Lesson: Always Pack a Lunch

Yesterday John and I embarked on our 4th weekend in a row of vending at Fall festivals. At the last three festivals, we packed a lunch. We ate the packed lunch, and since there is little else to do but sit in our booth and wait for the occasional buyer, we also ate some good festival food - ice cream, french fries, & nachos. Yesterday we decided not to pack a lunch because we figured we'd just eat the junk food anyway. No problem.

Except it was a problem. John decided (I'm sure with visions of heroism dancing in his head) to give blood soon after we got to the show. You can read about his experience here. Now I'm all for giving blood and saving lives, just not when it involves:

• not being able to lift anything for 24 hours afterwards when you are helping me at a show that involves an 80 lb. tent and various other heavy tubs and equipment that I am now going to have to lift and pack and carry all by myself therefor extending the time of our breakdown by at least 20 minutes.

• and signing a death waiver.

It wasn't a great life-saving experience. The new method of sucking twice as much blood out of you and shooting the extra back into you at room temperature didn't sit well with John, or all of the small children and parents alike who were frightened by a very blue-faced John Duffy, laying down in the walkway beside my booth. It was all very dramatic. He was taking loud, deep breaths with his hands over his head (which exposed his belly due to the tee shirts he constantly wears - thank goodness for the makeover challenge!) and rocking back and forth. Needless to say, it wasn't so good for business.

Joking aside, I was quite worried. I went to find him some food and this was when I realized that no one cares about people that don't eat meat. My festival-food options were: chili, ribs, crab cakes, burgers, chicken wraps, and corn dogs. No french fries. No nachos. No meatless anything. I brushed this off as fate playing a cruel, cruel joke and began walking to the nearest grocery store.

I was sure it would be a quick trip and I could grab a salad and some crackers and be on my way back to save my blue fiance. The problem was that all of the pre-made, ready to go, easy lunch salads had meat in them. I'm not kidding - there was even one with steak. So my next stop for a quick lunch to go was the Lunchables aisle. Out of the abundance of prepackaged meals, only one did not have meat - a very sad looking "nachos" pack. I tried looking for something that didn't involve some very questionable cheese, but there was no easy veggie-friendly lunches to be found. Nachos it was. John probably preferred the nachos over a salad anyway, but alas, they did not stop him from turning blue several more times before the festival was over.

After a hard day of wishing we could eat meat (out of neccessity of course), matters were made worse at dinner. We went to a chain restaraunt for a friend's birthday and were met with a menu with a total of three meatless options, two of which were appetizers. Out of the eight salads they featured as entrees, none were meatless. Fortunately the soup & salad combo came with a small, meatless salad (and lucky for me the soup of the day was not chicken noodle). John was forced to ask for his ceasar salad without any meat, which brought on several questions and strange looks from our waitress.

The upside to all of this was that our bill was only 17 dollars (much less if you exclude the beers) compared to the 40 dollars of the couple sitting beside us who enjoyed a burger and chicken pasta. I'm guessing that longtime non-meat eaters must be really efficient cooks because there are no options for unprepared vegetarians. Lesson learned. Always pack a lunch.