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I’ve been a strict vegetarian for over 12 years, and I’m kind of a pain in the ass. I’m the girl that wants you to place her veggie burger on a different part of the grill than where the hamburgers were cooked, asks you to roast the vegetables separate from the meat, and will refuse food that has been made with chicken/beef/pork/fish stock. I know – I’m a bit high maintenance. At least I am in the US.
Since we’ve been traveling, I’ve had to relax my standards a bit. Okay, maybe “had to” is a bit strong – I could stay as strict as I’d like but that wouldn’t allow me to taste new local foods. Since half the fun of traveling is eating, I’ve decided to relax about the whole thing. In El Salvador I pretended the yummy pupusas were not cooked in pork fat. In Nicaragua, I ignored suspicions about “flavor enhancers” in my black beans and rice. And in Vietnam, I’m choosing to forget what is in the broth of that delicious pho pictured above. (As a side note – our favorite restaurant in Denver makes an excellent vegetarian broth version of pho, but it has not been easy to find in Vietnam itself.)
While I haven’t eaten any meat outright, I’ve become more flexitarian about what I will and won’t consume. The most basic reason that I’m a vegetarian (among several) is because I don’t like the taste or texture of meat. So my current rule of thumb is that if my seemingly vegetarian food tastes like meat and I don’t like it, I don’t eat it. If it seems vegetarian enough and I’m enjoying it, I’ll look the other way if I see a piece of chicken floating by. (I do avoid fish as much as possible, though, because I find it to be the most offensive.) I have no idea how many times I’ve eaten foods cooked in animal fats or stocks, and I don’t really want to know. So far, nothing has made me sick, and that’s good enough for me.
Traveling without being able to sample the local cuisine would be a major bummer, so choosing to be a little more flexible has made eating easier and more enjoyable. It’s a lot more fun to eat street food and try new dishes when you aren’t overanalyzing the ingredients. I’m not sure if I’ll stick to flexitarian rules when we get back to the US or go back to my strict vegetarian ways, but for now it really doesn’t matter. I’m off to get some more delicious, delicious pho.
