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Delving into food politics and culture for this evening, as we enter the summer grilling season, this vegetarian has noticed two rules of thumb among some carnivorous friends of mine I keep hearing:
1. He doesn't eat meat, so he must not know how to marinate/grill it.
2. I love vegetarian food you make- that roasted butternut squash apple soup is yummy!- but I could never go to a vegetarian restaurant.
On the first, what I think some folks forget is that a lot of vegetarians- I'd even wager most- actually grew up eating, and yes, even cooking, meat. For me, it was 20 whole years. I do know what good chicken, burgers, buffalo wings, polish sausage taste like- heck, once in awhile I can even imagine eating it. Due to my father's impressive marinating skills, I've even got a few recipes up my sleeve, and I can sure handle a grill. Can't say the same for everyone, but no need to assume just because one doesn't like something, it means they don't know what to do with it.
On the second, this is something I noticed in college, but as there have been a couple of no-meat establishments sprung up recently, it's popped back in my head. When I invite people over for dinner, I usually don't tell them I don't serve meat (unless it's a special occasion, like someone's birthday). They usually leave pretty darn full and content with all the dishes I've made. But if I invite them to meet for dinner at a new restaurant that's vegetarian, suddenly it's a whole other world. "I wouldn't know what to eat at a vegetarian restaurant," one friend told me. "But I'm not a vegetarian," said another. True story.
It goes into what I think is perhaps a negative connotation with vegetarianism, that it's an exclusive culture of PETA members who frown at their friend's plates or something. When I was younger and I was in the kind of place where they didn't serve a lot of decent non-meat entrees (salad and pasta with sauce were basically it), I would sometimes literally tell the server I was allergic to meat so as to entice their sympathy and in hopes the chef might whip me up something great. I did that because whenever I told them I was a vegetarian, I got a look of disgust and sometimes an eyeroll, and salad/pasta with sauce is what I ended up with. Again, non-meat might be fine- or even people concerned about their heart choosing to not order red meat for the evening- but vegetarian is like a cult.
It's an interesting food culture in which we live. I think it's important to define vegetarians by their food choices. It's the same food choices as when as you may choose not to eat Chilean sea bass because it's endangered, or choose to cut down on red meat for health reasons. I see it as that more than any kind of label or belief system.
This is an open thread on food culture and your own stories- vegetarians and carnivores alike!- on it.
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Zambians take great pride in their local foods and--thankfully for us--many of their traditional dishes are vegetarian.
