Sometimes you’ll eat mostly vegetarian, sometimes you’ll eat a prime rib. And that’ll be fine, too.

It’s been years since my ex went off to Naropa to play lead doumbek in a drum circle, and I smudged my friend Tim’s stove in Woodstock because I’d roasted meat in it. It took me years of therapy to get beyond the deep-seeded aggressiveness of my actions, but I think I’m pretty much over it. And I’m fine with saying that I’m no longer the vegetarian I once was back in the 1980s, when whole foods were brown and a Gray’s Papaya hotdog was my secret breakfast of choice.

I still eat them today, but only once in a while.

Tagged as: Bittman, Bourdain, Deborah Madison, Vegan, Vegetarian