Fake Chicken Finger Lickin' Good

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of attending a coworker's party. As I hadn't eaten anything all day, my trip there was spent hoping that there would be something tasty to eat at the party. Since it started at 5 pm, and both my coworker Renee and her husband are vegetarians, I figured there had to be SOMETHING there I could eat. Luckily for me, I was right: there was a large spread of food and several bottles of wine in her kitchen, and I wasted no time making my way toward the grub. Filling my plate with a generous helping of everything I saw, I made sure that I had enough to satiate my appetite, and then commenced the obligatory rounds of mingling, making small talk and stuffing my face.

Eventually, my friend Rashi arrived to the party and we ended up talking in the kitchen. I pointed her to the food and, knowing she is also a vegetarian, said, "You should try the fake chicken fingers. They are pretty tasty." As she started reaching for them, Renee saw her and, sensing impending vegetarian disaster, exclaimed "Don't eat those! Those are real meat. "

Ooops.

I had spent the last half hour shovelling them into my mouth, marveling at how they had managed to create a fake chicken fingers that tasted almost as good as the real thing. Turns out they WERE the real thing, (but for some reason, didn't quite taste like it). Also, the mini quiches with "fake" bacon that I had been eating were chock full of real bacon. Fortunately, the spinach balls didn't have real testicles in them, because I think I would have been too much for me to stomach.

Feeling slightly silly, I made my way downstairs into Renee's basement, where I found an unoccupied couch and a TV conveniently tuned to the game. I sat there for a bit and, still hungry, looked around for something else to eat. I noticed her coffee table contained a small black truck-shaped dish with the back filled with cashews. Confident that these cashews were not hiding a meaty surprise, I began to dine on the nuts.

Eventually, I realized I had eaten almost all the nuts in the truck shaped dish, and it was about then that a couple and their 4 year old twins made their way into the room. When one of the twins grabbed the "truck shaped dish" and started playing with it, it dawned on me that what I had been eating out of was not a dish at all, but this little kid's toy. I then watched in horror as he started sticking his fingers in all the cashews, put some in his mouth, then pulled some out of his mouth and putting them back in his truck - basically doing terrible things that shouldn't be done to poor innocent nuts. I imagine that the nuts I had eaten earlier experienced something very similar, (and helps explain why the nuts I had eaten tasted faintly like little children). Needless to say, my stomach was not very happy with me.

I think in the future, I can avoid these situations if I stuff my pockets full of lettuce, tofu and grass, and only eat my home-brought vegetarian feed at parties. It'll be really cool. Maybe if you're lucky, I'll share with you.