The Magical Hanukkahtime Section Variety Hour is an eight-day festival of light reading. BC Magazine's sports editor spreads his Gentile love in every other section but his own. And because it's Hanukkah, the gifts of are substandard quality: in this case, it's an article. Today: BC Tastes.

One of the most disciplined regimens in today's society is having the will power to eradicate meat from one's diet. I'll say this, it's never on my plate, because normally I'm transferring the ham straight from the buffet to my hands and into my gullet. No need for a plate, that's just unnecessary overhead.

But I'm all down with the no-meat thing. One of my good friends is a vegetarian, and my cousin's Vegan. And vegetarian restaurants can serve some of the best food out there. A cheese omelet with spinach and black olives. Wow, I could sure go for one of those right now. And I will...

[45 minutes later]

..Wow, that ruled.

The omelet rules, more so when it's 10 at night and you've missed the last 14 mornings to eat breakfast. Breakfast for dinner ... it's like the perfect crime, as if someone has found a loophole in the system. As opposed to pot roast for breakfast — nobody's impressed.

Nor am I impressed with someone eating a roast that looks like a roast and tastes like a roast but isn't actually a roast, but rather a tofu. To quote The Onion, It's roast... almost.

Again, I'm all for the Vegan and vegetarian diet, but why build a model of a turkey — and give it a knockoff name — if it's not a turkey? The "Tofurky" name might appeal to those new vegetarians looking to bridge the palette between a meatless diet and the thrill of Thanksgiving turkey. But it's still endorsing the concept of turkey as a whole. Meat eaters don't take a vegetarian item like a salad and replace Romaine lettuce with pulled pork (Although I don't know why. Lean Cuisine hates my suggestions).

I went to a Vegan restaurant once, as suggested by my Vegan cousin, and ordered a sandwich on the menu they called a "No Harm Chicken Parm." Essentially it was a Parmesan chicken sandwich, but instead of chicken, it was tofu. Instead of Parmesan cheese, there was air. (The bread was the same!) In all fairness, with an open mind and without a name suggesting actual meat, the sandwich would have been very tasty, even for a sammich snob.

Now, tofu might pass better as a mock turkey as opposed to mock chicken, although tofu is really the stem cell of the culinary experience. Sauce it up, and it can taste like any meat. (Exception: bacon.) But why consume a food that looks like meat but isn't meat? Why compensate for not skipping on the rotisserie chicken by skewering a tofu loaf and calling it "no-tissue-ie chicken?" It's almost like when a man hides his homosexuality but always seems to buy an irrationally high number of bananas, hot dogs, and miniature Washington Monument replicas.

Tofu, just be yourself. Don't gallivant about our tables as mock chicken, mock turkey, or mockwurst. You have a lot of good qualities, and nobody's going to love you if you're trying to be like everyone else. Wear your soyhood like a badge. The omelet knows who it is, after all.

Hmm. Omelet.

[disappears]