Kentucky Fried Chick...in Louisville

I wanted to provide ya'll (sorry, I picked up this linguistic foible during my travels through Kentucky) with an artsier picture of my vegan red bean and quinoa chili, but I opted for this interpretation of my “canned soup" instead.

The Lentil Project faced (and conquered) its very first challenge: a weekend youth leadership conference in Louisville, Kentucky. My limited resources and I had to quickly figure out a balanced, sustainable meal plan for three whole days in a hotel. I was incredibly lucky, though, because amongst my traveling companions there was Bill and Lorraine, who were also determined to bring prepared food to the conference. In fact, they're seasoned pros at organizing and providing meals for dozens of people during a week-long music festival every summer. For this trip, they brought coolers, a toaster oven, snacks, and tons of food for everyone's breakfast and lunch. But most of all, they brought companionship during my meals. Don't get me wrong, I’m not the kind of single girl who cannot be alone, but I only ever enjoy meals when I’m in the company of others. Food is a shared experience for me, plain and simple. Bill and Lorraine, who support the Lentil Project whole-heartedly, were that very crucial accountability system that a girl like me, a food addict who is surrounded by a city's worth of decent restaurants, needs like the air itself.

I met the challenge of this conference with all the excitement and energy of a 5-year old on Christmas morning. Like I've mentioned before, my sisters and I have a pretty adventurous spirit when it comes to cooking challenges. In fact, when I became a vegetarian, I didn't dwell on what I "lost" by not eating meat; I made a mental checklist of all that there was left to enjoy in the world of food and said "Yeah. I can work with that". Three days in a hotel eating food that I made/brought from my pantry? The race is on, Louisville.

I brought protein shakes, PB&J ingredients, a quart of homemade yogurt, and a quart of vegan dumpling stew. I was actually a little OVERLY zealous in my personal meal plan because, as I said, there was already a ton of food. Don't get me wrong, I worked my way through the yogurt and vegan dumpling stew, but for the most part I grazed on cookies, candy, cereal, chocolate, and chips. These were the five C's of my downward gluttonous spiral of binge eating. The diamond industry uses a different set of ‘five C’s’ to convince people to spend thousands of dollars on small, pressurized chunks of coal. In both sets of the ‘five C’s’, mine and the diamond industry’s, what you have is a deceptive, destructive system involving a large supply of processed crap* that comes at great, personal cost. Because I am fully aware that my devoutly vegan sister Kim is going to read this blog, I will leave out the nitty-gritty details involving me plowing through whole bags of potato chips. Let’s just say that there isn't enough quinoa in the world to undo the damage I did to my system at this conference. All I know is that through the haze of crunching oily chips, I kept pushing away the “Why?” that crept up to the front of my brain. In all my years of destructive eating patterns, there was always a “Why?” But then again, there was always enough food to make me forget the answer, too.

On the last day of the conference itself, I attended a lecture that focused upon “Girls’ Ministry”. This particular session was all about the psychology of mean girls. Our speaker asked all of us to go around at our tables and say if we were a girl who bullied or a girl who was bullied. As she spoke, a flash of vivid memories came to my mind: My 7 year-old self sitting down at a lunch table and watching in horror as the entire table's worth of kids immediately got up and tried to cram onto another table; sitting in 5th grade math and listening as one of the students stood up to tell the whole class a joke about killer whales with my name being the punchline; my 11 year-old self walking home from school and having my face covered in spit by a handful of boys riding by me on their bikes; my 13 year-old self walking home from school, bawling, as some kid called me every horrible name you could think of for the duration of that walk; my 15 year-old self participating in Spanish class and having my butt and back fat grabbed repeatedly by a boy in the class. When it came for my turn at the table to say that I was a bullied girl, my throat was constricted and it took every ounce of personal restraint to not become completely unhinged.

I’m sorry I couldn’t provide yous (back in Jersey mode) with a funnier anecdote here, but these are my stories for better or worse. I wish I could give you a legitimate reason for why I felt the need to eat my way through the feelings of inadequacy and loneliness that hit me like a ton of bricks during a conference where I was surrounded by close friends, several thousand Christian youth leaders, and the numerous songs and sermons declaring the love of God. All I can say is that it happened and it's over.

Yeesh, Debbie Downer, right? Wan Wannn Waaaaaannnnnn

Alright, well despite my destructive emotional eating patterns at the hotel, I didn’t buy any food! I even sat in several restaurants, drinking as much free water as I could get into my system, without so much as glancing at the menus. I know that this small victory doesn’t quite undo the Prozac-worthy spit-in-the-face story, but it’s something at least. Also, from the recent binge debacle I have learned something quite valuable: For skin reasons alone, I will not be eating any sugar in the near future. I’ve had Mt. Vesuvius on my chin all weekend long and let me tell you that nothing is more attractive to the hot, single Christian youth leader guys quite like a scabby zit with a top layer of flaked, plastered skin that one can only attain through multiple dabs of cheap concealer. Oh yeah, I'm keeping the message of abstinence strong and loud.

*When I refer to the processed crap, I want to point out that this is not a reflection upon the people who made or brought that food; this is about me. There were a lot of amazing snack foods, with the emphasis being on the word 'snack'. If my proverbial angel on the shoulder could have spoken, it would have probably said, 'Hey, Ang, sure you can have a small cookie...or...oh wow, ok, 12. They're not meal supplement cookies, you know but...oh...and now you're chasing them with Sun Chips? That's...different. And now you've discovered the fun-sized Snickers. Eating the whole bag is not what makes them fun, Angie. Um, stop. Seriously."