Rocket Number Nine, take off for the planet, Venus.

I am under attack by an alien being! Everything in the kitchen is turning green. I’m getting desperate. There’s no beer, no milk, no chips. The blender screams through the night. The oven is producing things at a frightening rate and I don’t understand any of them. You’ve heard of things growing in the refrigerator. Well, it’s worse than that.

My wife wasn’t always an alien and I have the pictures to prove it. But she has recently revealed herself to me as a Vegan. She tells me this will be a good thing for both of us, but that usually means that I’m going to suffer. My wife loves food and I love her, but my eating habits developed in Minnesota, where, in my formative years, we considered ketchup too spicy and the most ethnic food available was spaghetti, out of a can. My staples were meatloaf, potato chips, and Velveeta. Canned hash, fish sticks, and, if we were really good, some pudding or Jello. Meals, at our house, didn’t involve too much thought. In fact, we spent most of them in front of the television. We were a family who appreciated the basics. I even prepared some of the meals, though I can’t say that I learned to cook much. My mother could only make orange juice and angel food cake. I loved those cakes. If we were bad, she would threaten us with devil’s food.

My wife, Mary Liz, as I call her, is a great cook. A master in the kitchen. An adventuress of unquestioned taste. A gourmet and gourmand of the highest order. Give that girl a couple of tomatoes and some leftovers and be prepared to call it divine intervention. Your taste buds will shoot straight to Heaven. People come over to our house and wash dishes, just to be in the same kitchen with her. We have to throw our friends out.

But, here, I must confess something. I have been a trial to her. A burden of under-appreciation. A philistine set beside such sophistication might be criminal. Her finest creations pass by unnoticed. Desserts that have made other men cry, merely fill me up. I can hear her working in the kitchen at this very moment. Preparing a evening feast that I know I can’t do justice to.

Why she stays with me is a mystery. Sure, I feel guilty. You would too, if your palate were as limited as mine. I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried to expand my idea of what constitutes a good meal, but now this. This Veganism. This organically correct, this life-affirming, this good for your body and soul way of eating somehow sits there on the plate in opposition to everything that has sustained me thus far. No fats. No dairy. No alcohol.

She loves me and is trying to save me from my history and that is something that pierces my heart and I gaze at her gratefully, with a tear in my eye. But that tear, though a sign of the infinite love I have for her, is also a tear for the end of my youth. A tear for the elements that have made up my foundation and have created the cute roll of fat that hangs over the sides of that foundation. A tear that is a sign that, as a great British philosopher once said, all things must pass. All things must pass away.

But, because of my love and my confidence in her ability to transform even the meanest crumbs, well, not crumbs, unfortunately there is no bread involved in this, but, as I was saying, my love and faith in her ability to transform the greenest, the meanest, the most unlikely organic matter into something fit for a king, because of this I follow in the wake of her wisdom. I take the path that she has embraced and can know, with a certainty not unlike the guarantee that comes with a Honda, that all will be well. Me belly full. She satisfy my soul.