Ethos
Vegetarian cooking doesn’t have to be boring! Enough lentils! Bring on the seitan, Bring on some flavor.
We are people who love to cook and eat, but who (for whatever reason) don’t eat meat.
We are not New Age, we are not religious, we are not fanatical, we are not here to convert people or anything like that.
We want to share recipes, tips, and preparation notes. We want to learn and grow and share knowledge and experience.
We want better vegetarian recipes, and we want to document the good ones so we don’t forget them later.
We want to cook better vegetarian food.
Why a vegetarian cooking blog?
There are so few dedicated vegetarian resources out there that make use of meat substitutes. Even when they recipes are vegetarian friendly, they do not address the biggest problems with vegetarian food
a) Meat substitutes do not behave in recipes the same way as meat
Meat can often handle extremely long cooking times, smoking, etc. Certain things that work in terms of cooking meat fail miserably for meat substitutes. If you tried to cook seitan on a grill for an hour at 350°ree, well, you would have some extremely good seitan shoe leather on your hands.
It’s not enough to say “substitute vegetarian sausage-style crumbles for ground beef” because the cooking times are different, you don’t have to drain off the fat, etc. Steps vary. Steps make or break a recipe.
b) Meat, animal fat, and meat broths adds flavors that are intrinsic to some dishes
Certain spices and flavorings can mimic meat flavors, such as Kombu or other seaweed in a stock to simulate fish stock. There are lots of tips like this, but your average food magazine is not going to bother with this type of subtle manipulation.
Substitutions on major recipe sites will say things like “replace steak with mushrooms”. But they don’t say what you can do to cook the mushrooms or how you should flavor them or if vegetarian worcheshire sauce would make the dish more delicious in place of the meat.
c) Some vegetarian foods are just plain yucky
Some vegetarian food is great. Even my husband likes some of it (Tofurky, for example). Some are edible but not great. And some are just terrible!
We will be reviewing various meat substitutes and other products (e.g. cookbooks, magazines, vegetarian cheese, whatever) to find the best of the best.
And we will be sure to document the worst of the worst so we never have to eat it again.
d) Just for fun
I LOVE COOKING!
I cook a LOT of vegetarian meals, almost every night and multiple on the weekends. Like my outfits, you will generally not see the same meal twice.
I’ve documented a few recipes in the past – numerous from-scratch pizza photos (my iPhone is embarrassingly full of those). I’ve also produced full recipes like my “Party In Your Mouth ‘Meat’ball Sub”, which was indeed a damn fun party and you were totally invited but you said you had a wedding that day on the Evite so you missed it when ted did the kegstand and broke his wrist… but I digress)
I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook, but blogs are cheaper and easier. Maybe someday!
Let’s discuss meat
Meat is animal flesh, skeletal muscle, associated fat, organs, tissue, or anything that requires the killing of an animal to obtain. To me, this includes mammals, fish, birds, snails, shellfish, crustaceans, or products that require animal slaughter such as caviar. This includes meat by-products such as gelatin. This generally covers the Vegetarian Society’s definition of meat.
The creator of this blog is against factory farming and mass production of meat and fish products.
Lacto-ovo vegetarianism includes milk, eggs, and honey. This site will primarily be focused on this type of vegetarianism, however some of our recipes will be more restrictive just by nature. Some of our recipes and tips will be lacto vegetarian, ovo vegetarian, vegan, maybe even fruitarian or raw vegetarian. Unfortunately, I am a big proponent of onions, garlic, scallions, shallots and the like, so we will generally not be having many Su Vegetarian recipes, but it is possible. I will also admit that I am not strict on the whole rennet issue, but I understand the implications.
I enjoy whole grains, we only buy whole wheat sandwich bread for example, but I like my buttermilk pancakes with white flour, thank you very much. I think some recipes are just tastier and lighter with bleached all-purpose or bread flour. You may experiment with substituting whole wheat flour in place of white flour, if it is used, but your mileage may vary. Whole wheat flour is often heavier and will make for a denser final product. A mixture of white/wheat or wheat and another whole grain may be another option. If time permits, I will try to experiment with this some more. I think whole grains are a good thing, but I’m more concerned with taste. I am already limited so much in terms of the ‘no meat’ thing.
For the purposes of this blog, we will be using milk and eggs (chicken eggs, primarily) but the ovo-lacto vegetarian (or lacto-ovo vegetarian) components will be organic and free range, as we like to be as ethical as possible when we do involve animals.
History
I grew up with ovo-lacto vegetarian parents and has been vegetarian since birth, and vegan for about two years in high school.
My husband is an omnivore, and a ‘flexitarian’, as he will eat vegetarian food if that is all I feel like making, and there are some things he prefers like seitan fajitas over beef and he does get excited on Tofurky night! He is a fantastic photographer, particularly of food and flowers, so I will be soliciting his talents for this project.
What some people find surprising is that I sometimes cook meat for him. When I do, I will usually make a separate but similar meal for myself (e.g. chicken and pasta for him and Quorn and pasta for me, or bean tacos for me and beef tacos for him). Since I love to cook, this isn’t really an issue, but it does make cleanup kind of a nightmare… I use separate pans and utensils because I think meat is kind of gross and I’m irrationally afraid of food-borne illnesses like salmonella.
Maybe it’s not irrational fear of meat-sourced illness. For someome like me who has not built up any immunity to iocane powder meat-sourced pathogens and bacteria, and who doesn’t have the enzymes or antibodies to stay healty in spite of their presence or break down such foods, I suppose it could pose increased risk to my health if I were to ingest some of these things.
We both enjoy our junk foods, and I wouldn’t say we always eat healthy, even though I am vegetarian. Some people would be surprised that a vegetarian could be overweight, but I assure you it is possible for a vegetarian to not be malnourished!
The question “Have you ever TRIED meat?” is asked a lot, and the answer is yes, here and there, a bite has been taken of various things – chicken, steak, fish, eel. I’ve always wondered what the big deal was, but none of it was good and the textures were all very strange.
Although in the interest of honesty, there were two things – lobster and caviar – that I enjoyed. I felt guilty eating them, but they tasted good. Okay technically lobsters are bugs and not animals, but rest assured there will not be any lobster or caviar recipes on this site!
My husband and I have always loved cooking, and consider ourselves quite good at the art of cooking. Baking, however, is an entirely different animal. So precise! Baking is to cooking as math is to painting. And I am terrible at math.
On the ethics of Omnivorism, briefly
Frankly, I don’t have a problem with people eating meat on a philosophical level. If you’re going to do it, I think there are guidelines for humane treatment of animals and ethical consumption. But I do have a problem with factory farming, and the disregard that people have for the food they put into their bodies and where it comes from.
The use of words like “beef” and “pork” and “poultry” to describe cow, pig, and fowl carcasses serve to further distance the foods from the animals they came from. Despite unknown origins, make it easier for humans to eat these foods with irreverent disregard for the original owner of the flesh they are having for dinner. Nobody wants to think about the dead bodies their meals came from, so they prefered a different term since dealing with live animals was so gauche.
When humans and our historical brethren were hunter-gatherers, food was harder to come by. If animal lives are taken, and meat is to be eaten, I believe using the entire animal is ideal (i.e. the Native American tribal way) and being thankful and somber about the killing of the animal should be the norm, not the exception to the way omnivores eat.
One might argue that we as a species are “more evolved” and therefore animals are our right to raise and treat as we will and that we are therefore authorized to do whatever we want to them because they are less evolved. I think this is vain, pompous human rationalization. We have no more right to life than animals just because we use tools and have fire and speech. We may be more advanced because of those things, but if we are so advanced, we should act ethically and treat other species with compassion to prove our evolution and supposed superiority. One might argue that farming contributed to humans becoming civilized, but modern farming methods for mass-production using farm factories is decidedly uncivilized.
Of course, if we don’t want people to force us to eat meat, we can’t force them not to. Ethical eating has to be a choice, at least a collective choice. People will always eat meat. It’s part of who we are, it’s part of our history, it’s part of life on earth – there are even plants that eat meat.
If a properly planned vegetarian diet can meet the nutritional needs of humans in all stages of life (American Dietetic Association), and instances of heart disease are lowered along with decreased body mass index, as well as lowered cholesterol, blood pressure and hypertension, tell me why isn’t a vegetarian diet truly the more evolved choice?
Ok, this has gotten way more preachy than I wanted. This is in reality just a blog about food and it happens to be one that is about cooking without meat. Period.
Gordon Ramsay, eat your heart out.
Bon appetit!
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