When I first came across Alecia McClain, she shocked me right off the bat. She came into the room at a friend of mine's house, with platinum-blonde cornrows in her hair swinging down behind her back. I looked at her open, friendly face and instantly wanted to get to know her. Her funky, rebellious hair inspired me, making me feel creative. She was wearing bold, bright colors that it seemed no one else would dare to wear. She almost appeared to be a peacock among a bunch of pigeons, as everyone else there now seemed to be wearing dull tones in comparison. That night we got into our first of many deep conversations. We hung out for most of the evening, and when the night crept toward dawn and people were getting ready to leave, I made sure to get her cell number.
Alecia and I became fast friends after that night. We started hanging out regularly and discovered a mutual love of music and the HBO show Sex and the City. The first time I had dinner at her house she whipped up her favorite pasta recipe. It smelled extra delicious when it was cooking because Alecia grows her own herbs so they were incredibly fresh and fragrant. We sat around her table when it was done cooking, chatting and digging in to the meal. It was then I noticed the wriggly little chunk of white stuff in the pasta. I shrank away from the plate in horror.
“Alecia…?” I stammered, poking at the white chunk with my fork.
“Hmm?” she mumbled behind a mouthful of pasta.
“What is this…do you put eggs in your pasta? I mean, whatever this is it looks gross!”
“I don’t put eggs in my pasta, silly!” Alecia laughed as she leaned in to see what I was poking at with my fork. “Oh, that’s just the tofu. I add it as filler instead of meat.”
“Tofu? What, are you trying to poison me or something?” I half-joked, pushing the tofu aside on the plate. “I won’t be eating that stuff, no way no how.”
“Suit yourself, sweetie, but you should really be more open-minded about things. You might find out that you like something you didn’t think you would.” I had made up my mind though. I wouldn’t be eating the egg/tofu surprise any time soon. As I pushed the strange food to the side on my plate, I watched her as she happily dug in to hers. She didn’t keel over or anything but I still wasn’t completely convinced that that wriggly stuff wasn’t poison.
A few weeks later, Alecia attempted to get me to consume another unappetizing-looking dish. This time it was falafel, a Greek dish, and it looked like little balls of bread with onion stuck in it. We were rooting around in her cabinets and fridge, trying to find something the both of us would eat.
“How about this?” she asked, pulling out the falafel. It looked hard and tasteless. This seemed to be a theme with vegetarians. Why does everything vegetarian appear to be tasteless? I wondered to myself, simultaneously shaking my head no. “Oh, but its sooo good!” Alecia gushed, her blue eyes shining.
“Good?” I replied sarcastically. “You mean it has a taste?”
“Of course it has a taste,” she said. “I also put this Tahini dressing on it that adds some extra intensity to the flavor. Here, sister, give it a taste,” she added, digging in the fridge and pulling out a bottle of creamy-looking dressing. She undid the lid and held it out to me. I put a little on my finger and tasted it.
“Ugh!” I spat it out. It was horrible. I had never tasted anything so awful in my life. I was expecting creamy goodness, maybe a little ranch-like. Oh no. This stuff tasted tangy like tartar sauce and had chunks of something (maybe veggies) floating around in it. Definitely more dumpster-chic than gourmet flavored, at least to my palate. “No way, Allie,” I said. “You are crazy if you think I am going to eat that!”
“Ok, ok. We’ll find something else,” she replied, looking disappointed in my lack of worldliness. We dug around in her cabinets some more and wound up finding a dish both of us could agree on. Pulling out as many veggies as we could find, we fixed a fresh garden salad with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, black olives and Feta cheese.
“Ah, Feta cheese. Now this is something Greek I can sink my teeth into,” I said behind a mouthful of salad. Salad, I decided, is the only vegetarian dish I can stomach.
About a month after the terrible Tahini, Alecia lost her license. She was forced to take a cab or hitch a ride with friends everywhere she went. She was working long hours, and was very worn out. Getting to work and school had become a burden, and so had her weekly grocery shopping. I had brought her to the local Kroger's a couple of times to shop for food, and during one of those trips I noticed she did not purchase any meat at all. Instead, as we walked around the fluorescent-lit market, she loaded up the grocery cart with fresh organic vegetables, and meatless burgers. She also added lentils, tofu, potatoes, organic milk and cage free eggs, which are collected from free range chickens. This was the strangest grocery cart I had ever seen.
"Where's the beef?" I joked under my breath, sounding like that commercial from the eighties. I thought about my mother. If she laid eyes on this grocery cart she would lecture Alecia about being unhealthy and the lack of protein being purchased. We walked out to my car, our feet crunching on the pavement, and began loading the groceries into my trunk. All the while I kept wondering to myself about the meatless menu. I casually mentioned she had purchased no meat, to which she answered,
"I never do. I am a vegetarian." In the car on the way to her house, Alecia told me that she grew up eating meat, but had become a vegetarian about five years ago. She saw the abundance of food that our nation has, and was aware of the cruel way some animals are forced to suffer for our pleasure. She told me, "Baby cows are sometimes not even allowed to stand. That is how they make veal tender." The thought disgusted her, and I could see that disgust written on her face as I pulled the car into her driveway. I had to admit that this negligence of animals wasn’t a huge source of pride for me as a meat-consumer. I felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of all the animals cooped up in cages with no room.
Alecia fished in her pocket for her keys as I balanced the bags in my arms. She turned the key in the lock and we stepped into her foyer, greeted by the happy sounds of her two cats, Jembae and Pave. The kitties purred and rubbed up against our legs as we took our shoes off and brought the bags to the counter. I helped Alecia unload her groceries, and she trailed off, absentmindedly putting away her produce. Her house smelled like Nag Champa incense: a real thick, musky smell that reminded me of an old Grateful Dead shop. She finished putting the groceries away, and pulled out a cookbook. She flipped through the book, which was obviously vegetarian, though I didn’t catch a glimpse of the title, and passed it to me as she pointed at a page. "There are some great recipes in here, like this one," she told me. I looked at the recipe, called "Awesome Eggplant Rollatine." It looked interesting, to say the least. The ingredients were eggplant stuffed with cheese and spinach, topped with marinara. I noted that it didn't seem too hard to cook, or too time consuming. At least it didn’t have any poisonous looking tofu stuffed into it. I handed her the book back, thinking to myself I would much rather have a steak. As she took it from me, her slender arm with its bohemian bangles jingled in the quiet house.
I asked Alecia if she ever felt sick from not eating meat, since she had eaten meat in the past. She thought for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. "No," she told me, "I haven't ever felt sick, unless I catch a whiff of someone cooking meat." This was interesting to me, because I thought meat was an essential part of every diet, not to mention that when it cooks it smells delicious to me. In fact to me, there is nothing better than the smell of bacon cooking in the morning. I told her so. She seemed to dismiss my worry for her health, adding that "I intake an adequate source of protein from many items including beans and lentils. I also eat iron-fortified foods, like cereals. You shouldn't worry so much, you know. It's bad for your soul."
"Well, what about vitamin B-12?" I asked her. "I took a nutrition class, and according to nutritionists you can only get that vitamin from animal products," I finished smugly. No way would she have a fancy-pants answer for that one! But she did. She agreed that yes, animal products are the main source of the vitamin, but that she is a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I must have looked puzzled, because she added that what lacto-ovo vegetarian means is that she consumes dairy and eggs. Of course the dairy and eggs she does consume are organic and cage free, but they still provide an excellent source of that vitamin. I was dismayed by the fact that I knew very little about vegetarians. I wondered what other kinds of vegetarians there are.
A couple months later, Alecia and I were about to fix dinner again. She was trying to get me to eat that tofu stuff because she was convinced that I would like it for some reason. I was seriously against the entire idea.
“It looks tasteless! I bet it’s a tasteless poison!” I said. We were standing in her tiny kitchen in her apartment, looking through a recipe book for something vegetarian that I could stand. “That way no one has any idea until it’s too late!” I cried, being purposefully overdramatic. I made a bunch of gagging noises and fell to her floor in a mock death.
“It’s not poison, I swear!” she laughed, gesticulating wildly at me as if her excited arm movements were the key to getting me to give in.
“I don’t know…” I replied, looking at the recipe she planned to cook. It was Thai Tofu, with peanut and ginger flavors. It looked disgusting. I didn’t think I would be able to actually endure eating the whole thing. “Some of it may go to waste if I don’t like it, ya know,” I said as she waited for my final decision.
“That’s fine,” she replied, her eyes lighting up. I don’t honestly believe at this point she would have taken no as an answer. She was too excited to open this new door for me. She got to work immediately in the kitchen, heating up a skillet and chopping up ingredients.
While she was in the kitchen I wandered into her living room. I sank down onto the carpet in front of her entertainment stand and began searching through her collection of CD’s. Ween, Tortoise, Grateful Dead...she had all the great albums. I selected one I knew both of us would get into, “Midwest Band Does OK” by Umphree’s McGee. The music came on and I floated away with it, getting lost in the intense guitar solos and ingenious walking bass lines. Soon I could hear the skillet working and could smell ginger wafting through the window cut into the wall between her kitchen and living room. The music was so good I barely noticed when the sounds of cooking had stopped.
It didn't take her long to finish preparing the meal, and when she was done and set the dish in front of me my eyes bulged. The tofu again looked a bit like eggs to me, except even more wobbly and uncertain on the plate. Because of the peanut and Thai sauces, it had a weird orange color to it. I did not want to try it at all, until I got a whiff of it. The aroma was magnificent, and consumed my senses. I looked over at my vegetarian friend, who was eating and carrying on about an episode of her favorite show, Lost. She was sitting cross-legged on a floor cushion, and eating off of her dining room table, which was low-set and round. Her face was clearly happy, and she was honestly enjoying this tofu dish she had prepared. I noticed her skin and hair, which both had healthy shine.
Picking up my fork, I tried to stab a bit of the tofu with it. It skidded across the plate as if on wheels. The orange sauce dripped from the piece as I lifted it to my mouth. Alecia looked at me, clearly amused. This was not the first time she had cooked tofu for an omnivore, and she seemed delighted in the fact that I was a bit deterred by the looks of it. After all, I remembered the poisonous pasta she had cooked for me earlier in the year. I put the piece of tofu into my mouth, chewing it slowly, noticing that the texture indeed was like egg. But what surprised me the most was that the flavor was intense, yet not overwhelming. In fact, it was pretty darn good. I’m not saying I would run away and join the vegetarian-pride parade, but the whole tofu experience changed my perspective on vegetarian meals. At least now I know I can eat at Alecia’s without worrying about her trying to poison me with these strange new dishes!
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