Butter The Hand That Feeds

Last night I went out to dinner, a business dinner. You would think that the most bizarre part of the evening, other than the fact that I was out to a business dinner and yet am unemployed, would have been the couple who used the single-stall bathroom for a different sort of unhygienic relief ahead of me, but no. To me the most outlandish occurrence was that my choice of appetizer was limited to…grilled bread.

Let me be clear and explain two extremely important things. One, I am not complaining. Especially in light of this article that my boyfriend sent me regarding food choices in Haiti (“It’s vegan,” he meekly insisted with a smile that illuminated the fact that there is still a ways for us to fall down the economic ladder) I would not complain about being taken out on somebody else’s dime, even if my food choices were reduced to a complimentary bread basket left upon the table.

Two, this restaurant was what we refer to as “a classy joint” if, like me, you’re from Long Island. It had all the elements of swankiness that I believe fine eating establishments require: cloth napkins, intrusive floral arrangements, candles, and attractive yet inattentive wait staff. TGIFridays it was not.

However, when it came to ordering, I had decided that the vaguely worded side dish of “vegetables” could sub in as a vegan appetizer. In my game of menu Tetris there was only one option I could consider vegan and that was my entrée, a salad, hold the blue cheese. My dinner companion made it a point to jokingly mention to the waiter that she was not vegan, unlike me. The server turned to me saying in a voice that truly reflected the nadir of humanity that (understandably) accompanies all food service jobs:

“The vegetables are sautéed in a little bit of butter.”

That left me to ashamedly reply, “Oh, no worries, I’ll just have bread. Could I have a bit of, um, olive oil and balsamic vinegar with that?”

A dish of three slices of bread with impeccable grill marks arrived with a tiny ramekin of EVOO and vinegar. I consumed them rapidly, thinking, “Jesus, this is Portland, you’d think they’d have a vegan option.”

Holy shit, I’ve become one of them. The entitled, privileged, snot-nosed vegans that I so reviled. Okay, maybe snot-nosed is pushing it a bit far, but a month ago I would have openly mocked anybody who shied away from the opportunity to consume an appetizer just because of what it was cooked with. Now, however, I have information like this on hand to steer me away from inadvertently making a choice that would be difficult to live with. For example, cows naturally produce sixteen pounds of milk a day to feed their young, dairy cows are fed antibiotics and hormones to increase this production to a nearly perpetual fifty pounds a day. I don’t want to eat antibiotics unless I’ve got some bad juju going on in my body that needs fixing. I don’t want to have any hormones all up in my piece either until I’m having hot flashes or my future senior beau is popping little blue pills to keep me smiling and satisfied. I don’t feel good being indirectly responsible for some living thing being kept in inhumane conditions like a concrete cage. If I didn’t cause my mother to get mastitis why the heck should I force an animal to? It might just be a “little bit of butter” but the implications to me suddenly are huge.

Yes, I wrote that it would be difficult to live with ordering a dish cooked with butter in a restaurant that I, if traveling alone, could not afford. Yes, I know what that sounds like. But if I were suffering from any lactose intolerance, Crohn’s disease, or food allergy it would be acceptable, right? Being conscious of food choices seems to be something designated only for those who have to be. And I suddenly find myself feeling like that’s all of us, until the price of a television exceeds my yearly wage.