Lesbian comedian Bev Googlestein takes us on a tour of her tastebuds with her new autobiographical cookbook, Me & My Cucumber or growing up gay the vegan way
“I guess you would have said my Mom could cook. If you were using the word in the strictest sense of the meaning. She could take food from the refrigerator and place it in a pan. Often however she would forget to take off the wrapping and we’d be left with fish with fried paper skin or baked beans and tin and label on toast.
It wasn’t that my mom was hopeless, she just didnt care about food. And that might be the reason for my turning vegan at three. That and the crush I had on my nursery school teacher, Ms Hatthaway.
Ms Hatthaway never allowed meat at the nursery school. “Meat is for barbarians and dogs” she would cry and we’d all chant back, “For lions in Africa or fat stinky hogs,”
then she’d sing again, “For people who don’t know what a cucumbers for”
and then we’d pipe in with the next line, “For fat rich men with no necks who keep us all poor”.
Ms Hatthaway was a socialist and wore only red and called us comrade. She had long curly hair and smelled fainlty of wee and vagina and I was never sure whether it was hers or someone elses. The wee OR the vagina.
I was a precocious three year old. I could read and write and do somersaults in gym class and drive a car. ”
Stay tuned next week for more adventures of a childhood comic genius vegan �
