First look: Becoming a vegetarian

I should not be surprised that I have become a full-fledged vegetarian. I was never much of a big meat eater from childhood. I had such a dislike for seafood I would occasionally feign an allergy for fear of being shamed for completely rejecting a food group with proven heath benefits. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to have made ethical decisions on the environmental impacts and sustainability of the fishing industry. I frankly found the fishy smell and taste to be utterly unpleasant, despite efforts by others to convince me that “it tastes just like chicken.”  Breading and deep-frying it also did not help the cause.

I also did not care for red meat. It seemed to be a favourite in my household and I never quite understood the draw to a big juicy, barbecued steak as everyone else seemed to have. Actually I remember as a child when we got a new barbecue and I never quite understood the fascination with it. Food just seemed unnecessarily charred which held no appeal for me and this is well before the perceived carcinogenic effects were well articulated to me.

I did not have a great love for pork, either, save for crispy bacon that would accompany my greasy sunny-side up eggs on a Saturday morning.

That essentially left me chicken in terms of meat preferences. At some point it was evident that I had little interest in the other meats. My parents were gracious enough to make me a chicken breast on barbecue steak night and I luckily was able to indulge in gravies and sauces to make it through roast beef and pork chop meals.

Yes, I was a fussy eater. I was also a colicky baby so I can try to blame this on some sort of destiny locked in during infancy rather than another defective personality trait.

I was all in for the carbohydrates, though. Being half Italian (with a paternal grandmother who made a tomato sauce to die for) I developed a great affinity for pastas. And bread. And potatoes. I once joked that if there had been a healthful eating lifestyle called “carbohydratarianism” it would be the perfect fit for me.

So what of vegetables? Did I have an undying love for broccoli, green salad and celery? Hardly, but does any child? I don’t know if this was a function of my general fussiness or if it was a product of not being introduced to vegetables in delicious, imaginative ways. The greatest example that sticks out to me is green beans. I thought that the beans came out of a store-bought can and were meant to taste exactly as they tasted. They were dull-coloured and had a waxy feeling. All in all unappealing. I thought I hated green beans. That was until I went to a friend’s house and experienced the deepest green, most beautifully crunchy beans with a pat of delicious butter gently melting on their surface. It was like nothing I had ever seen or tasted before. I realized I had been wrong, I really did like green beans!

That experience most certainly helped to broaden my mind a bit when I finally was on my own and discovering the wonder of the variety fresh vegetables at the grocery store. I was no culinary genius, however, and wasn’t willing to take the time to learn much about cooking. It was more about survival than joy. Plus the internet wasn’t much of a thing as of yet, so instructional articles and recipes that have been tested and commented on by many were not so easily at the ready.

Eventually my culinary interests started to bloom. It began with baking. I have always, and still do, love sweet treats. Baking was fairly easy, reliable and scientific: follow the directions properly and most things will turn out as expected. It was fun to try out new techniques to see if I could learn and replicate them. Adventures in general cooking would come a bit later and I took a couple of culinary arts classes at a local community college. Through these classes I was exposed to many different meat dishes that I would not ever decide to make for myself, nor were they anything I would gravitate toward when ordering at a restaurant. I was generally underwhelmed by many of the different meats we cooked and this was not because I was particularly bad at cooking; I enjoyed a great many of the non-meat items that we made.

And so my carnivorous cooking did not expand a great deal as I went on to discover more recipes and techniques, sticking mostly to chicken, vegetables, eggs and carbs.

I don’t know that I have the meat-craving characteristic that many others have. Therefore in deciding to go vegetarian, it didn’t seem like it was going to be such a pronounced leap. It would take a decision and a commitment. At this point, I feel like I was quite adequately skilled at creating delicious meals that I could make for myself as well as share with others. Choices for vegetarians and vegans in restaurants are becoming more common all of the time. And surely some very clever vegan recipe writers have figured out ways to replicate some favourite meat dishes that I might miss (spoiler: yes they have).

I do get queries about missing meat all of the time. Based on all I have just written out here, that was never really going to be the biggest consideration. No, I suppose the question I would really have for myself is this: what took me so long?

By

Mark Iacovelli, Toronto