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Reforming Vegetarians


weinoo

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Today's NY Times Food Section has a good article about a new magazine out of San Francisco called Meatpaper, which evidently has some vegetarians all agog. It's here.

Seems as if some vegetarians are even reverting back to meat - the two founders of Meatpaper, Sasha Wizansky and Amy Standen, are converts.

Both are in their early 30s, and both were once committed vegetarians. (“We find over and over again that bacon is the conversion meat,” Ms. Standen said. “Bacon is how vegetarians change their minds.”)

Sounds good to me - but I'm already an omnivore :smile: .

Now- who else in gonna take that first bite of bacon???

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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Hot Dogs too. I had a friend that was a strict vegetarian except for ball games. Then she had to have a hot dog. Her roomate also a veg, does lobster once a year at Thanksgiving as a half way point between Turkey and Tofu I guess.

Maybe start them off with Bacon Salt to get that smokey goodness craving going.

Edited by Stefferdoos (log)
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Bacon: the gateway meat.

I've seen bacon as just a stepping stone to buffalo wings.

Peter Gamble aka "Peter the eater"

I just made a cornish game hen with chestnut stuffing. . .

Would you believe a pigeon stuffed with spam? . . .

Would you believe a rat filled with cough drops?

Moe Sizlack

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This is so funny...a long time ago I was a rather devout vegan, and the chef at the hotel I worked at one day offered me to come to the kitchen for bacon. I refused. She would cook some up when she knew I was coming in and leave it in the path I would walk to go into my desk. With in a about 2 weeks, I picking off that plate! After 4 years of no meat.

Now, if you are made of pork, you better run faster than me...

"I eat fat back, because bacon is too lean"

-overheard from a 105 year old man

"The only time to eat diet food is while waiting for the steak to cook" - Julia Child

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As an ex-vegetarian and vegan, my lure was always steak. Bacon smelled wonderful but it was the thought of a grilled, rare slab of beef and just about *any* seafood that brought forth the saliva.

Shelley: Would you like some pie?

Gordon: MASSIVE, MASSIVE QUANTITIES AND A GLASS OF WATER, SWEETHEART. MY SOCKS ARE ON FIRE.

Twin Peaks

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Sorry,

A bite of bacon would not convince me that my tastebuds are more important that my conscience,  the environment, or the lives of the animals that would have to die to satisfy my gustatory cravings.

Nothing to be sorry about...please maintain your moral standards :smile: .

There are animals (as this magazine points out) that are raised humanely and in perfect harmony with their environment...probably in better harmony with their environment than the way a lot of vegetables are raised.

And that has some vegetarians rethinking certain aspects of why they are vegetarians in the first place.

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

Tasty Travails - My Blog

My eGullet FoodBog - A Tale of Two Boroughs

Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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Well, I don't know about everybody else, but my organically raised, sustainable-harvested-fed, Beethoven-played-to, free-range pig sang the "Circle of Life" song with me right before I did him in.

I think it made him taste even better.

“Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!”
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I love meat, although I admit that killing animals beyond the actual needs of our sustenance is a problem we affluent nations have to do a bit more work on. My main objection to knee-jerk American vegetarianism (I won't even go into veganism here--don't get me started) is its tendency to anthropomorphize meat animals, that is, ascribe the same needs and feelings to them that we do to people. My sense is that a cow or a pig simply has different aims in life than a human; they're working on a different frequency, with different priorities consciousness-wise. For them, a humane life followed by a humane death is pretty darn good, neither insulting nor injurious to their body or spirit, and it's incumbent upon us to do our best to ensure them those conditions. I believe that to an extent the animals become part of us when we consume them. Which is, you have to admit, kinda groovy.

By the way, one way to reduce our meat intake is by improving our meat: The less flavor meat has, the more you have to eat simply to get that satisfying sensation of eating meat.

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I have a friend who is vegetarian except she'll eat hot dogs... but with the "skin" peeled off. :blink:

I think bacon was one of the things for me too (besides not having an actual problem with eating animals), but there are other things that I think influenced me more; it wasn't just one thing or the other. Like those duck wings my parents would buy at the Chinese market. Mmmm.

Maybe I shouldn't say this for fear of angry mobs coming after me, but I see both over-indulgence of meat and vegetarianism as they exist in the US as a result of living in an affluent nation.

"I know it's the bugs, that's what cheese is. Gone off milk with bugs and mould - that's why it tastes so good. Cows and bugs together have a good deal going down."

- Gareth Blackstock (Lenny Henry), Chef!

eG Ethics Signatory

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it was on one of the Two Fat Ladies shows i remember them eating bacon sandwiches and them saying that bacon was the one thing that would lure a vegetarian from that inclination.

Nothing is better than frying in lard.

Nothing.  Do not quote me on this.

 

Linda Ellerbee

Take Big Bites

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A friend of mine is a lifelong vegetarian--ever since she was born--and she can't stand the smell of frying bacon.

Yeah, I was already thinking that it probably depends on whether the vegetarian in question ever ate meat in the past. If so, surely whatever kind of meat one liked best as an omnivore would be most tempting. Bacon smells really good but I grew up in Pakistan and never saw the stuff 'til I was 18. I guess by then I was too brainwashed to think of it as anything but taboo. However I loved a juicy hamburger and now as a vegetarian that's what tempts me most. If I ever went back to eating meat it would be to take a big bite out of a fat juicy burger!
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I was a vegetarian for many years, and it wasn't bacon that did me in. On a business trip to the bahamas, (hard life) many of the meals were preordered by our hosts. The vegetables were pathetic (browned iceberg lettuce, anyone?) but the seafood spreads were plentiful. I chose scallops and shrimps, thinking they were the least sentient beings. When I got home, I went back to vegetarianism for a few months, but I couldn't get those delicate pillowy scallops out of my mind. It was a slippery slope after that.

Bacon on the other hand, is good, but not nearly as good as: pork belly, braised pork, carnitas, and the many other applications of the pork.

Edited by Nina C. (log)

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Nina Callaway

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I was a vegetarian for about 7 years, and I thought about bacon all the time. When I started eating meat again, it was bacon that I started on. I was alarmed to discover that fatty meat was really hard to eat out of the gate (it would make me nauseous), and boneless skinless chicken breast was pretty much the only thing I could handle eating for about a year afterward.

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Maybe I shouldn't say this for fear of angry mobs coming after me, but I see both  over-indulgence of meat and vegetarianism as they exist in the US as a result of living in an affluent nation.

I have to agree with this statement.

an affluent nation with a notoriously cheap food policy.........

watch how things change this coming year.....

food prices are going to go through the roof...

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My daughter was a vegetarian for a couple of years when she was a tot. Fried chicken did her in. She's never been big on what she calls 'pig butt'.

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This might be a bit divergent, but I know there are religious creeds/traditions that mandate vegetarianism...is there anything comparable for vegans?

I say it because I'm considering the whole "over indulgence in both meat *and* vegetarianism is a sign of affluence" (and I agree,) but evangelical veganism strikes me as about as much of an affluent indulgent Western life style as it's possible to have....

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I'm a totally wannabe vegetarian, solely for taste preference, not for loftier reasons.

When it comes to pork, my spouse and I just don't eat it. In fact, we had our first bite of pork in nearly a decade last week (odd story too long for here). My spouse was raised in Zambia where his family had pigs, and he swears that only the monkey was smarter than his pigs. The dogs and all other animals didn't come close, so for that reasons, its hard to enjoy pork (and although we've never talked about it, I"m sure monkey is off limits too - just as elephant would be).

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Maybe I shouldn't say this for fear of angry mobs coming after me, but I see both  over-indulgence of meat and vegetarianism as they exist in the US as a result of living in an affluent nation.

I have to agree with this statement.

I have a proposal that I think can unite vegetarians and carnivores: Call it "do-your-best-ism."

Recognizing that eating meat does requires the loss of sentient life and a huge expediture of resources, Doyourbestists would do their best to eat only the meat that they really felt they needed to eat in order to meet their needs, whether nutritional or emotional, and would do their best to eat the most humanely raised meat possible.

There would be some whose best would result in their not eating any meat, because they just don't feel that they need it--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Vegetarians.

There would be some whose best would result in their still eating quite a bit of meat--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Carnivores--but they would no longer be overindulging, animals would be treated more humanely, and meat quality would be higher.

Some might feel that their best would involve not eating any meat for most meals, but still cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving or eating meat when it's served at a dinner party, because it's important to them not to feel socially isolated--the Doyourbestists formerly known as Hypocrites. They too would be welcomed into the fold of Doyourbestism.

Best of all, there would be an end to snarky carnivore vs. vegetarian threads on culinary web sites! (Not talking about this one, which has been mercifully civil so far.)

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Bacon should really be classified as a drug rather than a meat.

It is interesting to note that pigs are incredibly smart though. So one would have to justify eating dogs if pigs, also kept as pets, are even more intelligent than most pets.

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