Looking At The World Thru A Windshield: An Omnivore At The Vegetarian Food Festival

Recently I saw a Groupon offer----half-price admission to the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I love vegetables.  I eat a lot of them.  Probably more than some vegetarians.  But as much as I really try to eat healthy---I'm not perfect.  After working a busy brunch shift in Harlem, I've been known to make the occasional pit stop at the Popeye's on 125th St. before getting on the train home.

It's not something I'm proud of.

I don't think I've ever gotten take-out from Popeye's and NOT immediately passed out for a two-hour nap after eating it.

In fact, that was my Facebook post one afternoon:

"I just ate Popeye's and I will not take a nap.  I just ate Popeye's and I will not take a nap..."

One of my friends commented on my repetitive post.  Said it was repetitive.  Why was it repetitive?  When I didn't immediately respond, another friend wrote, "Shhhhh.  She's sleeping."

I was.

It's sad, really.

But maybe if I went to the Vegetarian Food Festival, I could take a few steps towards being a better person.  After all, it's no secret that a diet full of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains is definitely good for you.  Maybe a day with the vegetarians would help give me that Zen and contented life I'd always wanted to lead.  Like a fabric softner commercial.  I mean, I'd still be me----but a BETTER me!  And my sheets would always smell like Spring Rain.

So I signed up for the Groupon and headed downtown.

The first thing I noticed about the Vegetarian Food Festival was that it's pretty much vegan.  If you're one of those French Fry Vegetarians existing on cheese pizza and mozzarella stix---this may not be your organic, fair trade cup of tea.

But while being a vegetarian is a fairly easy dietary choice---being vegan is a freaking lifestyle!  And it's a little time-consuming.  Let's say you enjoy a bit of half-and-half in your morning coffee?  Well, you're going to have to start by soaking some cashews in water overnight.

And then there's a whole to-do involving a food processor and some cheesecloth...

I've made cashew half-and-half.  It's delicious.  But it involves a certain amount of work.  

The second thing I noticed was how much vegetarians desperately want to eat things that look like meat, taste like meat, and have the texture of meat---without actually BEING meat.

When I tried to describe this phenomenon to a friend, a light clicked in his head and he replied, "Oh!  So they're like Episcopalians?"

 The longest communion line at the festival was a throng of hungry parishioners waiting for these...

Vegan Sausages!!!

Meat substitutes were everywhere!  There were even vegan gyros made from seitan.  In case you've never heard of seitan, it's yet another meat substitute made from high-gluten flour, basically.  And once they squeezed a bit of vegan tzatziki sauce on a slice of cooked flour, it tasted almost exactly like the stuff they carve off the giant spinning wheels of lamb in the Village.

I found myself annoyed by all the meat substitutes.  Not for any moral reason.  But I already EAT meat.  I try not to eat too much and try to buy from reputable butchers where they only purchase from farms where the animals are humanely-raised, etc, etc.  So I didn't WANT meat substitutes.  I wanted vegetables!  And there weren't all that many vegetables there.

As I encountered the deliciousness of the vegan cheese (oh!---this stuff was the bomb!)...

I remembered that there are FIVE taste senses on the tongue----sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami.

Umami is the one some people might not know.  It's a fairly new discovery.  It's a savory taste.  The reason MSG became such a popular ingredient was that it supplied that taste.  A taste for L-glutamate.  It's hard to find in meatless-options.  Mushrooms have it.  Tomatoes have some.  Sauerkraut.  But it's a yummy taste.  Vegans and vegetarians often use something called nutritional yeast in their foods to mimic it.

Vegetarians who eat cheese can get the flavor there.  Think of how much better your pasta tastes with a bit of fresh Parmesan cheese grated on top.  Umami can have a bit of a fermented flavor.

And it was the promise of this taste that drew the vegans in.

Unlike sweet or salty (which can easily be part of a vegan diet) umami is harder to replicate in the home kitchen.

For example, I went completely nuts when I saw these:

      
Vegan Beef Jerky!

Oh, I sampled them all!  The consistency was between Beef Jerky and a Slim Jim.  And if there's any gal who enjoys the occasional Slim Jim, it's yours truly.

You see, the first time I bought a couch, I went to the Salvation Army Store in Minneapolis.  I found a terrific couch.  Beautiful color, kind of retro, and super comfortable.  Just as I was making the couch commitment in my head, some young, in-love couple sat on MY couch!

And I could tell they liked it.

And then they saw me looking at them sitting on my couch.  It was like they could read my mind.

Shit.

I quickly turned around nonchalantly.  Tried to pretend I was "just looking".  I'm just browsing around.  Never mind me.  I'm just going to browse my way towards the payment register....

But apparently, I wasn't very good at being stealthy.  They immediately picked up on the fact that my casual vibe more-closely resembled Pooh Bear after he rolled in mud, grabbed a balloon, floated up towards the honey tree, and tried to disguise himself as a rain cloud to fool the bees.

"I'm just a little black rain cloud.
Pay no attention to little me."

No sooner did I get to the register, than those bees were right on my heels.

It was the battle of the "cool couch".

Luckily, I knew that the guy working behind the counter only had one good eye.  I don't know what happened to the other eye.  It was just missing with no cosmetic attempt to disguise the fact.  So while he was ringing up some old lady for a sweater, I jimmied myself into position on the side of his one eye...

Now, my actions may not have been politically correct----but I got the couch.

But how was I going to get it home?  I didn't have a car.  Let alone a van.  Or even a driver's license.

A friend of mine who DID know how to drive went down to the UHaul to rent a van.  Unfortunately, the smallest vehicle they had available that day was a small truck.  It seemed a bit of overkill for a couch----so I decided to make it fun.  When she came to pick me up in the truck, I ran out with a tape player and a cassette of trucker songs.  To make the whole trucker theme complete, I suggested we pull into a gas station for some Slim Jims.  We laughed hysterically as we gnawed on our Slim Jims and sang along with old trucker songs like "Convoy", "Six Days On the Road" and "Give Me Forty Acres (To Turn This Rig Around)".

Just like music, food can be evocative.

So that's why I bought this.

And then I Googled recipes online and tried to figure out how to make it at home.

And why I went to the market to purchase this.

And spent an hour cooking a brine and slicing my tofu.

And let it marinate overnight.

And then plopped it in the oven at 200 degrees for a few hours.

And then what I got was this:

And it was HORRIBLE!!!

Tasted NOTHING like the delicious vegan pastrami I'd purchased.  Or any other kind of beef jerky, for that matter.

And that's why my hat is off to every vendor at the food festival.  Because everything I tasted was completely delicious.

But what the best food vendors at the festival did was to tap into perhaps a sixth taste.  While umami borrows from the Japanese, I think the sixth sense should borrow from the French.  Proust, to be exact.  His memory of Madeleines.  The way food can take you back to a time and place.  It's why the best meat loaf is the one that tastes like mom's.  It's why people from the Midwest got all excited when a Steak-n-Shake opened in NYC.  Why Campbell's Soup will never go out of business. Why we get all excited when we see "vintage candy". And why we practically cry when a product we grew up eating is suddenly discontinued.

Proust's evocative Temps Perdu.

Probably not a catchy name for a taste bud.  But it's just as good as umami.

It's why comfort food can be anything, really.  It just depends on where and when you ate it.

Things CAN taste better if they remind you of a happy time.  Even if you don't remember being particularly happy in that moment from years ago.  It was somehow better.  Simpler.

That's why even vegans long for the smell of something on a grill pan that reminds them of that summer when they were a kid....

The last thing I learned at the Vegetarian Food Festival is that vegetarians and vegans are no better, healthier, or happier than most of us.  Every other booth was someone either selling something that would help you find peace and tranquility or someone raising awareness of a good cause---involvement in which would give you satisfaction and peace and tranquility.

At the end of the day, no matter what we choose to eat, we're all looking for the same thing.

That beautiful, crazy happiness that can come from driving around town in a ridiculously-sized truck with a brand new couch and eating stupid food as we giggle and recount the story about how we were victorious over a couple in love and managed to catch the one good eye of a Salvation Army clerk.

As Del Reeves sang:

"Well I'm looking at the world thru a windshield.
And I see everything in a little bit different light.
I got a sweet little thing I'm a-wantin' to see in Nashville.
And I'm down around Dallas and a-rollin' on South tonight."