Vegetarian Q & A

Whenever people find out I’m a vegetarian, there’s always a common barrage of questions that I get. This is an attempt to try and answer some of the more common questions that I get.
Q: How can you be a vegetarian? Don’t you miss meat?
A: No, not really. The first few weeks were kind of hard, but after awhile you realize that a lot of meat really tasted the same, and you were missing a lot of tasty dishes because you were eating so much junky meat. It’s kind of an eye-opening experience.
Q: Why would you become a vegetarian, anyway?
A: There are a lot of benefits. I feel better, I eat better, and I get the benefit of eating more ecologically sustainable – eating meat is very hard on the planet because it takes a lot of plant matter to make very little meat matter.
Q: But you still eat meat sometimes, right? Or at least seafood?
A: Nope. I don’t cheat anymore (I did the first few months), and I don’t eat fish, since that is still an animal. I do eat eggs, however, since unfertilized eggs never were animals, nor did they have the potential to become animals. A lot of vegetarians eat eggs, but like many vegetarians, I try not to when I can. A vegetarian who eats fish is called a “pescetarian”, and being a pescetarian is a good way to transition to full vegetarianism.
Q: So I’ve heard of being a “vegan.” Is that the same thing as being a vegetarian?
A: It’s similar, it’s basically being a more extreme vegetarian. A normal vegetarian (like myself) doesn’t eat animal flesh, but will eat other animal products like eggs, cheese, and milk – basically anything that you don’t have to kill the animal to get. Vegans don’t eat any animal products at all, even milk, and will often shun other animal products, like leather. I’ve tried to be vegan – it isn’t easy, but I hope to transition to this lifestyle someday.
And that’s it! If you hope to become a vegetarian at Trinity someday, give it a try! You have the options, and now you know what you’re getting into!

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Breakfast at Mabee's

Oddly enough, when you go to Mabee for breakfast when you’re a vegetarian, you simultaneously have the smallest number of mini-restaurants and the largest number of vegetarian options available. The breakfast at Mabee isn’t much, but it has a larger variety of options that all of the other meals at Mabee.

The best thing about breakfast at Mabee is that you can get some protein by having any kind of eggs you want. The hardest part about being a vegetarian is getting enough protein in your diet. In the morning, you can get scrambled eggs, breakfast tacos, the works. It provides you with a much needed boost in order to have a successful day.

In addition to eggs, you can get all of the standard breakfast fare, as well. This includes fresh fruit, pancakes and/or waffles, and a variety of other breakfast foods. The options for breakfast are more bountiful for a vegetarian than at any other part of a day, largely because people don’t really seem to like to eat meat at breakfast. The bottom line is, if you want to be a successful vegetarian, it’s vitally important that every day, you eat a good breakfast (as much of a chliche as that is).

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Review: Mabee Pasta

Assuming you're getting sick of veggie burgers (I know I am), you might be considering something a little more adventurous. Unfortunately, Trinity doesn't provide any avenues for adventurous eating, vegetarian or otherwise, so your next best bet is the Trinity pasta place.

If you go to Mabee, you know how few vegetarian options they offer. The pasta bar is a haven for vegetarians, providing a variety of vegetables, different types of pasta, and even tofu, giving vegetarians a rare source of protein (the lack of which is the scourge of every vegetarian diet).

However, this wouldn't be a Living La Vida Veggie post without a good pro-con list, so here goes:

PROS
1) The pasta bar provides a large amount of food, meaning that you don't have to try make an entire meal entirely out of side items (a common meal for the Trinity vegetarian). It also provides you with a lot of carbs and a lot of vegetables, forming a pretty complete meal.
2) As mentioned above, it gives you protein, both in the form of select vegetables, and in the enticing possibility of as much tofu as you want.

CONS
1) It's pretty expensive, even by Trinity standards. Adding sauces and meats makes the price tag even more hefty - while the pasta is good, I wouldn't recommend eating there too often.
2) It's good - but like every other food at Trinity, it gets really repetitive really quickly. The vegetables never really change, and tofu will always be tofu. There's also only one type of sauce the vegetarian can get - the meatless marinara - so every pasta ends up tasting the same - pretty good, but pretty dull.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Trinity Pasta is a pretty good choice when you get sick of the veggie burgers. Don't eat there too often though - your taste buds will get pretty sore along with your wallet.

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Review: The Boca Burger

The Boca Burger from the Coates Commons (colloquially known as the "veggie" burger) is one of the few foods available to the vegetarian at Trinity University, and like any vegetarian food, there's a hearty list of pros and cons to go with it.

Pros

1) As far as burgers go, it doesn't taste half bad. It'll never be like the real thing, but if you go to a fast food place like McDonalds, you won't get a burger that tastes like the real thing anyway. Even before I became a vegetarian, I would always get the veggie burger at Burger King, because it tasted a lot better than the real burger. The Coates burger is no different - I'd hazard a guess that it tastes better than a lot of the non-vegetarian food at Trinity, and at a lot of surrounding restaurants.
2) It's a lot healthier for you than a lot of the non-vegetarian food...and even some of the vegetarian food. Sometimes when I can't get a burger, I get mac and cheese and fries at Mabee. Sure, it's vegetarian, but mac and cheese and greasy fries isn't exactly health food. As far as meat goes, there's no chance that a boca burger is worse for you than a greasy sirloin burger. It's also a good source of protein, something vegetarians are always lacking.

Cons

1) It tastes pretty good, but sometimes it's not good enough. Whenever I have a veggie burger, I'm reminded about how much I miss the real burgers...and a lot of other types of meat. Slathering it in barbecue sauce helps, but it can only do so much.
2) For reasons scientists are yet to understand, cooking a boca burger at coates takes forever. I normally wouldn't mind waiting 15 minutes for a burger - it's good food, after all - but it always leaves me scratching my head when my boca burger takes 15 minutes when everybody else only has to wait 5 minutes for their burgers. Don't order this burger if you're in a hurry.

The Verdict

If you have time to wait and are thinking about trying some vegetarian food, the boca burger is a good place to start. It fills you up, and you'd think you were eating a real burger - almost.

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Opening Thoughts

I've been a vegetarian (with a few cheating meals) since I was 16. I thought the first few weeks were tough, but trying to be a vegetarian in Wisconsin is nothing compared to trying to be a vegetarian in Texas. So far, It's been a struggle - my options have basically been limited to salads and pasta, and while these are tasty, one quickly grows tired of eating the same few foods for months. This has been especially difficult in Texas, where some of the best barbecue in the nation (or so I'm told) is made daily, tempting me to stray away from my dietary choices.

Mabee Dining Hall especially is not the ideal place for a vegetarian. Every day, my friends rant about how good all the food is...from the chicken place, from the sushi place, and from the grills. As they do, I silently shuffle to the pasta line for my tofu and vegetable pasta, just like every dinner. Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly risque, I'll get undercooked, velvety macaroni and cheese and artery clogging fries to go. I've decided that in the next couple of weeks, I might be more adventurous and try some off campus locations. From what I can tell, there are a lot of Mexican restaurants that will be happy to serve me vegetable tortillas. There's also an Indian food restaurant that I know from personal experience serves excellent food for those of us who don't like meat. Any recommendations will be welcome, though - I need to find as much vegetarian food as I can if I hope to survive here for 3 and a half more years. Whenever I'm on campus, though, I'll only a have a few choices of delicious, if repetitive, food.

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