At least in terms of eating habits, I finally have a name for who I am, a flexitarian. In short, it is someone who is not a vegetarian, but eats so little meat that for periods of time could easily be taken for one. The article I found this term in, did not explain flexitarian’s view on eating fish, neither does wikipedia, calling it a “practice of eating mainly vegetarian food”. This clarifies little for me as I’m not clear on whether vegetarians eat fish or not. I have never paid much attention to the various forms of vegetarianism and similar life diets. I’m not oblivious, just never considered these philosophies/lifestyles for myself so never dug into the topics. Nevertheless I have reduced drastically the amount of meet, keeping fish to a moderate, mostly in the form of sushi:)
Most likely the source of this was unhappiness with the quality of meat in Amsterdam. Maybe we shopped at the wrong place, but with majority of shops closing at 18h, hardly any restaurants serving dinner till 21h, we had little choice but to get our food where we did, which lead to disliking meat we cooked 9/10 times. I used to generalise saying that Dutch meat was bad, point final. Yet since we normally liked meat at restaurants…obviously not the entire Dutch meat market was bad. Good quality meat just required the extra effort we where not used to, i.e. either knowing the little neighbourhood butcher, translating meats names prior to going shopping as not all butchers spoke English, or adjusting shopping hours to small shop schedules, etc, etc.
Friends of hours took us once to a farm between Rotterdam and Amsterdam where the meat sold came straight from the fields you purchased it on; so did other produce, like cheese, butter and plenty of fruits and vegetables (although not all, as they sold Sicilian oranges as well). Apparently this is the farm that supplies the Amsterdam restaurants, so mystery solved:) Everyhting we brought from there was delicious! Going to that farm once was also fun; perhaps a few more times would have been just as fun, but naturally it could not have converted into a regular shopping habit. Plus you can only buy so much meat in advance… Slowly but consequently we stopped buying meat. Eating it only when we would go out or in the form of cold meat in sandwiches. We never missed it, never even thought of going out precisely with the purpose of having some.
Certainly my dislike for handling meat while preparing a dish added to the longevity and stability of this practice. Furthermore, there are just so many dishes we enjoy which do not include meat that the practice solidified. What influenced it most significantly is the fact of having certain expectations on how something should taste and being disappointed at how it turns out tasting:( makes you not want to eat a particular dish any more, or at least eat it only where you know for sure it tastes best. I had tagliata fiorentina once in Florence, loved it to death, hated everywhere else; I simply don’t bother any longer. I know if I go back to where it tasted perfect, I’ll enjoy it again. Ordering it elsewhere has given me no gastronomic pleasure. Same is true for many other meat dishes. Obviously similar expectations-disillusion conflict might occur with vegetarian dishes, yet in my case happens much less frequently and therefore discourages me less from ordering veggies:)
I could not believe when I found out the term flexitarianism has been around for 16 years! describes my eating practice of the last 3 years so perfectly and I only find out about it now:)
More in the Newsweek article
