The Vegan Diaries, Day 4: Black Friday

I awoke to a rather unusual surprise this morning. At about 8:30 am, the power suddenly went out in my house, right as a nasty storm was blowing through northern California. My housemates and I looked outside to see if we were the only ones in the neighborhood affected, and it was pretty clear that the entire surrounding area was without electricity.

It was my first California rolling blackout! How exciting!

I was originally going to have a nice heaping bowl of high fiber, naturally organic Super Colon Blow with soy milk to start my day, but we all decided not to open the refrigerator. We didn’t know how long this blackout was going to last, and we wanted to keep the fridge as cool inside as possible. So, we all made an executive decision to go venturing out into the raging storm and find a greasy spoon in Chico to satisfy our taste buds. I was salivating at the thought of eating a big plate of hash browns just sopping with ketchup. Boy, oh boy! This day was really starting to shape up!

But the culinary gods were not on my side this morning. As we drove throughout town, we noticed that all our breakfast nooks were closed and without power. Every now and then, we’d find a pocket of businesses that had somehow avoided the mass blackout, but pretty much anything even associated with breakfast was shut down for good.

Bye bye hash browns.

It was at that moment that we suddenly discovered a Starbucks that was open, so we drove towards it with great anticipation. Unfortunately, everyone else in town had the same idea that we did, and within minutes, Starbucks became a scene of mass hysteria. Bodies upon bodies were crammed into the tiny little coffee house, fighting each other to get their caffeine fix. I feared for my life, so I skipped this Starbucks death trap, went over next door to Jamba Juice and had a Peach Perfection all-fruit drink instead. Ah, Jamba Juice… my fruity vegan friend during times of crisis.

There’s not a hell of a lot to do in a place like Chico during a blackout. We ended up going to Target to buy some clothes, but got kicked out when their power went down. So we then went to Costco to waste some time. My housemates indulged in the many free food samples—all made from animal products—that Costco hands out like gateway drugs to get shoppers hooked on their stuff. My housemates then started gorging themselves on two huge kosher hot dogs that they bought for lunch.

I bought a bag of raisins.

Once I got home, I violated the ban on the refrigerator by pulling out my hummus and eating that along with an orange and half of a pomegranate. I then spent my afternoon reading a book about beans. There’s all kinds of beans: lima beans, split pea beans, lentil beans, navy beans, black beans, red beans, garbanzo beans, soybean beans... as I said earlier, when there’s a blackout going on in Chico, there’s not a lot to do.

The power still didn’t return this evening, so for dinner, I had to resort to eating peanut butter, apples and celery by candlelight. And by golly, it was the most romantic peanut butter, apples and celery eating experience I have ever had.