Sloan: Taking a shot at vegetarianism

With a young vegan role-modeling new tricks about plants making her more mature and benevolent than an old hound, on May 5 I said cherrio to Paleo.

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Competitive about everything from outlasting strangers in saunas to solar-powering my noggin (sometimes in a close shave) more reflectively than fellow Neanderthals to hooping with farm-to-market kids on modern peach baskets, being out-saged by 21-year-old Portales resident Desiree Cooper — who probably thinks ’80s hair bands are hourglass-shaped hair ties — seared my dog-eat-dog pride like a blackened hotdog in a KKK bonfire.

With my social growth pogoing between playground and prom level, I suspected animal carcinogens (heightened by hippie-days pot and mushroom tea) had stunted my development like cafeteria ketchup counting as a vegetable.

Since we are what we eat (and read, or — for some — what the fox says), Cooper’s gatherer diet apparently metamorphed her into an old soul floating above my heel.

The antithesis of the fountain of youth, it was a slam dunk the preternaturally wizened daughter of legendary Roswell High basketball coach Britt Cooper had discovered the fountain of seasoning — on everything without eyes (except potatoes): including her grandma’s vegan chili, teriyaki vegetable bowls and baked sweet potatoes.

Meanwhile, I remained raw, salty and half-baked.

For accountability, I posted on Facebook, “This is Day One of my trial as a vegetarian. (Back off, vegans. I'm not giving up ice cream or honey on pancakes.)”

Friends from Florida to California supported me unconditionally with:

“I will eat some pork chops in your honor.” “We’re omnivores and always will be.” “Being vegetarian is a huge missed steak.”

With such meaty encouragement stoking my cuisine competitiveness, my only backsliding (excepting briefly floundering with grouper just for the halibut on the Texas coast) has been animal crackers.

Although I’m still flunking “plays well with others,” Cooper, a pop-culture authority specializing in Pokemon, has graciously supported my vegan-light path toward college-level maturity.

Shepherding with the unclogged-with-mutton-arteries enlightenment of a vegan-chef headmaster to her grasshopper-in-training for The Culinary School of Side Dishes, she mentored, “I have no beef with vegetarians.”

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]