A Note to the Passionate - 5/22/2014

Vegetarians. Stop.

I don't mean stop being vegetarians, that's your choice and can be a good one, if you do things right. But stop trying to make vegetarian versions of foods that are usually made with meat and trying to make the carnivores like myself believe it's something it's not.

Vegetarian chili is not chili. By definition, chili has meat in it. Beef is an integral ingredient, and telling me I'm going to be eating chili when there's no beef in it sets my expectations incorrectly. I will come to it expecting chili, I will be disappointed. Not because what you've made is bad, or unpalatable, but because my taste buds will zig expecting a zag.

If you must serve me something attempting to be chili, don't call it chili and don't tell me it's chili. Call it “Xobaxa Terricana”, or any one of a thousand other made-up names. Lentil stew (if it uses lentils), tomato-bean casserole, leftover soup, whatever.

That means that I can come to this experience with no more expectations than I might otherwise have, and enjoy the experience because you are not trying to force something into a mold that does not properly hold it.

Meat is not vegetable and vegetables are not meat. There are meatless cuisines worldwide that do wonderful things with vegetables, grains, fruit and all the other possibilities. But they are wonderful because they do not try to make vegetables do meat things, they let the ingredients be themselves.

So let the ingredients be themselves, and do not concern yourself with tofu dogs, fake hamburger patties (which can be quite good, I'll admit) or any other such things. You are a vegetarian, be a vegetarian and convince me with the wonderful things that vegetarianism can do, not with attempts to make it something it isn't.

And yes, this is more a meditation on that basic concept than any arguments directed specifically at a particular dietary lifestyle. If a thing is a thing, let it be that thing. If it is not that thing, let it be not that thing. Find the joy and beauty in things by coming to them without preconceptions that if it is in some way like something else, it must be similar in other ways, as well.

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