Vegan Night at UpStairs on the Square: When lentils attack

Earlier this week, I attended a vegan dinner at UpStairs on the Square in Cambridge. No, I'm not a vegan, but I had heard good things about the restaurant and wanted to check it out, and my friend Timm is a vegan as well as my roommate's brother, so the three of us embarked on a culinary adventure, during the making of which no animals were harmed, although about which one run-on sentence was created. Anyways, the restaurant itself is very quirky and our dining room reminded me of an Easter egg. The staff members were all quite friendly, and so were the vegans, until I pulled a McDonald's burger out of my purse and went to town. Just kidding; I did not do that. The meal consisted of a beet and walnut salad, a lentil dish, and a tofu dish, as well as a chocolate dessert that I skipped because I'm allergic to chocolate. Everything was tasty, although the portions were on the small side. The wine, however, was abundant. They made a big deal about the wine being vegan, which was sort of confusing, until I learned that almost all wines go through a fining process that involves filtering through egg whites. Weird, huh? I had no idea.

I was too distracted by the food and my five glasses of wine to take many pictures, but the one thing I did capture on film was our lentil challenge. The objective? To spear one lentil on each prong of a fork. It's tricky-they are slippery little buggers. The victors? Ern and myself. And let's just say that one member of our party came up empty-pronged.