Veggie Burgers Suit Me Just Fine

I grew up in a household where eating healthy food was a priority. No candy. No gum. No chips. We don't keep sugar in the house because we don't bake. If you want bread, it's going to have to be whole wheat. Rice? You bet it'll be brown. And we’re vegetarians, too.

I have probably been asked more often about my vegetarian diet than about anything else. Many people seem to have a hard time envisioning their meals without meat. At some point I started noticing a pattern in the reactions of people who had just discovered I am a vegetarian. It goes something like this:

"You're a vegetarian? What do you eat?"
"Oh, you know. Pasta…vegetables…soups. Everything you eat, just no meat."

(Dumbfounded silence follows.)

But when a child becomes an adult, he dictates his own diet. One of my brothers took advantage of this by throwing a “meat party” on his eighteenth birthday. He and a group of friends went to a local restaurant for dinner, and one of them used his digital camera to take a video of him eating shawarma and chicken-matzo ball soup for the first time.

I chose not to follow him on The Meat Path.

I found myself on the brink of adulthood while on a study abroad program in Jerusalem, 5,901 miles from my parents. Even with the freedom that came from being so far away, I stuck with my veggie burgers. I just didn't feel a need for anything else. I guess an authentic Israeli shawarma just isn't my cup of herbal tea.