I got a nine month head start on that whole vegetarian thing.
My relationship with vegetarianism, until five months ago, was…complicated.
The first time I tried to become a vegetarian in high school, I failed miserably after a few weeks and felt sick and really weak. During college, I tried and failed and tried again and again with varying degrees of success and with various reasons for failing. Sometimes this involved me trying to slowly cut things out of my diet and working my way to complete vegetarianism. That probably failed most quickly. Other times I saw a documentary like Food Inc. or Super Size Me or read emails from one of the animal rights groups whose listserv I signed up for at the Warped Tour years ago and was scared away. But that always failed too. Sometimes I just avoided buying any meat and used financial reasons to motivate myself because I was a broke college student. Unfortunately, that logic failed when Ramen noodles and canned tuna were cheaper and, more importantly, faster and I was always in a hurry. The dining halls also required more effort than I was willing/able to put forth most of the time. Also, free food at college? You don’t pass that up. I don’t know how many times I had leftover pepperoni pizza from College Democrats meetings or leftover lunch meat from HRP lunches.
In summation, I failed. A lot.
I briefly worked at a burger place this summer between graduation and moving to Kyiv and reconsidered vegetarianism again after that experience. Then again, let’s be honest, anyone handling that much raw hamburger almost has to, right? But Eastern Europe isn’t exactly vegetarian friendly, you see. There are definitely options (obviously), but animal products are a huge part of food culture here. I can’t even imagine being a vegan in Ukraine. Things like salo and many of the zakuski (drinking snacks, essentially) that are such a big part of food culture would always be around and I was worried it would be rude if I didn’t partake. My inner Midwesterner always hates being rude, so I decided that I would try again when I got back and had a little more control over my food options. (See the Twitter post above.)
When I got here in September, I noticed that I was getting sick a lot and I wasn’t sure why. Some days I couldn’t keep food down and others I just felt miserable. After one night of eating several hors d’oeuvres whose contents I couldn’t identify other than being some kind of animal, I got particularly sick. For a few days I ate mostly kasha (sometimes called hrechka or grechka) and vegetables and started feeling better. Because the sight of most things made me nauseous and because I’m apparently some kind of dietary opportunist, I decided to try vegetarianism again. It didn’t completely resolve my issues, though I was sick far less and started feeling much healthier than I had in a long time.
Now, five and a half months later, I’m writing about this experience. For a number of personal reasons, I don’t like and usually avoid talking about what I eat, so this is a little outside my comfort zone. Sorry if it’s as awkward for you as it is for me. Also because, given my record of trying and failing, I wasn’t sure if it was exactly worthy of writing about. There are a few reasons why I think I haven’t failed like in the past. I believe the biggest reason was my realization that when I thought about what I was eating, genuinely thought about the fact I was going to eat a muscle and animal tissue off of a bone, I didn’t want to eat it. When I went to various med camps in high school, we often worked with cadavers in some way and I’ve never been able to get over how much humans and animals, especially those I found cooked on my plate, have in common. The idea that I didn’t want to eat something when I consciously acknowledged what it was and thought about where it came from brought me to a rather obvious conclusion: don’t eat it. None of this is intended to be preachy (boo to preachy people), just my thought process.
But here are some of the things I’ve learned in this endeavor:
- I can become anemic pretty easily and when I do, I get dizzy and sometimes fall down. It’s funny at first, but after a while it’s kind of miserable and confusing. I went from having a relatively iron-rich diet to one with little iron and I had to learn how to deal with that. Luckily one of my friends here has been a vegetarian for a long time and offered me some advice for how to survive here. After some searching, I located lentils, chickpeas, spinach, iron-enriched cereal, and soy milk with some other practical things he recommended in one of the nicer grocery stores here. No more dizziness!
- You have to think a bit more about what you eat when you cut something that large out of your diet. Finding balance is more important than I originally expected. Fresh vegetables go bad pretty quickly and when those make up most of your diet, you need to plan what you’re going to cook in advance. You also need to plan how you will get different vitamins/minerals in your diet. Diversifying meals is important for both health reasons and for having variety for enjoyment which brings me to the point of…
- Collecting recipes and trying new things helps with keeping food interesting. I have spent more time looking at recipes now than I have at probably any other time in my life. Pinterest is partly to blame for this, but it’s also a great feeling to take the time to cook and appreciate your meal. I never really had time to do this in college, but my current schedule and life style allow me to spend time cooking a healthy dinner each night.
- Don’t get stressed out and think you failed the world if you mess up. I accidentally ate an olive that had some kind fish in it (don’t ask…it was a horrifying discovery and would have been even before I was a vegetarian) when I was at a friend’s house. Spitting it out would have been even more gross, so I did eat it. But that didn’t change my mind or make me not a vegetarian. It just meant I ate something I didn’t intend to. Just move on.
I’ve had some people ask if I’m going to be a vegetarian when I get back to the US, seemingly (usually) with the hope that I’ll break down and stop. I have every intention of sticking with vegetarianism, but who knows what I’ll be like in the future. Maybe someday I’ll go back to being an omnivore (or go super crazy and become a carnivore!), but I don’t foresee that happening as long as I have control over my diet and have healthy options. And if anyone wants to know what a vegetarian can eat in Ukraine, here are pictures of some of the wonderful food I’ve had:
Vegetable Omelet - Cafe Mapa in Lviv
Almond and Caramel Apple (with a red ribbon!) - Christmas Fair in Lviv
Mushroom Ravioli (and green tea!) - Cafe Odin in Lviv
Caprese Salad - Kharkiv restaurant with a name I forget
Cheese Lavash at the same restaurant in Kharkiv. Lavash is a thin tortilla-like bread. This had cheese and some herbs and was delicious.
Spinach Mashed Potatoes (with a tomato and sun-dried tomato flakes) from the same place in Kharkiv. This was surprisingly good and I'm going to try to recreate this at some point soon.
Pide with cheese (and tomato and green pepper) which tastes vaguely like pizza without sauce but good if you've never had it and want to know what it tastes like. This was from a Turkish restaurant we went to in Kyiv.
Not sure what this soup was called, but a friend got it at a Turkish restaurant and it was delicious so I got some too. I think it was lentil or white bean and it came with a lemon to add some extra flavor.
When I was in Lviv, I went to the Lviv Chocolate Factory (which has two shops in Kyiv and only one in Lviv) and, because it was around St. Nicholas Day, there was an abundance of chocolate St. Nicholas figures. It seemed odd to eat a saint made of chocolate, but it was delicious.
So I’ve written a lot now, but here’s a blog post from SeriousEats that I found interesting and you may be interested in if you want to read about someone’s experience with veganism for a few weeks. I love cheese way too much to ever consider veganism, but he has some interesting thoughts as someone who is now a “part-time” vegan (I don’t really understand that classification) and food reviewer.
This was just a timeout from other posts because I realized some of my closest friends didn’t know/just found out/still-don’t-know-until-maybe-just-now about this whole Kaley-is-a-vegetarian-now thing. I promise my next post will be more about Ukraine and politics and all the things I’m doing here with my stipend. Until then, I hope you’re enjoying the spring weather as much as I am wherever you are!
kaleyinkyiv 