Why I'm Vegetarian
I decided "Um, dunno" when people start asking me why I'm vegetarian now might not add to my reputation as a quick wit and entertaining socializer so I've developed my "mission statement"/"testimony." If anything, it's for me so that I can paint clear goals and define a big picture.*
I was nearly vegetarian before I went to India. When I did eat meat, it was usually chicken, and I like to eat fruit. I even like to eat carrots for lunch, and that combined with my hippie-shaming long hair convinced people I was vegetarian. Well, now I don't have to control my irritation when they make silly assumptions just because their own hair is shoulder-length and they prefer barbecue chips for lunch.
When my eldest cousin announced she had turned vegetarian, I actually looked upon it as a sort of betrayal. What was this weird thing she was doing? Didn't she want to appreciate the good food our grandmother and mothers worked all morning to prepare so that we could all sit down together? Furthermore, she restricted herself to corn and pasta, ignoring the dishes she could eat like green beans, okra, and squash from our grandfather's garden or cantaloupe, raw veggies, and lima beans or green peas purchased fresh from the store. And there were always apples and oranges in the crisper in the fridge. I learned early that vegetarianism meant bland, colorless food and distressing your relatives.
I made a lot of effort to eat healthy food before going to India, but I'm not sure I would have experimented with being vegetarian, at least not anytime soon. Since our traditionally-minded school was vegetarian, India forced me to try it, but it was no hardship for me to have three or four cooks prepare fresh food for me every meal. After all, I've never liked cooking. Baking is fun, but cooking just wastes time and delays the moment you can sit down after a draining day of work, relax, and put some food in your miserable stomach.
But to my surprise, India changed my mind on that account as well. First, they served a wonderful variety of flavors and textures, all spiced with different herbs that tasted exotic to me. I constantly asked what ingredients created the different flavors, and Mathew or another staff member was usually happy to bring me some coriander or strange vegetable I'd never seen before to examine for myself which I greatly appreciated. I learned hands-on and objectively (from an Ayurveda lecture) about the six flavors: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, pungent/spicy, and astringent. Ayurveda, an ancient Indian system of medicine, teaches that a balanced meal must include all of these tastes, and it certainly is enjoyable mixing them one at a time in one's rice and discovering how the flavor changes. From eating food with skillfully-used spices, I learned of the potential I'd always been told spices hold.
Secondly, I was surrounded by students who do love to cook, and they kept saying the same thing. They repeated that cooking was very therapeutic and nurturing, but I didn't believe them, shrugging it off as "Some people like to sing/do sports/fill-in-the-blank, some people like to cook." It took the Ayurveda lecture to convince me because what Dr. Harry said made sense. He instructed us to believe that the food will nourish us mind, body, and soul and to concentrate on the food. Malayalis don't talk when they eat, and I don't like the dead silence and shoveling that goes on at their table, but I agree a certain amount of silence is desirable. Silence is the chef's greatest compliment, n'est-ce pas?
So I believe now that preparing and eating fresh food is a worthwhile investment and not a frivolity that steals time from exercise or music practice and other healthy activities I'd supposedly be doing instead. Interestingly, preparing lots of fresh food is an excellent method for long-term weight control. I saw a diet tip in one of Mom's magazines recently that recommended eating boring food so that you don't eat too much of it, but when I do that, I get frustrated and irritated. I thought it was stupid that eating the same peanut butter or cheese sandwich every day could matter to my overall happiness, but I missed the part about food nourishing the soul and the mind as well as the body. My aunt and I agreed on a combination of Eastern and Western ideas about food: if you prepare your food from fresh, tasty ingredients and concentrate on its flavors (Eastern) and you utilize reasonable portion sizes and variety (Western), you will be satisfied with your nourishment and have no need to eat an entire bag of potato chips or Oreo cookies while watching T.V.
Learning that something is healthy is a pretty big clincher for me to accept it. I also like how much lighter I feel, and I've seen a few suggestions that being vegetarian is healthier for the environment. It takes a lot of corn to feed a cow which they also pump full of antiobiotics and hormones, and I'd much rather eat the corn than the cow.
And I've had no problems getting enough protein. You'll laugh, but my aunt recently turned vegetarian and she gave me Vegetarian Cooking for Dummies last week when I visited my grandparents. I like it because instead of trying to scare me with all the nasty things they do in slaughterhouses like PETA's website and publications, this book teaches me about all the different kinds of grains, beans, and vegetables I can eat and how to prepare them. It also has lots of nutritional information, and protein is in everything. Besides, one of my minor goals in going to India was to shed some of the Western mind-body divide and take a more holistic approach to the self. Consequently, I listen to my body, and if I feel sluggish and irritable, I ask myself how much water I've drunk and how much iron and protein I've had lately. Then I drink some water and eat some nuts, granola bar, hummus, or goat cheese, and I'm fine.
In summary, these are the benefits I've found for myself in vegetarianism and an outline of what I want to accomplish:
--Teaching myself to cook and not just boil, chop, and fry food or collect dusty bottles of spices (in other words, to extend food's nourishment of my body to my mind and soul as well)
--Honoring my grandfather who grew delicious vegetables in his garden (nostalgia, childhood memories)
--Encouraging my interest in gardening which comes from my mother. I've wanted to grow a little kitchen garden as well as flowers for some time now, and I'd also like to recycle food scraps instead of throwing them in the trash. Well, what's the point of compost if you don't have a garden?
--Promoting communication and relationship skills between my boyfriend and me. I find I like to cook for him as a gift to him, and he appreciates it just as I do when he cooks for me. We try to help each other chop and cook and clean up. Maybe if we learn to discuss what we like and dislike about each other's recipes and what to try next, we can transfer that skill to other touchier topics later in life.
--Helping the environment. Regardless of the corn-vs.-cow argument's merit, I'll find ways to be environmentally friendly. I've already mentioned the garden and compost idea.
To be honest, I haven't been purely vegetarian this month. I love shrimp, and my mother, who is used to planning meals around a meat, was really confused on what to serve me when I went to visit. Thus, I've had my fill of shrimp for a little while, and I did have a bit of chicken and salmon on the plane as well as one bite of--gasp!--pork barbecue. But meat has a really weird, repulsive texture to me now. I can't say I won't ever eat meat because it's so ubiquitous and boy, that barbecue smelled delicious (the texture couldn't weird me out with the yummy barbecue sauce either). I also doubt I'll be overly picky on whether something has white sugar,** particularly if I'm a guest or my parents drag me to another Southern meat-and-three restaurant (I ate biscuits or hush puppies because even the green beans were cooked in country ham), but I'm having fun exploring this world of grains and beans and spices. I can't wait 'til I have an apartment and can start an mini herb garden.
*Cliché mix-up on purpose.
**White sugar is processed with cow bones or something that sounded like that.
I was nearly vegetarian before I went to India. When I did eat meat, it was usually chicken, and I like to eat fruit. I even like to eat carrots for lunch, and that combined with my hippie-shaming long hair convinced people I was vegetarian. Well, now I don't have to control my irritation when they make silly assumptions just because their own hair is shoulder-length and they prefer barbecue chips for lunch.
When my eldest cousin announced she had turned vegetarian, I actually looked upon it as a sort of betrayal. What was this weird thing she was doing? Didn't she want to appreciate the good food our grandmother and mothers worked all morning to prepare so that we could all sit down together? Furthermore, she restricted herself to corn and pasta, ignoring the dishes she could eat like green beans, okra, and squash from our grandfather's garden or cantaloupe, raw veggies, and lima beans or green peas purchased fresh from the store. And there were always apples and oranges in the crisper in the fridge. I learned early that vegetarianism meant bland, colorless food and distressing your relatives.
I made a lot of effort to eat healthy food before going to India, but I'm not sure I would have experimented with being vegetarian, at least not anytime soon. Since our traditionally-minded school was vegetarian, India forced me to try it, but it was no hardship for me to have three or four cooks prepare fresh food for me every meal. After all, I've never liked cooking. Baking is fun, but cooking just wastes time and delays the moment you can sit down after a draining day of work, relax, and put some food in your miserable stomach.
But to my surprise, India changed my mind on that account as well. First, they served a wonderful variety of flavors and textures, all spiced with different herbs that tasted exotic to me. I constantly asked what ingredients created the different flavors, and Mathew or another staff member was usually happy to bring me some coriander or strange vegetable I'd never seen before to examine for myself which I greatly appreciated. I learned hands-on and objectively (from an Ayurveda lecture) about the six flavors: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, pungent/spicy, and astringent. Ayurveda, an ancient Indian system of medicine, teaches that a balanced meal must include all of these tastes, and it certainly is enjoyable mixing them one at a time in one's rice and discovering how the flavor changes. From eating food with skillfully-used spices, I learned of the potential I'd always been told spices hold.
Secondly, I was surrounded by students who do love to cook, and they kept saying the same thing. They repeated that cooking was very therapeutic and nurturing, but I didn't believe them, shrugging it off as "Some people like to sing/do sports/fill-in-the-blank, some people like to cook." It took the Ayurveda lecture to convince me because what Dr. Harry said made sense. He instructed us to believe that the food will nourish us mind, body, and soul and to concentrate on the food. Malayalis don't talk when they eat, and I don't like the dead silence and shoveling that goes on at their table, but I agree a certain amount of silence is desirable. Silence is the chef's greatest compliment, n'est-ce pas?
So I believe now that preparing and eating fresh food is a worthwhile investment and not a frivolity that steals time from exercise or music practice and other healthy activities I'd supposedly be doing instead. Interestingly, preparing lots of fresh food is an excellent method for long-term weight control. I saw a diet tip in one of Mom's magazines recently that recommended eating boring food so that you don't eat too much of it, but when I do that, I get frustrated and irritated. I thought it was stupid that eating the same peanut butter or cheese sandwich every day could matter to my overall happiness, but I missed the part about food nourishing the soul and the mind as well as the body. My aunt and I agreed on a combination of Eastern and Western ideas about food: if you prepare your food from fresh, tasty ingredients and concentrate on its flavors (Eastern) and you utilize reasonable portion sizes and variety (Western), you will be satisfied with your nourishment and have no need to eat an entire bag of potato chips or Oreo cookies while watching T.V.
Learning that something is healthy is a pretty big clincher for me to accept it. I also like how much lighter I feel, and I've seen a few suggestions that being vegetarian is healthier for the environment. It takes a lot of corn to feed a cow which they also pump full of antiobiotics and hormones, and I'd much rather eat the corn than the cow.
And I've had no problems getting enough protein. You'll laugh, but my aunt recently turned vegetarian and she gave me Vegetarian Cooking for Dummies last week when I visited my grandparents. I like it because instead of trying to scare me with all the nasty things they do in slaughterhouses like PETA's website and publications, this book teaches me about all the different kinds of grains, beans, and vegetables I can eat and how to prepare them. It also has lots of nutritional information, and protein is in everything. Besides, one of my minor goals in going to India was to shed some of the Western mind-body divide and take a more holistic approach to the self. Consequently, I listen to my body, and if I feel sluggish and irritable, I ask myself how much water I've drunk and how much iron and protein I've had lately. Then I drink some water and eat some nuts, granola bar, hummus, or goat cheese, and I'm fine.
In summary, these are the benefits I've found for myself in vegetarianism and an outline of what I want to accomplish:
--Teaching myself to cook and not just boil, chop, and fry food or collect dusty bottles of spices (in other words, to extend food's nourishment of my body to my mind and soul as well)
--Honoring my grandfather who grew delicious vegetables in his garden (nostalgia, childhood memories)
--Encouraging my interest in gardening which comes from my mother. I've wanted to grow a little kitchen garden as well as flowers for some time now, and I'd also like to recycle food scraps instead of throwing them in the trash. Well, what's the point of compost if you don't have a garden?
--Promoting communication and relationship skills between my boyfriend and me. I find I like to cook for him as a gift to him, and he appreciates it just as I do when he cooks for me. We try to help each other chop and cook and clean up. Maybe if we learn to discuss what we like and dislike about each other's recipes and what to try next, we can transfer that skill to other touchier topics later in life.
--Helping the environment. Regardless of the corn-vs.-cow argument's merit, I'll find ways to be environmentally friendly. I've already mentioned the garden and compost idea.
To be honest, I haven't been purely vegetarian this month. I love shrimp, and my mother, who is used to planning meals around a meat, was really confused on what to serve me when I went to visit. Thus, I've had my fill of shrimp for a little while, and I did have a bit of chicken and salmon on the plane as well as one bite of--gasp!--pork barbecue. But meat has a really weird, repulsive texture to me now. I can't say I won't ever eat meat because it's so ubiquitous and boy, that barbecue smelled delicious (the texture couldn't weird me out with the yummy barbecue sauce either). I also doubt I'll be overly picky on whether something has white sugar,** particularly if I'm a guest or my parents drag me to another Southern meat-and-three restaurant (I ate biscuits or hush puppies because even the green beans were cooked in country ham), but I'm having fun exploring this world of grains and beans and spices. I can't wait 'til I have an apartment and can start an mini herb garden.
*Cliché mix-up on purpose.
**White sugar is processed with cow bones or something that sounded like that.