This year, since discovering invisible oranges, I'm not as invested in indie rawk. but Pitchfork's got this really cool system going on: I'm volunteering for the festival. Not to for pitchfork, that would be pretty unethical (despite being something most music fans would love to do). I'm volunteering VegChicago, who organize the monthly chicago meetups¹. In return for having "members" volunteer for the festival, they get booth space and promotion. Which I think is cool.

1. like yesterday, at foster beach, catered by veggie bite (back ↩)

• the obligatorytofurky (it's impossible to find unturkey until american thanksgiving, and last year we didn't have enough freezer space to buy one a year in advance.)
• malloreigh's mushroom gravy (from la dolce vegan)
• cranberry sauce (we had to have it again after last year. i never realized that the real stuff was so much better than the canned, and she never realized she even liked cranberries)
• green beans almondine
• salad with dried cranberries, candied almonds, and raspberry vinagrette (again, from LDV)
• broccoli, califlour, and cheeze
• garlic masshed potatoes
• cornbread
• pumpkin cheezecake with candied pecans on top(O!M!F!G!)

now we're on to the best part: a week of leftovers (okay, they're not actually going to last that long)

I managed to thoroughly confuse just about everyone with my dietary habits this past week.  normally, the deal is that Melanie is vegan, and i eat vegan when we eat together (a good 70% of the time).  when we eat out, or when there's no separate effort (e.g., pizza toppings), i eat whatever i want.  So most of my family/roommates/friends are used to seeing me wolf down 4-cheese pizza and cheeseburgers when Melanie's not around.  so when we started planning our little Kentucky/San Francisco tour, the thought of a week long vacation from eating vegan sounded awesome.

two Saturdays ago, we drove down to Kentucky for my sister's graduation, and then Melanie flew out to san francisco, where she hung out with our until-recently chicago friends, waiting fo me to fly out this last thursday.  Saturday, in kentucky, we ate at the one vegan-friendly grocery store's deli. (although, they really only have one or two vegan sandwiches).  so, since we were eating out, i had a chicken caesar sandwich.  i don't know if it's because it was undercooked, or just because i hadn't eaten meat in a while, but my belly was not happy afterwards.  not enough to actually complain about, but enough.

So, after driving Melanie to the airport sunday morning, i came back to campus in time for the graduation brunch in the school cafeteria.  the smell of roast beef smacked us in the face a good 10 paces before we reached the door.  so, i decided that given my stomach's poor reaction the day before, i'd just stick with the veggies.  by the time we finished the "side dish" section of the line, i already had a plateful bigger than most dinners i eat.  i called it good enough, and took my seat.

i ate most of my mashed potatoes, cheese and crackers, buttered rolls, and salad suffering confused looks from my family before my sister finally had the courage to ask "so are you eating vegan now too?"  i explained that a) cheese, ranch dressing, and buttered mashed potatoes are all pleasures not afforded by veganity, and b) that cafeteria roast beef did not sound appealling enough to risk a repeat of saturday.

and then, post graduation, i drove home and ate a grilled stuffed burrito, since taco bell is my all-time favorite road food.

given our current financial situation, which only developed after i'd been salivating over the prospect of a week of un-vegan excess, my efforts were much scaled back.  monday night i ate the remaining salad greens from the fridge, but with the peppercorn ranch dressing that tempts me from the fridge every time we have salad (but the effort of preparing vegan dressing is offset by making it for 2, thus i never eat it).  after perusing our grocery reserves (and realizing i was due to leave thursday morning, not thursday after dinner), i set out for the grocery store, and bought the obligatory frozen pizza, but decided to re-appropriate the leftover tofu for fajitas, rather than buying chicken strips.

i love fajitas, although i only discovered that while living with josh.  ironic, considering that neither of us were what you call handy in the kitchen.  so, to make life easier for ourselves, as well as decreasing the risk of salmonella poisoning, we used to buy the pre-cooked, pre-sliced chicken strips from tyson.  which, follow the "fast - easy - cheap" rule (choose any 2, but not all 3).  I used to only tolerate tofu, until i realized that it's just like chicken, in that it doesn't have any real flavor of its own, only that of what you cook it with.  so given that i was going saute the tofu with a packetful of fajita seasonings (yeah, my cooking skills aren't that much improved), i went for it.

because the real reason that i don't get fajitas regularly is that Melanie doesn't like fajitas is the green pepper, the rest of it can be substituted. and i ate fake pepperoni on my frozen pizza, since the sausage itself contributes very little to the flavor of pepperoni.  I'm not giving up the cheese anytime soon, but I'm happy being less dependent on the meat industry.