Twinkie Sushi

They have a recipe on the Hostess Twinkies website for Twinkie Sushi!

Tip: "Light" Twinkies are marginally vegetarian, without the "animal and/or vegetable shortening" that figures so menacingly in the ingredients of so many processed baked goods. I think it means "whatever was on sale that day at the rendering plant," which caused Twinkies to pop to mind as I was reading the article on Jimmy Hoffa in The Mafia Encyclopedia, where they suggested that Mr. Hoffa had been disposed of at a rendering plant in New Jersey.

I turned vegetarian in 1973 because my girlfriend that summer, (whom I mentioned previously in the post about cream cheese chile roll-ups), was a vegetarian and refused to kiss me if I ate meat. So that pretty well doomed me as a meat eater. Her reason for not eating meat was that "Those animals never did anything to me!" which was still what she said last time we were in regular contact in the 80's. I've always admired that. Today it bothers me a lot more because of the suffering that goes into it than for the simple fact that it's incredibly gross. Initially, however, I found that being off it for a few months caused it to change radically in my perception. A pot roast was no longer just a pot roast, but a scene from Silence of the Lambs. And don't get me started on lamb! So I haven't eaten any red meat or fowl since then.

I decided to start eating fish in 1980, and I don't really remember why, but I do recall the first time vividly, putting a piece in the oven and sitting in the living room feeling like I was performing some kind of cannibalistic torture-murder ritual. It's a miracle I could choke it down. I go through phases where I can't stand the idea of it, and I go off it for a few months or a year. But generally nowadays it's pretty normal to me. So I can say I was a vegetarian for seven years and have had strong vegetarian tendencies ever since.

For several years recently I couldn't stand eating shrimp, crab or lobster, just because, (as I think everyone knows), they're bugs. Sea-dwelling arthropods, not much different from a cockroach or a spider. And I know they eat tarantualas in South America, and I bet if you're used to the idea they're just as scrumptious as Alaskan King Crab. But a spider's a spider. Even so, I've had shrimp a couple of times recently, and I have to say, it was good. And it didn't even "bug" me.

A lot of vegetarians do it more for good health than out of concern for animals or disgust at consuming animal body fluids and tissues. This can lead to confusion. Like when someone said, "How come you drink Coke if you're a vegetarian?" and I said "Oh man! I've never thought of that! Those rats fall into the vats and dissolve in there! Yuck!"

Meat eating served us well when survival of the species depended more on finding a meal than on curbing our own excessive ability to consume, destroy and reproduce. I call them "The Three F's," the three things every species must do to live: to feed, fight (against predators, competitors, and the elements), and ... procreate. A profound irony of human existence is that we have learned to do all three so well, that the last serious threat to our collective survival, short of asteroid impact, is our own ability to perform those three primary functions so efficiently, on such a vast scale. The most important "fight" facing us now is the one to check our own extremes of destructiveness. Vegetarianism, by making better use of resources, can be a key element in winning that fight, much as an omnivorous diet coupled with tool making was key to our survival long ago.

I often tell Boo Radley when he menaces poor Sophy or Samantha, fur puffed out, spine-tingling hisses and moans spewing out between his bared fangs: "You carnivores think you're so dangerous. Ha! You got nothing on us omnivores. We have the Bomb!"

Oh yeah ... "and TWINKIES!"