There are many different types of vegetarians. There’s the type that won’t eat any animal products at all; the type that will eat eggs and dairy, but not fish; and the type that will only eat food that is raw. Then there’s my daughter, Clementine. Clementine has created her own type of vegetarianism, one that is so simple that she should easily be able to follow it for the rest of her life. Clementine is the type of vegetarian that will only eat things that have been breaded, and deep-fried.
I know what you’re thinking: that’s not a vegetarian, that’s a redneck; and it’s true that in her quest to sample the fryers of the world, Clementine has eaten her fair share of meat. (As I commit this public outing of Clementine’s not-quite-so-vegetarian lifestyle, I am irresistibly reminded of the time I saw Michael Stipe of R.E.M. outed in a vegetarian magazine. “ READER ALERT!!!” screamed the headline, “ Michael Stipe seen in Atlanta area grocery store purchasing ROTISSERIE CHICKEN!”).
Perhaps not so coincidentally, it was also chicken that began Clementine’s backslide from “true” vegetarian to “sometime” veggie: she just couldn’t stay away from those chicken strips. Of course, it’s not like she has ever really tried, but, even if she were to give it her best shot she would certainly be doomed to fail, since it is a sad facet of the modern restaurant industry that restaurants without chicken strips on their menus are scarcer than, well, hen’s teeth. Mexican restaurants have them. Chinese restaurants have them. I have even been to a Turkish restaurant that, along with its more traditional fare like broiled sheep’s tongue, had them. So ubiquitous is the chicken strip, in fact, that I have no doubt that if we were to someday travel deep enough into the Amazon to discover some unknown civilization, what we would be served at our welcoming banquet would include–you guessed it–chicken strips. (Alternatively, we ourselves would be served as a course; but even if this were to happen, I am sure that some part of us would be breaded, deep-fried, and presented to the chief’s children as “chicken strips”.)
The “chicken-stripping” of America (and beyond) is detrimental on so many different levels (not the least of which being its deleterious effect on poultry morale), but perhaps its most insidious effect has been its cunning ability to undermine all my efforts at ensuring that my children, at least every now and again, eat a food item that does not appear on a big lit up menu with the letters “Mc” in front of it.
Here was the plan: my husband and I decided that whenever our family took a trip, we would insist on stopping at least once at some place of which there existed only one in the whole world: the diners with velvet oil paintings of Bob Dylan in his born-again Christian years, the truck stops selling row after row of “herbal stimulants”, even the combination BBQ joints/fireworks stands.
In doing this, it was our hope that we would be able to expose our children to a wide variety of foods, from peanut soup to piki bread. Instead, what we exposed them (and ourselves) to is the fact that the chicken strip is everywhere. No sooner would we push past the dusty bead curtain into what looked like some funky Middle Eastern souk than our hopes of diversity would be shattered by Clementine waving away the menu to demand, “chicken strips and fries”, which would, to our great chagrin, then appear.
Eliot said that the world will end not with a bang, but a whimper, but from what I’ve seen, he was only half right: judging by the world’s menus alone, I think it will end with a “cluck, cluck.”