Food from the Earth

My first memories of vegetarianism as an observance rest with my grandmother. I recall, as a little girl, that every month on the first and the fifteenth, and every January for the first fifteen days of the month, my grandmother would eat no meat. At other times she would eat pork or poultry and some fish. On those days she would sit in a corner of her salon and pray, fingering her beads as she did so. When I asked her about this she told me she was observing the laws of Buddha. She was not a strict vegetarian, as you can see, but she fasted according to her beliefs. Those beliefs also extended to her absolute abstinence from beef because it was forbidden by Buddha.