happy being vegetarian

Am so happy to be a vegetarian and I am happy that I was born one and just had to hang on there with conscious choice of being one always. I did not have to give up much.
I would have been happier if I was born a vegan but then I wouldn't be able to eat even my favorite breakfast cereal. It is something I am going to start working on- so from today, I plan to atleast reduce the consumption of milk.

The simple act of denying animal products for ethical/ compassionate reasons puts us (me and hubby) in a corner whenever we step out of my house. We cannot go to any and every restaurant and grab a bite- we end up asking a hundred questions to the poor guy who serves us about the content of the food. We cannot go camping and set a grill or go fishing or have a bbq at home. We see each and every food label to check if it contains animal products and yet we do consume bleached sugar and cannot let go of pastries. I don't know how many times my screening has slipped and we have ended up eating gelatin filled curd or used a body lotion with animal fat.

We watched Fast Food Nation yesterday - many of the scenes nearly made me throw up and I kept wondering how people still eat the food they do and especially Fast food . You know that they are adding all sorts of chemicals to get the smell and flavor , then there is a good portion of animal faeces that conveniently gets mixed up in your food and it all comess with such low nutritional value. Why do you want to consume it?
If I make a side dish, keep it frozen for a week and take it out - it tastes like mud -but if you buy frozen entrees and microwave them, they taste just as good as newly made. Why is that and How's that? Why do Mc D's fries taste so good? The answer is so simple and is in fromnt of you-the "Flavor industry" and the Flavorists . We are not ignorant, we all have some information about it or are atleast know that something is wrong here and yet we keep doing the same things over and over again. We know about obesity and under-paid, exploited employees and all about the innocent animals getting chopped in the most inhuman way. Then Why?
well,that's my two pennies worth.

"The Vegetarian"

I can't step into the kitchen on Sundays. Period.
This sunday was no different and we set out to go to our favorite haunt "Udupi Cafe" aka Nala Pak in Columbia Heights.
While we were in Bangalore, we used to regularly hunt out new dining experiences -especially vegetarian ones. But here, due to the lack of Indian vegetarian restaurants we restrict ourselves to the 2 veggie places-Udupi and India Cafe for dining and Bombay deli for chats.
So when we saw this sign board "The Vegetarian" about on Central avenue-we had to check it out. But we had no clue if it was a restaurant or just a shop by looking at it.
Anyway,we were determined to venture in. So what if it was located in a spooky place. So what if there have been recent shootings around that area...so what?

We ordered malai kofta and rotis...cos our romance started with malai kofta three years back at Fortune and that is something no one can go wrong with.
Food...though it did'nt taste awesome, it felt homely BUT they could do better - infact way ,way better in terms of cutlery and probably someone needs to tell them about dishwashers.If you're charging $9 for a malai kofta, we come to expect clean knives and plates along with it.The glasses had lip marks on them and the plates seemed so ancient with so many scratches from umpteen uses ( did I say that this restaurant was opened only last month ?)
!!!
They could do some help with interior decoration too-and not pick up some odd chairs and tables bought out of garage sale.
I dont think we would be going there ever again unless there is a need to remind ourselves how good Udupi is.