Part of it, I think, is that we are seeing a greater variety of ethnic restaurants, and those from regions where there is more vegetarian cooking -- Indian and Indonesian restaurants in particular. Meat is an expensive treat in most regions of the world, so there's lots of vegetarian cuisine in Third World countries. Now that we see more restaurants from those areas, we become more accustomed to vegetarian food without even realizing it.

Our gamelan concert is in a couple of weeks, and we'll have a slamathan (ritual meal) beforehand. It's being catered by a local Indonesian restaurant, and we'll be able to accommodate vegetarians and non-vegetarians with perfect ease. The only real issue is to have the restaurant remember to mark any dishes containing shrimp on account of at least one gamelan player (me) is allergic. And last year, one of the dancers was even more allergic than I am, as we discovered when she accidentally ate a sauce with shrimp in it and was curled up begging to be killed half an hour before the performance.

She danced anyway, and was great. But she was not happy about it.