I like our new IT lady at work a lot. I started liking her on her first day when she asked me where is good in the 'hood to get lunch. Before I recommended my fav vietnamese place, Pho Bang, I asked if she was a vegetarian. "No way," she said, "But I'm like vegetarians because that means there's more meat for me to eat."

Uh huh.

I am always instantly suspicious of people on food trips of whatever stripe. I think it's a surefire indicator of mental illness at worst and maladaption at best. I have never known a balanced, thoughtful, mature, intelligent person who was a vegetarian. Well, one. (How clever is that? If a buddy of mine who is a vegetarian should read that, I have room to assure him or her that he or she is absolutely the exception I was thinking of.) I know more than a few balanced, thoughtful, mature, intelligent people who were vegetarians but have since relented. I think it's a remnant of the childish view of animals as something other than 'red in tooth and claw.'

A co-worker arranged for me to have lunch with a friend of hers. I saw his picture on a cd he has out and I thought he was something of a hottie. Well, he blew it when he announced (and we're smack dab in the middle of Chinatown mind you) that he was only eating whole foods right now so he wanted a salad. From that point on, nothing he said could alter my opinion of him.

Okay. I'll fess up. I don't eat veal. For one thing, I don't particularly like it. For another, my Dad has these tales of when he was working in the dairy barn at college (I covered this in a previous post) and was there when they would come to take the calves away from their mothers to become veal. It was a bovine Auschwitz that he described. The only other meat I have trouble eating do to sentiment is pork. Pigs are such sweet animals. They bond readily. I would love to raise them if it didn't mean sending them to slaughter. Uh... and if I didn't live in BDJC (Beautiful Downtown Jersey City).