vegetarian day fail

We're making great progress on the bathroom renovation, but in the meantime, I feel like I'm a little bit behind on a couple of list items.  I haven't seen a movie in a while, my booze-free days are few and far between, and I'm also eating meat pretty much every day.  I really could use a few meatless days to get myself back up to speed on my requisite number of vegetarian days.

Yesterday, however, I went nearly all day without having meat.  I had a toasted bagel with butter for breakfast.  At work, I got really busy, so I didn't really eat lunch.  We had cake, because Jocelyn is moving to Chicago.  There were chips and pretzels, too.  But nothing that involved any kind of meat.

For years, at this point, Bob and Grant have suggested that we all go to Buttermilk Channel, a terrific restaurant in Carroll Gardens.  I'd been there once before, and really loved it. And I knew that they had a vegetarian menu.  This seemed like a really great opportunity to have a vegetarian day!  I'd already made it to dinner without meat.  We were going somewhere where I could get a really tasty vegetarian meal.  Perfect!

That's not to say that I wasn't a little bit conflicted.  They had lobster on the menu--butterflied and roasted with squid ink pasta and spring vegetables on the side.  Their fried chicken is legendary.  And people swear by their duck meatloaf.   I was weighing all of those options, but, at the same time, there was a pasta dish that was vegetarian and looked terrific (a woman at the bar was having it, when we came in).

As I was weighing my options, we ordered a bar snack--specifically, these delicious smokey-sweet almonds.  I talked it through with David, Bob and Grant.  Should I give in and have meat, or should I stick to my guns and have the pasta?

Then, in the middle of my deliberation, David says, "Well, the nuts are maple bacon almonds. You've already blown it, I think."

What?  When you eat a handful of nuts, you'd never think that they'd have meat in them!  But they did.  And I'm totally okay with that, because my rule is that bacon is alsome, and should be eaten as often as humanly possible.  Still, this may be the first time in my adult life that I've accidentally eaten bacon.

So, having screwed up my plan with three delicious meat almonds, I ordered my meal:  butter lettuce salad with green goddess dressing and duck crackings (meat in my salad); and the most incredible fried chicken I've had in a good long while.

Sometimes a "fail" in one respect, turns into a "win" very quickly.

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