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So here's my situation - I have (for the first time ever) a vegetarian coming to my home for a dinner party tomorrow. I am at a complete and utter loss as to what to serve. Here's my menu so far: Starter: Roasted Garlic Soup with Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes Main Course: Roasted Tomato Tart(s)? with a salad ? I'm fairly pleased with the roasted tomato tarts and have made them before to serve as an accompaniment to meat or fish dishes. They taste good and are fairly hearty, but I don't think they are substantial enough to be the whole main course on their own. I cook them in 4 ounce ramekins if that gives you an idea of the size. I was thinking of serving two to a plate, but that still seems insufficient. I would be happy to serve one of the tarts per person with some sort of vegetable accompaniment, but I don't know what to serve. The main dish of the plate is already vegetable based, so I would feel kind of silly just putting some green beans next to it. Or is that not silly? The tarts have a crust, so I don't know how I feel about serving a starch on top of that. I have a pretty steep reputation to uphold, and I have purposely avoided having this person to dinner in the past because I didn't know what to do about him not eating meat or fish. I don't eat pasta, so I can't serve that. What should I do? Just stick two tomato tarts on a plate? Serve everyone one tart plus another vegetable and/or starch? Anyone with any good ideas for non-pasta vegetarian food please help!

I love these lentils. They seem to be under used considering how tasty they are! I make a soup with them with mix of garlic, carrot, leeks, onions, spinach, cumin, olive oil, and vegetable stock that is so tasty.. sometimes I will add in spicy sausage chunks ( like hunters sausage if our vegetarian daughter is not around for the meal I just wondered what other people make with these fantastic lentils

We are catering a wedding this weekend and are considering doing a summer vegetable strudel-type dish using puff pastry as our vegetarian entree. However, the bride has requested whole grain and organic products only. We can get a pass on the organic requirement, but we'll need to rethink the dish unless we can get whole wheat puff pastry. Does it exist? Not that I have the time or space or inclination, but can it be made or are whole grains too heavy? Thanks for any help!

My sister has recently become a vegetarian, and someone she knows claims that marshmallows have meat products in them. Can anyone clarify this? We have found online that gelatin may contain meat byproducts, but cannot verify the truth of the websites. Some of them kind of look a little fanatical. We would appreciate any help we could get. Thanks.

While eating at the Organic Grill (a vegetarian restaurant in NY) today, a vegetarian friend asked me why many non-vegetarians have a general aversion towards vegetarian or vegan restaurants. I didn't quite know the answer. Truth be told, I would never even consider going to a vegetarian restaurant (except Indian) unless I was actually with someone who is a vegetarian. Although I am not one myself, I do frequently order vegetarian entrees at "regular" restaurants and generally enjoy them as much if not more than meat or fish entrees. Why the stigma then, towards vegetarian restaurants? Is it really the taste of the food? I'll admit that today's Miso Soup was not great (probably because of the bonito-less dashi) but I can also turn around and say that Organic Grill makes a damn good vege-burger. So is it instead a perception or image problem that keeps non-vegetarians away? Is it the "hippie" scene that these restaurants seem to attract? Or perhaps it is the feeling of having to limit ourselves, by not having the choice or option for meat dishes...and in some cases, the blatant misrepresentation of certain dishes as meat (tempeh as "vegetarian duck"). What exactly is the beef with vegetarian restaurants?

If you should happen, for whatever reason, to visit a vegetarian restaurant as I occasionally do, you may have noticed that some of them seem to be heavy on "faux" foods which mimic meats (beef, even lamb!) and chicken or even fish (fake shrimp and fake lobster!). Of course, these dishes are made of tofu, gluten, and soy protein, etc. So, with that thought in mind: #1) would you order the "faux" replications or #2) simply prefer to order dishes which are not "copies" at all but original, creative vegetarian offerings? Examples which stand out in your mind?

I must admit that for me, barbecuing is about meat fat falling onto hot charcoal and making smoke, etc. etc., but I have vegetarians coming to a barbecue, and am after inspiration for some things I can do that are more imaginative than vegeburgers and meat-free sausages. I reckon aubergines (eggplants) might have some good barbecuing potential, as well as chillis, peppers etc., and smoked paprika could be a good complementary flavour. Any advice from experienced vegetarian barbecuers much appreciated...

Hi all, I was wondering if I could enlist you for some help. I returned to Montreal 2 years ago after a long absence and I 'm really loving the food and restaurants here-- o.k. maybe not so much the mexican or some of the take out chinese, but who's counting? I digress. So what I was wondering was if I could get some cookbook reccomendations for quebecios chefs. They can be in french, that's no problem. And since I happily cook meat for others, but I am not a huge fan of meat/ poultry and am alergic to seafood, I'm looking for books that are not too heavy on animal protein. I'm not looking for a vegetarian cookbook, but am trying to avoid books that are 75% meat and seafood recipes (this is what I encountered with Daniel Vezina's books). Right now I don't have too much to rely on other than a la Distasio, which I watch pretty regularily. Seems like a lot of her guests are celebrities, and not chefs though. Having recieved her book as an xmas gift, I will say that it's a good reference book for timing oven roasted vegetables and has some quick ideas for busy cooks, but I don't find myself running to it to try something different. I should also mention that I am not really a fan of Jamie Oliverish books either, which maybe part of my problem with distasio. I like recipes that are dead on (as in Alain Ducasse dead on). I hate books that don't give specific quanties or use vague terms like add x ingredient to taste. (I know quite well what my taste is and I buy books in order to NOT make things to my taste). Thanks in advance, chantal

One of the members of our book club has become a vegan. Now, I've found a great roast portobello mushroom w/rocket polenta recipe for mains, but I'm stuck for dessert, so I thought I'd ask the experts Obviously I could do fruit and / or sorbet, but the weather here is wet and chilly so I'd rather have something a bit more comforting. What on earth can I make with no dairy or eggs?? Sarah

Hello everyone. Stumbled onto this site while looking for a recipe for zucchini blossum fettacine (awesome pasta i had in some neighborhood cafe off the beaten path in rome a few years back). didn't find the recipe but found this very nice community of food lovers. anyway, i moved into the triangle 2 years ago from california and have been slowly checking out the restaurant scene here. its been slow going secondary to time and money constraints :) but am slowly getting a feel for the area. the culinary adventures are somewhat limited by the fact that my wife is vegetarian and that i'm mostly vegetarian (i'll eat meat but i prefer to eat vegetarian if the option is available). so far, we've found Udupi Cafe in Cary has a very good indian vegetarian buffet. Foster's Market in Durham is a nice lunch place. Nana's was good if a bit pricey but with limited option for veggies. Lime and Basil in Chapel hill was a bit disappointing to my wife for vegetarian pho. there has to be a good vegetarian pho place around here... haven't found good thai food yet. haven't even bothered to look for ethiopian cuisine (we've driven up to DC and found some good ethiopian food there but i'd be surprised to find any in a small market like the triangle). i was attributing the dearth of vegetarian options around raleigh durham to it being the south but our recent trip to asheville dispelled that notion. wow. that city is incredible for vegetarian food for its size. laughing seed was some of the best vegetarian food i've had. great fresh produce at early girl eatery. and salsa's had very inventive mexican food which was very fresh and tasty. in my experience, asheville far outstrips the triangle in terms of vegetarian cuisine. but i got to thinking.. how can a town with 10% of the population have more and better options? so i must be missing something. please tell me that there are many great restaurants that i've not heard of around the triangle that have good vegetarian choices. thanks to all that reply.

Anyone see Trading Spouses the other night? Vegan mom from San Diego trades places with Cajun (and omnivorous) mom from Thibodaux. So what do you think? Is veganism a viable option for communities that have historically made their living (directly or indirectly) off of fisheries and fur-trapping and the like? My thought is that ideologies such as veganism are only possible in a truly affluent society, and economic microcosms like Thibodaux would vanish if the world (or even the United States) went vegan. Of course, that's a scenario that is pretty extreme.

I'm considering buying meat from this place. Does it still exist? Does anyone have good experiences with their purchase? Is the price reasonable? I don't normally buy meat but I'm slowly coming out of my vegetarian state. I know there are other good butchers in town but I am only interested in this place for now. Thanks!

I am somewhat embarassed to say that for the last two weeks, I watched a FOX network show called Trading Spouses. Can't even remember how I stumbled across it, but was intrigued by the cuisine and culture oriented match up: California Vegan (and fairly militant about it) trades with Louisiana lives-on-the-bayou-and-eats-'gators Cajun. Even though this is FOX and one suspects that many, if not most, of the reactions are staged, did anyone see this and have thoughts about program? The California Vegan woman was portrayed as a somewhat whacko control freak (with a kind but put-upon husband), while the Louisana Cajun woman was portrayed as rather rustic yet fairly sympathetic (with a kind but stupid husband). Given the conservative nature of FOX, would you deem this cultural show-down as a slam against Vegans? Liberals? Californians? Two ridiculously one-dimensional stereotypes of regional cultures and cuisines thrown together for explosive potential and ratings only? Admittedly, I did find it an interesting theme that did at least capture how important culturally-bound foodways can be. Then again, I might have been the only one out there watching it...

And so, way down in Louisiana, deep in the swamps of the Mississippi Delta, beneath the Spanish moss, alongside the bayous, some of us eGulleteers are having this discussion: California Vegan in Thibodaux, on Fox Is veganism a viable option only for the wealthy? If you have to scrap just to survive, much less eke out a living, does that necessarily mean that you really have to boil, roast or fry up everything that walks, flies, or swims past? Or could you subsist on things you could cultivate? And would you really have to kill animals to make belts, shoes, billfolds, decorations for the rumpus room? Or could you find easily and readily available substitutes hard by the Bayou Teche? And instead of beef barons and chicken magnates, would we just transfer our hate, scorn and loathing to large corporate bean barons, or corn kings, or watermelon magnates that have cornered the fruit and vegetable markets? What do you think? Veganism -- silly, arrogant, impractical and elitist indulgence for the wealthy? Or viable, healthier, preferable and more moral option for us all?

So this is I imagine a somewhat unique question. I am going to responsible for throwing a dinner party for my tai chi instructor's tai chi instructor's tai chi instructor in a couple of months. This person speaks no English and only rarely comes to the U.S. and *really* prefers Chinese food (or at least has always chosen to eat in Chinese restaurants when I've been around). In the past I've seen him eat plenty of steamed fish w/matchsticked ginger and some kind of sauce on it, ma po tofu (with pork), and sea cucumber, so I know he's not a vegetarian, but he obviously values healthy eating... So I'm trying to figure out a menu that will be both impressive and feasible, for somewhere between 8-12 people. With essentially one worthwhile burner with regard to wok cooking. I have the Land of Plenty cookbook, a fair amount of experience cooking from it, and access to a decent asian grocery. What I don't know is how a dinner like this is structured/served, nor how to go about cooking it (timing wise). Nor how to choose complementary courses. Nor... just about anything else it would seem. Any suggestions?

Dear Forum, I've been a lurker for ages and learned heaps from the forum, but now I think I could use some help. We're cooking a meal for 40 people. We have done similar stuff for 25 before, but now there are a few added complications. We are amateurs, and while this is not exactly a family party, but similar enough. It is a sit down dinner, but the food doesn't have to be fancy. It should be flavorful, and as seasonal as possible. Mainly, the problem is that we need to cook at an off-site kitchen. We have a rental kitchen, so cooking is no problem, but I'd be happy if somebody with more experience could make sure I've the right ideas for transporting the food cold/hot:We are doing the bulk of the cooking the day before, refrigerating it and heating & finishing cooking at the kitchen. The transport is about 10 minutes driving, and we'll have chafing dishes with, um, the flame thingies at the site. (Sorry, English is not my first language.) Are we alright with heating at the kitchen in the chafing dishes, packing with foil and transporting to the site? I guess the question is how fast a packed chafing dish cools down? Is half an hour off heat OK? As for the menu, we are trying to come up with dishes that stand up well to reheating. Also, it's winter (freezing, couple of feet of snow), so warming, hearty food is in order. A third of the guests are vegetarians. I think I would like to start with a soup. We (and some outside helpers) will bake our own bread that the guests are expecting and looking forward to, and that should go well with soup. I'm looking at either mushroom soup (Les Halles with stock from our own dried wild mushrooms) or sunchoke soup. The problem with both is that they both look like gray baby food. Is sprinkled parsley (and bacon/reindeer bits) good enough, or would it still be too ugly for a festive meal? For the main, the plan is a pearled spelt side dish with beluga lentils, lamb shanks as the main protein, roast parsnips, an eggy/cheesy vegetarian thing, and salads/cold dishes. Would a quiche be odd in this context for the vegetarian thing? The lamb shanks I get are quite big (450g or 1 pound), and I can't imagine eating more than one, but should I have extras or a backup protein? I mean, I will have a few extra, but should I be ordering 1.2x carnivores? 1.5x? Creme brulée and wild berries we picked & froze ourselves for dessert, with coffee and truffles. Does this make sense? Any comments would be appreciated, even (or especially) just to say it seems fine would be appreciated! cheers, Skavoovie

Okay, I've never made this but my SIL made something she called Spanakopita, and it inspired me to do better. She used frozen phyllo, and that was the best part of the dish. Her filling was missing the spinach, as far as I could tell, and the cheese tasted sweet. I believe I bit down on some nuts, too. So the filling was pretty awful (like out of some new age vegetarian health food book), but the dough was crispy and flaky right out of the oven, and not greasy. Not critical, but my first stumbling block upon googling recipes was spelling. Spanakopita wins, but spanikopita is popular. Is it phyllo or filo? The frozen package I have says filo. Here are some other questions: Butter or oil to brush the layers? How eggy should it be? Some recipes call for 3-4 eggs. As for cheese, some recipes use a combo of feta and ricotta or feta and myzithra, presumably to cut the saltiness a bit. Adding some ricotta would make a creamier filling, I presume. That sounds reasonable, but is it typical? When I make Greek salads I've taken to using French feta, because it seems less salty than some others. My preference would be heavy on the spinach and not too salty. As for spinach, I'm going to use frozen to start with, since I have some Cascadia organic spinach and I think it's pretty good. Once I get some technique down I'll branch out and try fresh spinach. I have no intention of making my own dough, not just yet that's for sure; I already have some frozen. But rolled or flat? Some recipes make folded triangles, some make a flat casserole. Flat sounds easier to start with. Some recipes suggest scoring the top filo layers before baking. How essential is that? Does anyone have a great traditional recipe? Or other hints? I'm already hip to the fact that you need to keep the filo/phyllo moist and work quickly, and I won't be surprised it there's a steep learning curve there.

First of all, happy holidays for every one. My room mate, a good friend of mine, realized that she wants to be vegetarian, 2 days before Christmas, now I have to come with a menu for our Christmas dinner but don't have a clue where yo start. Any help would be appreciated

I'd be interested to recieve any recommendations for good (1 Star level) restaurants in central Paris with a good selection for vegetarians. Thanks

I've always enjoyed UK-based food publications. I pick up the odd "BBC Good Food" magazine off shelves in Shanghai, and really enjoy the fact that they feature vegetarian mains seriously, and have recipes from a wider range of ethnic magazines than US magazines seem to bother with. BBC Good Food is obviously aimed at casual cooks - the recipes are usually fairly simple, but I've still clipped several, including a vegetable biryani that gets raves every time I cook it. I have a magazine distributor that will order in magazines for me, but I don't know what titles I should be looking for. Help?

Hi all, I was reading Serious Eats this morning. One of the writers is going vegan for a month as an experiment, just seeing what it's all about, presumably coming to some sort of opinion, and meanwhile sparking lots of discussion. As an ex-vegan who is now totally anti-vegan, I have some strong views on the subject. My comment turned into possibly the longest single comment ever in the history of serious eats. I figured I might as well post it here too... These sort of topics always seem to provoke a lot of discussion! ---------------- I was vegetarian for eight years and vegan for five. What a mistake! I totally regret it. I was always hungry, annoyingly self-righteous, and dreaming of the foods I was depriving myself of. And for what? Now I am a happy, guilt-free omnivore. I lost 30 lbs after ditching the soy ice cream and constant grazing, actually felt satisfied for the first time in years, got more energy, and am now a happier person who enjoys life much more. And no, contrary to PETA, I did not turn into an acne-ridden, flatulent blob of colon cancer after taking up meat and dairy again. In contrast, it blows my mind that I ever thought myself healthy while eating a diet of ultra-processed veg substitutes which bear no resemblance to anything in nature. I am a total greenie, love the environment, love animals, love plants, and hate to waste anything. Many vegetarians, vegans, and activist groups like PETA paint a black-and-white picture: either you are an evil person who doesn't care about the suffering of animals (and, according to PETA, you will be punished by dying a terrible premature death) or you are a kinder, gentler animal-lover who is saving the environment by buying soy versions of everything. Luckily, this is not the case at all. I think this misunderstanding is due in large part to the fact that for many Americans, everything comes from the store. In many stores, your only meat options are eggs from diseased caged chickens or beef from cows that lived in horrible confinement, were pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, and were fed a totally unnatural diet of the corn scraps left over from the high fructose corn syrup factory. Luckily, there are many ways to enjoy the wonder that is meat and dairy while benefitting your health, the animals, and the environment all at the same time, including eating humanely-raised meat or, best of all, wild game, raising your own chickens if you've got a bit of space, fermenting dairy, etc. It may not be the instant gratification of going to the market and buying everything immediately. It may take a bit of time to source things or make connections or go hunting, but hey, good things sometimes take a bit longer, and it's usually worth it. A couple cases in point: -Wild boar were introduced by explorers to countries all over the world. In many places, they are totally destructive to native habitats. Think Hawaii and New Zealand, for example. Wild boar are terribly destructive in these delicate environments. Wild boar are also delicious, and free of hormones and antibiotics. They are also absolutely free to shoot. So, hundreds of pounds of delicious, free-range, wild, hormone-free, antibiotic-free meat, including everyone's favorite, bacon, that doesn't cost a cent? I'll take that over soy grown on a massive industrial farm in the Midwest, processed god-knows-how into a weird meat lookalike, flavored with artificial bacon flavor from some factory off the New Jersey Turnpike, then sold to many well-intentioned but misinformed vegetarians by some "healthy" company that is actually owned by Philip Morris. -Deer/delicious wild venison. With the bear, mountain lion, and wolf populations in decline in North America, deer have fewer natural predators. It is not going to harm the deer population for a couple or a family to kill one or two males (not females) a year, which will provide heaps and heaps of, again, delicious, wild, free-range, antibiotic-free, hormone-free meat. The deer lived great lives out in the wild, and were killed humanely. Unlike the hundreds or thousands of deer that die every year as roadkill, any deer shot by a hunter worth his salt is not going to go to waste. Generally speaking, when people shoot animals themselves, they appreciate the animal and do not want to waste any of it. Indeed, hunters arguably appreciate animals far more than many so-called "animal lovers" living detached from the natural world in the city, buying everything from a store, because they have an immediate and realistic understanding of how animals and humans relate to each other in the great scheme of things and in the web of life. And should you still worry that killing one deer a year for meat will harm the population, you can always counteract your impact by say, helping provide some habitat or shelter for the animals that will increase their chances of surviving winter, natural predators, etc. Also, eating/killing animals should be evaluated in the context of a concrete place, not some moral fantasy world. In New Zealand, for example, deer are a positive nuisance! They were introduced into a country that had no native mammals, whose environment was therefore chock-full of delicate plant and bird populations. They wreak havoc on the environment there, so much so the government for decades paid cullers to shoot as many of them as possible. And all that free-range meat surely would have been a bonus! - And there's always squirrels, rabbits, frogs... All sorts of meat there for the taking! It doesn't hurt to be able to braise! -A helluva lot of the land in the world is simply not suitable for growing vegetables or grains. It's suiting for grazing (ex: sheep) but not much else. It's not a black and white scenario, where you could either get 5 lbs of meat versus 1000 lbs of cabbage. It's grazers or nothing, baby. Unless you want to cut out the sheep and eat the grass yourself? -Quail, pheasants, dove, etc. On our property, we have been actively encouraging the bird populations by feeding them and building shelters from their natural predators (mountain lions, for example.) Next year, the population will be larger, and then we can selectively kill a few to eat - something that is especially useful when you live in the country/mountains where you can very easily get snowed in and cut off from town for long periods of time, not to mention during lean times when there's very little money for groceries from the market - or when you just need a good animal protein dose. And I can guarantee you we will not waste what we kill, because we will appreciate it, and anyway, the quail are our mates around the property! We love having them around and appreciate that at some stage in the near future, we might need them for survival. As for health, humans lived for thousands of years eating fruit, foraged plants, vegetables, wild game meat, nuts, fish, fermented and preserved foods including fermented (and therefore more digestible) dairy, etc. Doesn't it make sense that our bodies are attuned to this sort of eating? Humans gorged themselves on animal fat when it was available, for health and survival, and I'm quite sure they enjoyed it as well. And they were presumably quite hearty (or else they died) and weren't getting diabetes at age 13. Hmm, is it possible that the health epidemics in this country could have something to do with the ultra-processed, over-sweetened, preservative-laced crap that crowds the supermarket shelves? Look at what's on the shelves: sodas and juices and sweet drinks by the gallon, "energy drinks" that turn your pee bright orange, cereals that are largely nothing more than sugar with a few vitamins added, every possible kind of instant, frozen, microwaveable meal possible, cheetos, beef from cows confined in terrible lots and fed an unnatural diet, beef-flavored instant noodles with msg (oh but they do taste so good!), diseased factory-farmed chicken and eggs, every kind of cookie and candy and cake you could dream of, instant dehydrated mashed potatoes and instant cheese-flavor powder and instant gravy mix and instant peanut butter pie mix, spam and something called "meat product" in a can, soy substitutes with ingredient lists longer than the phone book, "healthy" margarines that beg the question: where's the oil in a vegetable? (remember the Oleo "health" fad?), etc, etc, etc. The body needs fat and cholesterol to survive. Our brains are pretty fatty, as anyone who has eaten animal brains would know. Our cells need cholesterol to maintain their structure. Fat and cholesterol have been demonized over the last few decades - and we don't seem to be getting healthier. Is it silly to recommend trying to eat more in line with the thousands of years of human history before 150 pound seven-year-olds and juvenile diabetes and people dying of heart attacks at age 23? There is a great book, "Nourishing Traditions" which counters much of the politically correct "nutritional" advice which has basically become dogma over the last decades, and points out how - shocker - lobbyists and industry might have something to do with the results from health "studies" that they themselves fund? On the funnier side, there's the documentary "Fathead" which follows a man who loses more weight eating fast food for a month than Morgan Spurlock did during quite a few months on his girlfriend's "healthy" vegan diet. I can appreciate that many veg activists are well-intentioned when they hassle meat and dairy eaters about food choices. They don't want to support the meat industry, and I am certainly sympathetic to that. However, the state of the entire food industry in America is the problem, aided by our massive portion sizes, and general inactivity. Meat and dairy in themselves are not a problem. Humans would've been extinct long ago without them. The pioneers would've died long before they ever hit the west coast. Settlers would never have made it through a rough winter without going out and shooting some game meat. Read Little House on the Prairie if you have any doubts about how absolutely critical animal products were to survival in a pre-Whole Foods world. Animal fat and protein are awesome! One thing I know, there's no way my husband could spend a week chopping firewood for the winter and working twelve-hour construction shifts on a vegan diet. Dreaming! If you are inclined towards activism, rather than attack meat- and dairy- eaters, attack the lobbyists and companies that are directing this drastic change in our diet and how animals are raised. Most of the "kinder, gentler" so-called health food companies are owned by corporations like Philip Morris and Coca-Cola! Not exactly the sort of companies I'd trust to keep my health interests in mind. They're getting rich on soy-Franken-foods and crap disguised as health food, while their well-intentioned customers are bankrupting themselves trying to buy ethically and do their small part to help the environment etc. If you really want to change the system or whatever, cut out these companies altogether! Eat game meat! Befriend hunters! They always have goodies in their freezer and are usually quite happy to barter or give it away, and hunters are everywhere - cities, little hippie towns, you name it. And surely most people have an uncle or cousin-in-law or friend of a friend who hunts? You can get a share in a co-op from someone who raises free-range chickens for eggs in a nearby town, then delivers them to the city. It doesn't matter whether you live in the city, or how much money you have. Great dairy and meat can all be pretty cheap or even free - unless you buy everything at the NYC Whole Foods. You can pay a farmer in a nearby small town to raise one pig a year for you, then slaughter it yourself or pay them to do it, and you'll have a freezer full of all the humane pork you could possibly eat. You can go onto craigslist and post a want ad asking local farmers what they can do for you or describing what you're looking for. If you're short on hunting skills or mates who hunt, but got the bucks, you can order game meat online from all sorts of places. You don't need a very big yard to keep a couple of ducks.There's a thousand different ways to get your hands on some awesome dairy and meat without supporting any companies with dodgy practices, no matter where you are. Mmm, time for a wild elk steak yet?

Hello, My husband will be traveling to Amsterdam next month on business. Are there any great vegetarian restaurants there? He may have to entertain a client. Thank you, Lori

I'm getting rather taken with growing my own veg. Upped growing space this year. I eat out in maybe one 2 or 3 star place a year, and I'm always loathed to forgo my meat and fish to try the increasing number of vegetarian tasting menus. But I do like to try my hand at cooking that kind of thing. I have Essential Cuisine by Michel Bras. I've just ordered a second hand copy of Charlie Trotter's Vegetables book. Any other good sources of the kind of vegetable focused dish one might find in these kind of establishments? Thanks

When in Provence about a year ago we were served a delicious vegetarian white bean soup that obviously had chopped tomatoes, onions, celery and a wonderful herbiness utilizing both fresh and dried herbs. Does anyone have such a recipe?

This may seem like an odd topic for a vegetarian to start, but I did use to eat meat and I do also have an almost completely carnivorous (vegetables? what vegetables?) brother! Saveloys. I live in the South West (just outside of Bristol) and our local chippie does them. My mother has always looked upon them with disdain as some kind of horrendous, red-dyed franken-meat. I must confess, I can no longer remember what they taste like. But as children, they were almost the point of going to the chippie for us kids, and this is a feeling my brother retains to this day. The trouble is, he lives in Reading now and can't seem to find a chippie that does them! This has led us to ponder a question: Are saveloys a regional thing? Are there towns that haven't heard of them? Are their actually English people who haven't heard of them?! Discuss.