HAT TIPS
Hello,
Last week, when I told you about our Medora adventure, I failed to mention our evening meal.
Now, when you travel with a group from Washington, D.C., you kind of expect something different. Not bad or anything, just different.
The plan was to go to the pitchfork fondue. I’m not real fond of pitchfork fondues. I grew up around pitchforks and I’m a little leery of where they have been most of their life. Shirley assures me that these forks have never seen the inside of a barn or cleaned out the pen where you keep the calves that have developed scours. I know I should trust her, but then, how could she be certain.
And besides, steaks are to be cooked over a fire, not boiled in oil. Unless of course they are steak tips.
That was the plan anyway, but we were visiting and time slipped away so it was bar pizza for supper before the musical.
The lady I was sitting next to was a vegan. I guess vegan is a relatively new word. It’s like a professional vegetarian. Something we don’t see a lot of in ranch country. They don’t eat meat. Of any kind. They don’t drink milk. They don’t eat cheese. They die relatively young from nothing.
It reminds me of a story Shirley tells.
She was at a legislative meeting in some far away city. With legislators from across the nation. The gentleman she was sitting next to asked what she did for a living. She proudly explained that she was a rancher. That we had a cow/calf operation and raised some horses. He looked at her with distaste and proclaimed that he was a “vegan.” Shirley is a country girl. She quickly exclaimed, “I just loved Star Trek too!” You can take the girl out of the mountain but you can’t take the mountain out of the girl.
Anyway this young lady I’m sitting by explains that she is a vegan. Not to be confused with the Vigen brothers that ride bucking horses, but it is pronounced the same. She reluctantly eats pizza, but first she picks off the pepperoni, hamburger, and sausage off the meat lovers pizza. She tries to get the cheese off, but it is kind of tough duty. Then she eats this mushy crust with the tomato sauce on. Luckily, she was sitting by a fairly large man that quickly took the stuff she had picked off and topped his pizza with it.
A short time later, the lady, who was still a little gaunt, ordered a BLT. Just trying to be helpful, I quickly pointed out to her that the B in a BLT is bacon! Bacon! I announced rather loudly that our vegan was going to eat bacon!
She quickly explained to me that she loved bacon. So when she became a vegan she went to her rabbi and explained her dilemma. And you know what her rabbi did? The rabbi granted her an exemption to her diet. She can be a vegan and eat bacon! Bacon!
And she was cute. So I explained that I too was going to be a vegan. And I was going to talk to my bartender (I don’t have a rabbi) that I need an exemption also. And I think he will allow me to be a vegan that eats pretty much anything!
Steak, medium rare, cooked over a nice fire please.
Later,
Dean