Tuesday

The more I travel the world, the more I'm noticeably hampered by my near-vegetarianism. I've been a near-vegetarian for years: since I began eating fish again around my nineteenth birthday. For a whole decade before that I'd been a strict ovo-lacto vegetarian. Back then, I would feel guilty whenever my dietary choices meant my friends had to alter their dining plans to include me. This guilt has never really gone away. Added to that, I hear about the fabulous exotic dining opportunities in each new culture I find myself visiting, but I'm still limited to the salmon salad while my friends are ordering cabrito, or barbacoa, or Kobe beef. There's a restaurant down the street from my apartment offering field rat and bat. I've finally gotten tired of feeling left out. I've gotten tired of worrying if the soup I'm eating is made from beef stock, if the flavoring in the sauce is chicken, or maybe ox. But I wasn't going to let my near-vegetarianism lapse with a sissy whimper. I'm in Vietnam for cryin' out loud. I know it'll make me a little sick, but I can't change a nearly twenty-year lifestyle by dining on a chicken. As you know, Tuesdays are Ms. Hương's night to come and cook dinner. Usually, we send her a text message the day before to plan the menu. Yesterday, after we asked her to cook us a dog, she actually called back. Dog is pretty rare around southern Vietnam, often only eaten around lunar holidays and at the beginning of the month. Since today was both a holiday and a beginning, there was no problem getting dog meat to cook. It wasn't delicious--greasy and tough and since, the whole place smells like glazed dog. Tomorrow, I'm getting a damn chicken. [Cavin]