Too Easy

Everyone needs a vegetarian in their office. For a person who really likes food and needs a quick pick-me-up, something to bring levity to their day, there's nothing like a vegetarian. Rewind 6 months to one of my boondoggles to New York, and a couple mates and I were out for a late dinner with another two from the office - one a vegetarian; one chicken dish, a steak, a salad.... and two steak tartar's. There are five people at the table - it's hard to avoid the tartare.

Now, no one does a dissertation on vegetarians better than the Uber Chef. There's a section in Kitchen Confidential, "From our Kitchen to Your Table", that is pure joy. If I may...

"Vegetarians and their hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persitent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polutted by animal protein. It's healthier they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumour of a cold. Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant, and zucchini slices suits my food cost."

The other evening as I was leaving the office I was chatting with our token vegetarian and was asked, ever so demurely, if, in the story I was telling, I could stop using the word "butcher". I was talking about an article I had written for a local magazine on some specialty pâté. Now, at 6:00 on a Wednesday evening after battleing with a vainglorious Pageant Queen, it's hard to come up with a suitable synonym for the word butcher. In fact, in that context, the word seemed entirely appropriate. Sure, meat purveyor may fit the bill, but we are talking chicken livers. Where a simple word can cause such interest there is endless entertainment to be had.

Again, borrowing from the Uber Chef; "amoebas are transferred most easily through the handling of raw, uncooked vegetables, particularly during the washing of salad greens and leafy products. So think about that next time you want to exchange deep tongue kisses with a vegetarian."

By the way, are snakes vegetarians?