Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I've been a vegetarian for 9 years (ok, so for 3 of those I was one of those terrible, awful, hypocritical fish-eating "vegetarians") and I found this article both enjoyable and relevant. I agree with nearly everything Taylor Clarke said. I'm not judging anyone for eating meat any more than I judge anyone for their religion; it's a personal choice and I don't think beliefs should be forced on anyone. I'm not easily grossed out and I don't care if you are eating meat next to me, or even if my veggie burger was cooked on the same grill as your hamburger. I do like the smell of bacon but meat doesn't even seem like a foodstuff anymore. You might as well say, here, eat this plastic bag! I like tofu and I agree with Sieseye about both tofu and meat being vehicles for spices and flavor.

I have not had too many problems with a lack of vegetarian options, though I am a little tired of the ever-present veggie burger, pasta, and overcooked vegetables. I went to a barbeque restaurant and eat the sides. My friends make vegetarian food at parties because they are nice people and they like it too. If they didn't want to make it, that would be fine with me too. Having been in college and/or NYC for the past 6 years, I don't often come against anti-vegetarianism anymore, but it's still there. Every time I see my grandfather he asks what I eat. "No turkey?? But it's Thanksgiving!"

I do get upset watching Top Chef: they put so much emphasis on animal protein-based dishes. Mark was kicked off last week for a vegetable curry, and during the zoo challenge, the Gorilla team used meat in 2/3 dishes (I think) and no one really called them out on it. It seems like fine dining is adapting more slowly to vegetarianism. Applebee's and Friday's have had veggie burgers for decades now! It's a shame because I think vegetarian cooking does encourage a chef to be more creative with tastes and textures. It's so easy to just fall back on what you know with meat.

I have a pretty awful food story from daycare, when I was 2 years old. I've been allergic to peanuts my whole life, even a tiny fraction of one nut will cause me to go into anaphylactic shock. Despite knowing this, my teachers (a bunch of incompetent 19-year-olds) gave me peanut butter between two rice cakes for snack one day. I bit into it and immediately realized that something was wrong. When my mother came to pick me up shortly afterwards, I was so swollen that she said she wouldn't have recognized me if not for the clothes she had dressed me in that morning. I can still remember sitting at my desk as they passed out that day's snacks--it might be my first memory. Trauma!

On a happier note, in kindergarten my class "studied" Japan and as a treat we had chicken-flavored rice-a-roni that we ate with chopsticks. Culinarily inaccurate, yes, but it was just so much fun!

I'm with you, PerkyMac--with both the pain of hot sauce, and the Northern European ancestry :-)

In college: a very very underripe, hard-as-rock avocado + a flimsy, bendy steak knife found in the dorm kitchen = a trip to the infirmary, and a lot of blood. Thankfully, my finger healed fully. It was the middle one, so I had a lot of fun showing off that wound!

Going through a break-up right now, and my dinner tonight was potato chips with sour cream onion dip. I'm now sitting on the couch at 11:30 pm with what's left of a very large cake on my lap, eating it with a spoon. Did I mention that I have chocolate frosting in my hair?

Sriracha is a fun, fun thing to use.
I discovered it last year in the dorm, and love that it adds the spice without the overwhelming of vinegar in most hot sauces. Considering, I was in northern Louisiana, the land of Tabasco, so I grew far more accustomed to it than I really wanted.
If you add a kick, you can make a dish more interesting. But if you add an assaulting kick, you'll kill your dish.

As many know, it's not that meat doesn't taste good, it's that it's FLESH. Some people are not into eating FLESH, considering it a revolting practice. Human flesh is supposedly divine when it's roasted up, why aren't we eating that? It's just exactly the same thing. Tastebuds are very easily entertained by flavor - all junk food being a case in point. And how then, can vegetarians not judge meat-eaters? Respect and unconditional love over-rides judgement among the educated.

sloppy, unfortunately the *sshole comments are not abnormal. This is actually a very civilized discussion here with a lot of respect.

And Gordon Ramsey is well known for his disdain of vegetarians (as is Bourdain) and has taken great pleasure in tricking vegetarians into consuming animal products. What I don't get is he donates money for the domestic abuse as his mother was battered but doesn't understand how disrespectful, controlling, deceptive and abusive his own actions are.

But GR is hardly the only one. There's tales all over the net of meat eaters taking glee over having put one over on vegetarians. And then there are the ones who write into advice columns for help on how to turn their girlfriends to meat and ideas on how to sneak meat in so she'll find out how much she really does like it.

Other advice column questions regard how selfish brides are who would even consider not serving meat for their guests and the evil vegan bosses who will be throwing an office party that won't have meat in the spread which can possibly be anything but a nightmare and are they still obligated to go...?

Heck, there was even the Miss Manners question from the couple who were so upset to find out via the church gossip the couple whose company they so enjoyed a few weeks prior were ::whisper, whisper:: VEGANS! Which meant they'd been tricked into eating vegan cake and they don't like soy!

Excellent article and, as someone who has never eaten meat, I agree with pretty much everything in it except that I don't know bacon tastes good, only that it smells good. I love the closing paragraph too. Classic.

Hopefully the couple of *sshole comments that were made on this thread were in jest. If not, they go a long way in proving his point (if wunami is serious he/she must be absolutely insufferable as I can only imagine the other ways that selfishness and spite could manifest itself).

I've been vegetarian since I was 2. I got violently ill and ended up in the hospital with dehydration 3 times. The first time, my parents thought they had undercooked something and gave me food poisoning. After the third time, they told me I didn't have to eat anything I didn't want to. I haven't purposefully had meat since then. I'm not vegan...I would die without butter and cheese. When my husband and I were dating, he and one of my friends slipped a small piece of chicken into something I was eating when I was out of the room. I immedietely got sick. Yeah, I still married him. I hate that people willfully try to sneak meat into my food. I respect your decison to eat meat. It shouldn't be that hard for you to respect my decision not to.