Robert here
The other day I had my first bite of steak in about ten years.
This was the beginning of our preparation. When we travel in Vietnam it's very difficult to keep vegetarian. For one, pork is included in small doses in lots of dishes where you wouldn't necessarily be looking for it. And besides that there's the hospitality issue . . . . the difficulty of refusing when a host presents us with a meat dish.
So on my last trip I assumed was ingesting a little bit of pork all the time despite trying not to and then there was one occasion when we were guests and I didn't feel like I could refuse what was offered. That was my first deliberate bite of meat--all of it pork--since the late 90's, and it made me sick the next few days. My guts just weren't used to it.
Ilene has adopted the strategy of a meat-eating sabbatical--not doing anything special to avoid meat when she's in Vietnam. I've decided to do the same this trip, for the reasons above and because I hate to miss some of the fun of exploring the cuisine.
So my plan to prepare myself by taking meat in small doses before we go over. I imagined buying a package of Jimmy Dean sausage and eating a little nibble each morning for a few weeks before.
But the other night I was out with friends at a steak restaurant, I had just bought the plane tix and was feeling excited about the trip, I was boasting about all I was going to do and fun food I was going to have, and I was getting ribbed about ordering fish at a steak restaurant, and the odor from the grill smelled great, and I got caught up in the moment. So I had a friend cut me off a little bite. Delicious.
And I didn't seem to get sick the next day. I guess if I was smart I would follow it up with some larger doses. But I am supposed to be vegetarian after all, and it's three months until we get to Vietnam. I'll start my real conditioning plan when we get closer to the trip.
