VEGETARIAN BLUES: I’ve been a vegetarian-of-sorts for the past 18 years, and sometimes it ain’t easy finding something good things to eat. I know what to do about dinner, and breakfast ain’t too hard to cover (cereals and such), but finding tasty things for lunch that are easy to make is sometimes a challenge. I used to buy a certain brand of bulgar wheat and cook it up on weekends, but after a while I couldn’t find it in the stores anymore. (This is one of those common little frustrations caused by modern supermarket sales strategies; you find something in the store that you get to like and you start buying it regularly. Then a year later, somebody in the front office looks at a report and decides that it’s not worth giving that item shelf space anymore, something else will make the company more money. Then it’s too bad about those of you who got to like the stuff.)

Oh, bulgar wheat is still commonly available in my vicinity (health food stores and such). But I can’t find the stuff that I got to like so much. What now passes for bulgar wheat is finely ground up chaff, almost like powder. Thus, when you cook it up, it becomes a white, gloppy, tasteless blob. Basically like hominy grits. As with hominy grits, the only way to make it taste good is to thrown in stuff that’s salty and full of fat, like whole milk or butter or gravy. But as a vegetarian, I don’t want that. I want stuff that in itself has taste and texture to it, but ain’t fully of high-blood pressure causing salt and artery-clogging saturated fat. The bulgar wheat that I used to know and love met those conditions; it was course and brown, and even after you cooked it for a few minutes and softened it up, it still had a crunchy texture and a nutty flavor. But now it’s gone forever.

What can I say. God giveth and God taketh away (eth). But maybe God has re-given (eth) in my case. Maybe I can fall in love again. Because I recently found steel-cut oats in the local supermarket. If you haven’t tried them, steel-cut oats still cook up gloppy like regular oatmeal (thus tempting you to pour on the whole milk and sugar). However, they retain part of their hulls, which gives them a toasty flavor and some crunchiness. Almost like the old bulgar wheat that I loved so much. And hey, oats have stuff in it that helps to keep the heart from getting clogged up (so long as you don’t pour in whole milk or butter). So maybe I’m gonna be all right despite the loss of my tasty bulgar wheat. Well, at least until the numbers boys in the front office figure out how they can hype up the profits by putting more super-sugar frosted cereal foods in the breakfast aisle and knocking out the odd stuff like steel-cut oats.

Oh, well, I think I’m gonna go cook some oats up for lunch right now.