Friday Interview: Claire Hunsaker

TRE: Chau co Claire! Even though you’re abroad in a foreign country right now (Vietnam), most of your blog posts revolve around food, especially fruit. Clearly you’re a woman who doesn’t mess around when it comes to eating?

CH: Chao anh! 

No messing around for me! Before I became a vegetarian, I only had two food rules: It can’t be on fire and it can’t bite back. Rule number two was enacted after I tried lemon-flavored ants on a hike in the amazon rainforest. Tasty, but not going down without a fight! 

Now, I eat anything that isn’t smart enough to be scared of me, or on fire. One of my coworkers described my attitude towards food safety as “eat it and hope for the best.” 

TRE: When did you become a vegetarian, and what brought you to make that decision?

CH: I was a vegetarian for most of middle school, highschool and part of college – mostly because I am just a big softie when it comes to animals and couldn’t handle the thought of eating them. But I am, and always have been a big foodie, which is much tougher as a veggie. Living in New York, I think the opportunities to eat AMAZING food overpowered my feelings, and I very happily went back to eating meat. My mom, who had been waging a guerilla war against my vegetarianism for years, was thrilled. 

I started practicing Buddhism a couple of years ago, and as I became more serious, it felt really dissonant to try to live a life of “right action” while eating meat, but not dissonant enough to give up steak salad at Keens steakhouse. I didn’t want to force myself into an eating habit that was…well, forced. So I was sort of waiting around for the internal motivation. Last summer, I was scuba diving in the Sinai peninsula, and the reef there is right off the beach. So you dive, and see all these fish communities, and interact with the fish, and then pop up onto the beach and there’s a bunch of those fish on ice, glassy-eyed, waiting to be your dinner. It kind of flipped the switch, so being veggie felt right again. Now meat just turns me off, but I am not super strict about it when eating with friends. My theory is, my eating habits shouldn’t torture anyone, especially whoever is cooking. 

TRE: What is it like to be a vegetarian in household that doesn’t support your decision?

CH: Hmmm. I bet my sister has different memories of this, but I don’t remember it as a big deal. I am probably the biggest foodie in the house and did a fair amount of the cooking. My mom would just as happily subsist on health bars, so she didn’t cook that much. When she did, she would try to sneak meat into it. I probably had it coming thoough – I was more than a little prone to mooing obnoxiously at people when they ate hamburgers (which I don’t do anymore). 

I had free reign in the kitchen though, and the best thing about being veg, which sort of started for me then, is that it forces you to think about cooking in different ways. Meat is easy to cook, and easy to make taste good. Tofu is a pain in the ass to cook, and tastes like wet cardboard unless you know what you’re doing. Which I didn’t (and probably still don’t) - I made a lot of awful, bland western vegetarian stuff out of books like “The Enchanted Broccoli Forrest.”  But we had a great Thai restaurant in town, which really inspired me. It only dawned on me this year, but the best way to cook veg, is to explore outside your ethnicity. I’ve had tofu doctored up and delicious about 15 different ways here in Vietnam and when I was travelling in the middle east last summer, every meze plate tasted different. I’m perfecting my baba ganoush!  

TRE: I’ve cut way back on my meat eating, but it’s often hardest when I am traveling. Depending on where you are, it can still be difficult to find good non-meat dishes. In my experience, it seems like we are starting to see more veggie restaurants, but the non-veggie restaurants still only serve one or two vegetarian dishes. Does this surprise you?

CH: Sadly, no. I mark it up to the relative open-mindedness of the head chef. I think there is a prevalent belief that vegetarians don’t care about their food, and therefore a plate of fettuccine with veggie medley and a bland cream sauce is sufficient to keep these culinarily extraneous guests satisfied. I don’t go to these restaurants - if you can’t be creative for all your guests, you don’t deserve to cook. 

But there are great chefs who embrace the veg, and so many great veggie entrees. I had an amazing savory bread pudding with dill and fennel at Serpentine in San Francisco.  Last night I dreamt of bruschetta with goat cheese, olive tapenade and lemony hummus, all together, followed by roasted summer squash topped with crumbled smoked gouda, and a french black lentil cassoulet for mains. 

TRE: And that is why you should be the one with the food blog. Aside from being a vegetarian, do you have any other food guidelines?

CH: I don’t really eat any fast food or processed food, but its more of an aversion than a guideline.

TRE: When you do end up eating something outside of your normal diet (processed, fast food, or meat), does your body notice?

CH: Weirdly, meat doesn’t bug me at all, even red meat. Sometimes my body actually tells me to eat some red meat, which I mark down to anemia. But even a small amount of fast food will make me feel exhausted and gross, or heavily processed prepackaged food. Don’t get me wrong, I like convenient food, but for frozen dinners, I stick to stuff like Annie’s Organics which is fast and tasty, but doesn’t have any preservatives. 

TRE: Thanks for taking the time to share your insights Claire. Do you have any parting words of wisdom or advice?

CH: You won’t know if its any good unless you try it.