Fair and (three) square(s)
As a vegetarian, there are some cuisines that I consider limited, if not off-limits, to me. I’ve never been particularly worried about this. It’s a kind of agree-to-disagree scenario - if I’m not worth your time, you’re not worth my money. Fair and square.
So to my mind, it’s pretty simple. When it comes to having a choice, this is roughly how I see cuisines…
Thai = brilliant
Chinese = bad
(there’s the occasional exception here, but almost every time I get cornered into going to a Chinese restaurant, I wind up eating green vegetables in soy sauce, boiled rice, and bland, gelatinous silken tofu, which all tastes like pork fat anyway - blerg. In other words, it’s not food you go out for. As for yum cha - don’t even go there!)
German = wouldn’t bother
Italian = great
Greek = good
(though this can vary wildly from menu to menu)
Turkish = good
Indian = good
(if I’m in the mood and the lassi doesn’t poison my friends)
Tony Roma’s Ribs Joint = nightmarish
(and anatomically incorrect)
French cuisine also falls into my “wouldn’t bother” category. I’ve seen enough cooking shows to know that the people who bring you a turkey covered in duck fat, layered in bacon, covered in goose fat (with a sprig of rosemary, of course) and doused in double cream, are probably not going to be renowned for the kind of food I consider edible.
Still, with a few friends and me forming a foodie mini-club, my cuisine comfort zone will be challenged. As well it should be.
We’ve informally dubbed our group ”Olibe Balzac”. “Olibe” because it would be confusing to spell out when we leave phone bookings (hi-larious). And “Balzac” because it’s the name of a nice restaurant in Randwick - and it’s also it’s rude and funny.
Olibe’s purpose is to discover and experience all the good food in our fair city. After all, as far as food goes, Sydney is like Homer Simpson’s “land of chocolate” - a wonderous place filled with good things of all different kinds (Mmmm - chocolate half price!).
Put another way, our Sydney restaurant “shortlist” gets longer by the week.
For my part, I’m throwing caution to the wind with a French restaurant slated as our first excursion. I’m told our booking voicemail went something like this:
“Hi, I’d like to book a table for Wednesday the 16th July at 7:30pm. That’s next Wednesday, not this Wednesday. At 7:30pm. It’s for 4 people. Actually, 3 people and 1 vegetarian. I mean 3 normal people and 1 vegetarian. I mean 4 people, one of which is a vegetarian. Um. Maybe you should call me. Thanks.”
Maybe we shouldn’t go by “Olibe” after all - we’re good enough at being confusing all by ourselves. 
Pet hate FAQs
Okay, so I started off this blog saying that we, as vegetarians in an omnivorous world, come in peace and spouting words of hippie harmony among all who eat.
However, this is still Veggie Rant and, to that end, here are some of the questions I get asked that make me want to slap people upside their head…
- Can’t you just eat around it?
Would you eat around a muddy old boot? It’s almost the same thing to me! - Do you eat seafood?
Fish (and friends) is not a #$%^ing vegetable!!! - So what do you eat then?
Oh, nothing, obviously…
- Don’t you get bored?
Food rarely bores me - but hearing the same dumb question for the 17,000th time sure does! Since when do animals = variety? How many different animals do you eat most of the time? Beef, chicken, ham/pork, lamb, fish - right? That makes 5 (though I know many omnivores who’ll stick mostly to chicken and beef over and over again). How many vegetables and fruits and grains and other products are there? How many ways can you prepare them? I ain’t missin’ those 5 left back at the farm, y’all. - So, how come you still own leather shoes?
Well, I’m not gonna eat them, am I?! - How could you not like meat?!
See question 1. Each to their own - and you can keep it. - Don’t you have problems with iron deficiency?
Never in all my 12 years as a vego have I been iron deficient. Could be something to do with getting enough vitamin C to can absorb iron efficiently, perhaps. Just saying… Besides, do I ever ask you how often you get food poisoning from eating animals, hm? Of course not. Why? Because it’s downright rude! It’s like asking an elderly person if they get haemorrhoids - you know, just ’cause they’re old. Honestly! - But you don’t look like a vegetarian…
Granted, not exactly a question, but it’s one I’ve heard a few times. And I’m not sure what it means - is it a compliment or an insult… or both?! Compliment: “You don’t look weak, pale and sickly”. Insult: “So why aren’t you thinner?” And, funnily enough, both versions are compliments and insults simultaneously. Don’t get me started - I’ll be here all day!
What are some of your pet-hate FAQs - vego or otherwise?
So why are you a vego?
It’s the question I’ve been asked countless times since I made the switch almost 12 years ago. Sometimes it can be a loaded question designed to get you on a militant rant about cages and extolling the virtues of tempeh, but most of the time, people are just curious. And fair enough - if I met an alien, I’d be curious too.
Unfortunately, the answer I’ll almost always give is pretty bland and not even close to the whole(grain) truth. First, I’m quick to put them at ease with this:
“It’s just a matter of preference, not activism or anything…”
Then, once I feel a little bit less like they’re going to hate me, I follow it up with a bit more of an explanation…
“I never really liked meat as a kid, then one day I gave up red meat and never ate it again. The other animals kind of just marched off with it too and I was left alone with the veggies in the garden…”
Okay, so that’s a far cleverer version of what I actually say. Still, it’s only part of the story.
It all began when I was 15 and I found a leaflet from a health food store on the health benefits of vegetarianism. In a clever, informal-albeit-bombastic style, it went so far as to claim that, in an evolutionary/biological sense, humans were simply not equipped to be carnivores.
Carnivores, it said, have sharp, pointy teeth, while herbivores have flat, square-ish teeth. Carnivores have short, fast intestinal tracts (ew), while herbivores have long, involved ones (also, ew). To my knowledge, this is where all of those “undigested meat sitting in your gut” arguments come from. It also said that the naturally-forming toxins in an animal much larger than us, such as a cow, are in too high a concentration for our consumption.
Then there are the other aspects of modern life such as the hormones and antibiotics given to livestock, mercury in the water for seafood, and feeding normally grain-eating animals their own dead relatives in pellet form. And none of this even touches the humanitarian argument, or the idea of how cruelty or trauma might affect the quality of what you eat.
Whether all - or any - of this stuff is absolute, unequivocal fact, I’m not sure. However, to a 15-year-old know-it-all who made ’being contrary’ a way of life, it was a pretty convincing argument. Add to that…
- “I never really liked meat” - I still remember being about 5 years old and sitting at the table eating around the mince in spaghetti bolognese! Now that’s dedication…
- I got quite sick from chicken once, to which a relative replied “you can’t let one experience dictate your whole life”. Oh no? Just watch me!
- And one day, I decided that seafood “wasn’t that great anyway”…
…and voila - I became a vego.
This occurred to the mild amusement of some of my friends, and the sheer horror of others. Then there were the parents of friends who thought it heralded an eating disorder - which is ridiculous considering my lifelong obsession with chocolate and my 100% serious phobia of puking (that’s another story)!
And now, 12 years later, it seems my vegetarianism isn’t a passing fad or me being contrary, and it’s certainly not an eating disorder! But I’m not an activist either.
“It’s just a matter of preference…”
We come in peace
I’m on a quest. A quest to set wrongs right, to set the record straight, to set my people free.
I’m on a mission to tell you that we’re not out to get you, or change you, or even judge you.
I’m here to implore and reassure you that it’ll all be okay once you discover I am…
“…a Vegetarian.”
Because it shouldn’t be a barrier between us, or even an issue. And here’s why:
Not every vegetarian wants to wage war on omnivores.
Not every vegetarian wants to debate the ethics of food, hell-bent on changing eating habits for the sake of innocent animals everywhere, or to send people on a harrowing trip - imaginary or real - down to the abattoir to show them “what really goes on”, or insist that you go out into the wild and shoot-and-gut a boar so you know what it’s like to have “blood on your hands”.
Not every vegetarian is a bombastic eco-warrior, an enlightened yogi, or, while I’m on the subject, an anemic hippie who’d insist that even lions eat tofu.
Some of us just want to get on with our lives, meat-free.
Some of us even want to integrate with the “normal” people - the omnivores. Some of us have far more omnivorous friends than vegetarian ones, and have little interest in converting people (though, in the event of a good friend deciding to make the switch, the lonely vego could be forgiven for feeling at least a little bit excited/vindicated).
The following may be a shocking admission, but here goes: I became a vegetarian because I never really liked meat. This is unfathomable to the more meat-partial members of society, but there you have it.
I also believe I’m healthier this way - it doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me. And, while I’m certainly no activist, I do feel a little bit warm and fuzzy that I play a reduced role in some of the animal cruelty that goes on. But that’s as far as it goes.
It’s not a protest or a statement or a contribution - just a personal choice. The “saved” animals are a byproduct (or, in this case, NOT).
I’m not bothered whether you eat animals or not - I’m even happy when my friends enjoy what they’re eating, regardless of what it is (though I will admit that I do feel a little bit squeamish when a friend has rabbit on his plate and calls it “bunny”).
One of the missions of this blog is to find ways for us to all go out to dinner with peace, love and the occasional mungbean. Though I will share with you one last admission…
I’m not sure what a mungbean is.