It's not easy only eating greens.

I am a vegetarian (up here on my moral high ground, looking down upon all you pitiful carnivorous cavemen/women! [not really {well… kind of}]), so is my girlfriend (who will be referred to as K-Dub for the purpose of this blog [because it’s funny]), so we live a happy little vegetarian life together with relative ease, but damn it’s hard to be a vego in the real world, and here is why -

I work in the construction industry (try finding some non-leather steel-toe boots [dunlop volleys don’t count]) with blokey-blokes who just don’t understand vegetarianism at all. So it’s best not to even try to explain it, unless you’ve got all day and are willing to be patronised and asked dumb questions like ‘but you still eat fish and chicken right?’ which shits me to no end (we’ll get to that later), but I must admit that this is a slightly skewed sample. However, when in somewhere like a restaurant, for example, you should be able to ask what you are eating and be provided with a concise answer and peace of mind (if you care about what you are eating), but I’m surprised that waiters/waitresses in most places here in Tasmania are unaware where their eggs come from, for instance, and wont provide a vegan option, so you’ve either got to go elsewhere or take the risk.

Being a vegetarian in a small city can also find you in shitty social situations such as: the BBQ at work or at an acquaintance’s house (people that know you well, should know better by now), where there is no non-meat food available (a BBQ prepared by a man) so you end up doing the whole ‘bread-and-sauce’ thing, or, when there is some vege-burgers/sausages on the barbie (if this is the case you will be greeted with ‘Look, I went and got some vego food just for you!’, rather than a more conventional and socially acceptable ‘Hello’) it’s being deep fried on a scummy BBQ in a sea of meat juices… You will be treated like a monster if you decline this food. The best thing to do is bring some food of your own and some foil.

Another bad situation is when rsvp-ing to a function that costs money, recently all the functions for work have provided a meat covered menu with one option for a ‘vegetarian meal’, now I ain’t gonna pay $45 just to find on the night that I get a re-heated quiche, so I am the guy pestering them to ring the place and get me some options. You do get the feeling that these places call a dish ‘vegetarian’ just because it doesn’t have any pieces of meat in it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you should all stop eating meat, if only to make my life easier.

Anyway, I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop.

Go and listen to ‘Bottomless Seas’ by Hot Water Music

Peace

Here's a photo I took in NYC (Jersey City taken from Manhattan [I lived off food from an awesome vegan restaurant on Broadway]).