I grew up and lived in a rural area (southern appalachians in the US) and it was not easy. Small town restaurants often have zero options, living near a taco bell was about the best you can hope for.

Not even morningstar farms veggie burgers in grocery stores. But that was 10 years ago, things are different now.

Whenever I go home for Christmas I'm amazed at what's available.

Howdie neighbor. I lived in North GA and experienced the same woes. There's still 10 fast food restaurants per 1 wholesome restaurant. I'll know we've made it when waffle house serves veggie sausage. haha.

I live in countryside Japan where it does not cost a lot more to buy a bento than to cook one yourself.

Before moving in, I used to think it should be easy to be vegetarian in a Buddhist country but it is not. Japan's culinary habit is that a good meal needs to have a lot of different ingredients in it. From a dietetics point of view, that's great but it often means that even in most salads, you'll have a few pieces of bacon or chicken, a shrimp or some grains of minced meat.

That still makes for a very meat-light diet and I would switch to a no-meat-at-all in a heartbeat if those bentos and salads came in vegetarian versions, but that makes it almost impossible to totally avoid meat.