Hangovers, chips and vegetarianism
Lunchtime at last, though I must confess to having eaten my sarnies before midday. I just get too hungry to wait until proper lunchtime.
I visited my mother in Cornwall on Saturday, staying overnight. Consequently I had a hangover on Sunday morning. I only get these hangovers (the head down the toilet kind) when I visit mother. This time it was the whisky, or was it the red wine I had before that? Or the white I had before that? Or the cider I had before that (mother is big on White Lightning cider, a fairly potent (7.5 percent) white cider)? I imagine most people to be on good behaviour when visiting their mothers, but our family just gets drunk. The hangover wasn't too bad though. I chucked it all up, then in the afternoon we went out for lunch, and a good portion of chips did me a power of good. I think chips are good for hangovers.
We did have some initial problems eating out. My wife is vegetarian, and I don't think Cornwall really does veggie. We phoned a few places beforehand to check they catered for veggies. One of them told us, 'Oh yes, we have loads of veggie dishes'. We got there and it was carvery only. They did have lots of vegetables, but it wasn't quite what we had in mind. A plate with several piles of different veg didn't sound very appetising so we moved on. The next place had a choice of stir-fried veg or veggie burger and chips. Fortunately we both fancied the burger and chips, being hungover, and so stayed. We don't normally have this problem in the UK, only Cornwall. The UK is generally good at catering for veggies these days, unlike most of Europe. Turkey is very good, though the restuarants in the cities which market themselves at tourists (mainly English and Germans) are less good. We should be going to Austria later this year, and I'm sure that's going to be a veggie nightmare.
I should say that I'm not vegetarian myself, but I decided to observe Lent this year by giving up meat. I am mostly veggie anyway and enjoy it, but I thought it would be a good idea to try the full 40 days without meat at all. Normally I get burger cravings quite often, but I haven't had this at all in the last 4 1/2 weeks, which I find strange. When Lent is finished I think I'll cut down my meat consumption (I don't eat a lot anyway), even if I don't give up completely. I do have these qualms about the meat industry. It's not qualms about eating meat, just the industry itself - I feel that there's something immoral about the scale of slaughter and the conditions a lot of animals are subjected to. For some reason I think my wife doesn't want me to become completely vegetarian, even though she is vegetarian herself. And if I did ever turn veggie my grandmother would throw a hairy fit, though I'll cope with that.
