PREP TIME

God bless the vegans; they work hard enough at it. I understand why they’re so given to meditation. They spend all of their time chopping vegetables! Plenty of opportunity for reflecting during then.

I am not a vegan. I’m not even a vegetarian, but I am certainly unopposed to a good vegetable melody unaccompanied by an animal broth, and I have fromagavore tendencies, especially around wine. I have adopted a lowered-meat lifestyle, though, because I enjoy the mass mutilation of the garden variety. Mostly I do it for the health benefits. I figure I burn enough calories in the exercise of executing vegetables that I can go back to drinking non-diet soda.

But what is up with these prep time estimates? Twenty-five minutes? Heck, that’s assuming you’ve already BEEN to the store, you’ve rinsed and dried the produce, and there are no dirty dishes soaking in the sink or strewn throughout the kitchen. Wouldn’t it be easier to flip a steak on the grill at this point? Microwave a nice potato with a big pat of butter? A potato is a vegetable, right? With an “e” at the end, right?

And what really of the health benefits of preparing vegetables? What really are the gastrointestinal advantages while you are bleeding to death from lacerations inflicted on your digits? Rather difficult to count the benefits on your hand when your fingers are all cut off. (Difficult to type too.) You see these diced tomatoes? Yeah. Not so much tomatoes as you’d think. Veganism is definitely a sober sport, at least until the food preparation is over. You can’t exactly enjoy a nice glass of vino while you slice up twelve vegetables in sixty different directions.

Why is it that a cow has four stomachs and never gets past the salad course? I sit down to Thanksgiving with my family and I wish I had four stomachs. According to our local newpaper, you have to walk about thirty miles to overcome a typical Turkey Day fare. I wonder how many vegetables you’d have to chop?