Meat. It's for eatin'

I went pescetarian for two months. This was not a decision that I made lightly, although it seemed like it. My pescetarian ways started on a bet at a vegetarian joint in Canada. Nope. Not lightly. I know some vegetarians and what they lack in meat-based protein they generally make up in overall coolness. Still, I'm a KC meat guy. They moved cows in my town. I bleed bar-b-que sauce.

Yet, as I ate meat-lover's poutine (it's a Montreal hangover cure that doesn't inherently require meat only fries, gravy, and cheese curds), I found my heart racing and rather than blame the curds I chose to pick on poor defenseless piles of meat. So after some discussion and a delicious meal of non-meat items my pescetarian path unfolded before me. No meat, except the fishes and I don't like fishes.

What had I signed on for? I blamed meat for my poor eating habits and figured if I removed the mammal, I could force myself into a food pyramid. There were some faulty assumptions in there, but I dove into couscous and tofu hard. I finally got around to slicing and cooking up sweet potatoes and kale. I ate fruit- pears, peaches, apples. For two weeks, it was veg-tastic. I shifted my paradigm. I didn't need to have a slab of protein as the centerpiece. I could instead have a series of sides. It was not as unsatisfying as I imagined.

The first real challenge came at a meal with my coworkers. I had steered them away from the seafood joints prior to signing up for this new lifestyle, so they could have registered surprise when I ordered tilapia, but I learned a non-vegetarian lesson that day- even people up in your business aren't always paying attention. Tilapia was the only option I could find that wouldn't make me a bet loser. It was crusted and the fish taste was minor. I survived. Maybe even thrived.

The next big challenge either came at an Ultimate tournament or a rehearsal dinner. Either way, the story was the same- BBQ. I ate cole slaw, beans, and buns and hoped to find an egg salad sandwich later in the evening. This stung a little, but I had a bet and was highly motivated. The Ultimate tournament was manageable, but the rehearsal dinner was pescetarianism under a magnifying glass. It's hard to hide meat-shirking from a family. There was not much hiding here. My cover was blown, but I wasn't backing down.

More weeks went by and I battled on with pasta and some tuna salad sandwiches. I wasn't about to lose. I was cruising along thinking maybe I could make a permanent change when two events struck back to back. First came the steak house. When someone ordered ribs after I'd ordered a sweet potato and a salad, my tear ducts quivered. I held back the waterworks, but just barely. Next came the portobello cheeseburger. It was an ok sandwich on its own, but as a faux-cheeseburger it burned my insides with its inferiority. I longed for beef. Each bite was mushroom covered defeat. It was almost sickening.

I'd learned some things during the challenge. Maybe I could survive without making meat the sun of my dinner solar system. Maybe to eat healthy I needed to focus more on portion size and the particular components of a meal, rather than on trying to assign blame to some poor animal flesh. These were the lessons, but my challenge lacked completion. The bet had gone a bit off the tracks, so I set my sights on the two-month mark. I was going to make it to that point without meat. I dug in, chugged couscous and made it.

To celebrate I ate a pepperoni pizza, a small cheeseburger, and a tofu explosion. I'm kidding about the tofu explosion. There are some things that require bacon. Maybe I'll cling to what I've learned and let someone else eat those things.