Vegetarian, For Now

Being alive means deciding what to eat

“Vegetarian. As in not vegetarian,” Joe said.

I gave him side-eye across the menu. Both things were true. Or not untrue. Truth is complicated.

Joe’s a fellow writer, one of our group of seven who’d spent the week tramping through Champagne to see, talk, taste, drink, and eat, or rather to be fed. This was our last dinner together. We were tired but remarkably still thirsty for sparkling wine.

We’d gotten used to each other by now, understood each other’s temperaments and tastes, not only of wine but also food and, more broadly, diet. We’d reached that stage of familiarity where we could prod each other about our food choices without acrimony (this is also known as teasing). Joe knew I ate fish but referred to myself as “vegetarian” rather than “pescatarian.” Vegetarian seemed easier to explain, and anyway, as I’d discovered over many visits, the French generally assume vegetarians eat fish.

Luisa was also scrutinizing the menu. Maybe the fish special? She poked her smartphone. What was the English word for this species? Was it one that’s overfished? Is there bycatch?

She had fences. Fences on the table. We all do.

Six months earlier I’d stopped eating meat. Menopause had begun to wreak havoc on my body. My weight had bloomed, my digestion shifted. So I’d chosen to resume the more plant-centric diet that had served me reliably earlier in my life. That return had been a two-part reckoning: a chance to revisit the practices and protocols that might help me reclaim my body, and an opportunity to probe the moral center of my beliefs about how to nourish myself.

I’d grown up omnivorous, a child of Depression-era parents who were thrilled to be able to serve their family modern foods, convenience and otherwise. But in college, turning twenty, I became vegetarian, and I followed this diet rigorously well into my thirties. The choice was, at first, about economics and flavor, but later about ethics and sustainability: a diet that made food conscious before it became corporeal.

After sixteen years of a strict ovo-lacto diet, after a marriage and a divorce and many other reassessments, I began craving protein. I started cooking richer vegetarian foods, larding dishes with nuts and cheese and eggs. Something was missing.