How to insult a vegetarian

There sure are a lot of people talking about vegetarians, legal cases, how rude they are, their own form of fascism. The article is How Can You Insult A Vegetarian? Published on PJ Media and I was hoping for hints but the article is about the boy punished for bullying another boy in school about being vegetarian. According to ruling vegetarianism is a distinguishing characteristic and the behavior of the accused is characteristic of bullying.

No wonder they're so mean.

Joke. But sometimes the rare few here and there among the many more kind and gentle souls that mind their own business do not behave nicely toward others about their own diet choices and their diet philosophy.

I know of one fellow who must not be named for privacy reasons but his first name rhymes with blue, clue, due hue, hew, and huge. And he does fit the description of obnoxious stentorian vegetarian. He sniffs and turns his head to avert his nose and vocalizes, "Ewwww" when your bacon is passed between himself and you when your breakfasts arrive at the diner. He was expecting not to be near any meat when ten people sit down for breakfast? No, he's taking another chance to proselytize dramatically, emotionally, wax philosophically, be the obnoxious scold about an ordinary thing, marking himself extraordinary.

And this goes on for ten years. This is what we put up with just to be friends. There are countless other incidents. He hosts a grill lunch where people bring what they want to grill (!) Odd, right off the bat, but whatever. Go along just to be friends, just to be sociable. Then he complains to me privately because people dared to put meat on his grill. Now his vegetables touch the grill and get meat particles on it. I thought that was funny. He was gravely offended.

Then one night at a party that somebody else hosted something happened. This occurred at their highrise condominium. A nice and large place overlooking Cheesman Park. Oddly, again another pot-luck type deal. A few of us were assigned to bring something. See what we endure just to be friends, just to be sociable? Anyone else would cater or do it all themselves. But everyone in this group accepts that as normal and behaves similarly. They all do this pot-luck sort of thing that disperses effort and cost. Co-hosting is one thing, in their case they all do a more total share thing. So the vegetarian continually presents his difficulty this way. That night I brought rumaki. Vegetarian, you don't get any. Too bad. Because it's great. He'll have to look at other pot-lucky things instead. That's the luck of these pot lucky deals, the luck of the draw.

The guy who makes a HUGE deal of bacon but whose name must not be mentioned grabs a rumaki and plunks it in his mouth. I'm stunned. Nonplussed. I cannot believe what I just saw.

We argue. He takes another and plunks it in his mouth.

I tell him he's discredited. He tells me, "Look Chip, rules are made to be broken. Okay?" and grabs another rumaki and popped it in his mouth like popping a pill.

I believe, but I don't know, that the big tall HUGE guy who was vegetarian no longer is. That turned out to be a phase. A very long phase having to do with feeling guilty about butchering all those animals back then in his meat processing days.

Making rumaki is gross.

Make this stuff for a large party and you can be put off making rumaki for the next decade.

Chicken livers come in a small tub along with regular chicken parts. Enough to cater a large party. The livers are separated and trimmed of anything that's not smooth and cut into tiny pieces. Each rumaki has only a tiny square of chicken liver. One chicken liver can make more than six rumaki. Just enough for a toothpick to stab. Then the taste cloaked heavily with disguising flavors, aroma and texture to change by few hundred percent. They are mostly bacon, more water chestnut than liver, and additional brown sugar loaded onto the bacon. They are sweet and crunchy with the fat and flavor of bacon and they are irresistible even to long-term vegetarians sometimes. At least once. I have this on record. Admit or not, that HUGE flake flipped to omnivorous diet on these rumaki.

The bacon is blanched so fat is rendered. If too stiff then it will not roll. If too raw then the fat will be giggly and unpleasant. Water chestnuts provide crunch. Real water chestnuts (from Asian market) are 10X better and also 10X more difficult to manage than tinned. Maybe heavily limed up jícama can substitute or crunchy apple. Bacon is smeared with brown sugar, a water chestnut slice is placed in the middle, a small chunk of liver, wrapped and poked with a toothpick. Baked until bacon completes cooking and liver inside is done.

One time Dr. Fred ate one raw. The bacon is half cooked and looks attractive to some when the light is not bright. I hadn't yet put the tray in the oven when he grabbed one and ate it before I could stop him. Went like this: grab/plunk. "You ... might ... want ... to ... wait ... until ... those ... are ... baked." Hey, I tried to stop him.