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A Dollop

As I've mentioned before, I try to eat veggie meals twice a week.  And when left to my own devices, I often resort to the same thing.  Well, I figure I should eventually do something about this, and I had the perfect opportunity to do so a couple of weeks ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had already knocked off one veggie meal.  I was left to my own devices for lunch, so I figured I'd make myself a veggie meal to finish off my weekly requirement.  Rather than grabbing eggs (incidentally, we happened to be out of eggs), I boiled water to cook frozen veggies.  I threw some rice in the rice cooker as I did that, to get that going at the same time.  My plan was to sauté the veggies just a little bit, and throw a little bit of sauce on top.  It wasn't going to be life-altering or anything, but it would've fed me and ensured I ate a veggie meal.

It doesn't take very long for those frozen veggies to be ready, so I had to quickly grab a pan to cook them in.  I didn't want the veggies to sit in water forever, either, since they might end up soggy that way.  I heated the pan & added a little bit of oil, ran the veggies through a colander, and then got down to actually cooking.  Okay, so the only thing that was left was to grab some soy sauce to add a little extra flavoring.

It took me longer than I would've liked to find it, but I did.  Unfortunately for me, as I grabbed the bottle, I noticed the word "fish" on the label.  I'd never really paid that much attention to the make up for soy sauce, but apparently it is possible for soy sauce to contain fish.  Not wanting to risk it, I put it back and looked for another sauce to add.  I mentally patted myself on the back for avoiding a mistake, and went back to cooking.

However, the only other things I saw were rice wine and fish sauce.  Neither seemed like a good option, so I kept rummaging through the cabinet while keeping an eye on the pan.  It was getting to the point where I had to do something or my meal was going to be less than tasty.  I think to fully appreciate the next few moments, I'm going to just write out what went through my head.  So, without further ado,

"Crap, how come we don't have any sauce?"
"Wait, there's one more bottle, what's that?"
"Oyster sauce.  Sweet, we swap that out for soy sauce on our bak choy half the time anyway.  Good thing I found something"
"All right, add the sauce, and I can eat soon"
"Wait a second ... that's OYSTER sauce.  Oysters aren't vegetarian.  Stop pouring!"
"Dammit, didn't catch myself in time.  I got a dollop of the sauce on the vegetables"
"Seriously?  I got an oversized drop on there?  Just one drop?  What are the frickin odds?"
"Hm ... can I still count this?  I want to count this as a veggie meal."
"I shouldn't"
"Yeah, but it's just a stupid drop"
"I shouldn't"
"Dammit, I can't count this as a vegetarian meal.  I guess I'm having another veggie meal tomorrow."

At that point, I sat down to eat, feeling a little dejected.  As I was chewing my food, though, it occurred to me that the "oyster" part might not involve actual oysters.  It's not completely unheard of; companies have figured out how to make artificial flavoring for tons of different flavors.  So, there was a glimmer of hope.  I resolved to check the ingredients on the bottle after I finished my meal.

Let's just say I ate another vegetarian meal the next day.
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