There’s an old joke that goes: How do you know when someone becomes a vegetarian? They’ll tell you. So anyway, I recently became a vegetarian. It’s something I’d spent years thinking about, but I could never quite align my actions with my beliefs. In the last few years, however, I’ve become very active in animal rescue, and it finally got to me. I could no longer pretend that animals lack complex emotions and interior lives. It became impossible to live as though cats and dogs can love and fear and want and worry, but that animals we don’t keep as pets are turnips with feet.
Still, the prospect of going meatless seemed daunting. I live in New Orleans. Aside from my own grazing at home, I’m not sure I’ve ever had a meal that didn’t have at least one of God’s creatures next to the braised carrots or atop a bed of rice. Complicating matters is that I have a gluten allergy. Losing access to dinner rolls and most main courses seemed like an insurmountable problem.
