Yet Another Cycling Forum

Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: Polar Bear on 30 July, 2016, 08:04:51 pm

Title: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Polar Bear on 30 July, 2016, 08:04:51 pm
I am puzzled as to why veggies are served up with substitute meat dishes with names so unimaginative as veggie cottage pie, veggie lasagne, veggie sausages, etc.   

It is really so difficult to find a proper name for these or what?    If I was a veggie I'd want my food not to have any association to meat at all even if it's only a name.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: hellymedic on 30 July, 2016, 08:13:49 pm
I suspect they are 'menu choices' by the unimaginative, who just substitute 'shepherdess pie' for shepherd's pie.
Decent veggie food doesn't work this way, as you'd see in any veggie restaurant.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: HeltorChasca on 30 July, 2016, 08:19:08 pm
There's also the patronising that goes on. Quorn Chicken Pieces. What's that about? When you are veggie, you don't even want the name associated with your grub. My 14 year old daughter is in her 3rd week and the bulldust that even she sees is mifftifieing...b
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: fuaran on 30 July, 2016, 08:24:51 pm
Lasagne refers to the layers of pasta. You can put whatever you like in between them. A cottage pie is just a pie with mashed potato on top. It doesn't have to contain any meat.

If I was a veggie I'd want my food not to have any association to meat at all even if it's only a name.
Whereas most vegetarians don't really care what its called. Unless you are just trying to take offence for the sake of it.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Kim on 30 July, 2016, 08:30:04 pm
People are vegetarian for all sorts of reasons.  Finding meat repulsive is only one of them.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Andrij on 30 July, 2016, 08:31:08 pm
Pork sausages contain ... pork.
Venison sausages contain ... venison.
Vegetarian sausages contain ...  ???

Other items are just as bad, e.g. oils.  You have olive, sunflower, peanut, vegetable, and baby.


I'll eat just about anything, but one must draw the line somewhere!
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Kim on 30 July, 2016, 08:33:55 pm
Pork sausages contain ... pork.
Venison sausages contain ... venison.
Vegetarian sausages contain ...  ???

Linda McCartney, obviously.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Andrij on 30 July, 2016, 08:37:22 pm
Pork sausages contain ... pork.
Venison sausages contain ... venison.
Vegetarian sausages contain ...  ???

Linda McCartney, obviously.

Good enough reason to never touch the things.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Mr Larrington on 30 July, 2016, 09:14:46 pm
A chum was once at some formal industry bash, whereat the schedule stated "Vegetarians will be served separately".  She waited for hours, but her vegetarians never did appear.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: hellymedic on 30 July, 2016, 09:50:45 pm
The vegetarian option at many Big Dinners is frequently rather second rate, at best.
IANAV...
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Hot Flatus on 31 July, 2016, 10:04:46 am
In most of India, vegetarian food is just called 'food'.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: hellymedic on 31 July, 2016, 11:01:02 am
In most of India, vegetarian food is just called 'food'.

Exactly!

Apologetic food makes poor apologies.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Eccentrica Gallumbits on 31 July, 2016, 11:42:10 am

I am puzzled as to why veggies are served up with substitute meat dishes with names so unimaginative as veggie cottage pie, veggie lasagne, veggie sausages, etc.   

It is really so difficult to find a proper name for these or what?    If I was a veggie I'd want my food not to have any association to meat at all even if it's only a name.

There's also the patronising that goes on. Quorn Chicken Pieces. What's that about? When you are veggie, you don't even want the name associated with your grub. My 14 year old daughter is in her 3rd week and the bulldust that even she sees is mifftifieing...b

I've been vegetarian for over 20 years. I don't eat quorn chicken pieces because I don't like them. I do really like quorn ham slices but they give me dodgy tummy. I sometimes make a veggie shepherd's pie using pulses instead of meat (which bobb will confirm is delicious). Some veggie sausages I like, some I don't. It doesn't bother me that they're called sausages. Does it bother meat eaters that Glamorgan sausages are called sausages even though they have no eyeballs or gristle in them?
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: barakta on 31 July, 2016, 12:54:34 pm
Most vegetarians I know will eat anything as long as it is vegetarian and they don't otherwise dislike it. Sometimes food offered is boring or insufficient but that beats being fed meat by mistake or worse bullied for not being a meateater.

I know a few vegetarians who do not like the taste or texture of "fake meat" products, but in the last few years products have got a LOT more varied so some are less meat-like and some are more convincingly meat-like which meets a range of needs.

I was veggie for 10 years between 1993 and around 2003, I saw products improve hugely during that time. Some veggie fake-meats are quite nice and I'll eat them now if it doesn't deprive veggies of a meal.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Martin on 21 March, 2017, 09:25:53 pm
I googled this thread just as my Quorn quarter pounder is heating up,

I'm very much a "failed" veggie as a lot of my diet now consists of Quorn versions of what I used to eat 30 years ago as meat. It's brought home to me that a lot of the appeal of meat based dishes was not the meat but what went with it; stir fries, curries, sarnies with mustard, burgers with blue cheese, chilli, proper sauce with meatballs, carrots broccoli and gravy; etc

IIRC the Dead Animal Pushers wanted to force the makers of Quorn to relabel it as Slime Mould and have it displayed on the packet as that's apparently what it is!

I do eat fish which is fortunate as it means I don't have to try fishless fingers....
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Jurek on 21 March, 2017, 09:33:16 pm
Totally!
My current abstention from red meat means that I miss mustard TO DEATH.
I have taken to putting it on my salad potatoes.
Dijon on Anya spuds.
Yum!
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Pingu on 21 March, 2017, 09:58:00 pm
We make a veggie pasta dish christened Spag Unbol.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 21 March, 2017, 10:06:41 pm
Totally!
My current abstention from red meat means that I miss mustard TO DEATH.
I have taken to putting it on my salad potatoes.
Dijon on Anya spuds.
Yum!

I gave up on Dijon on my spuds a couple of weeks ago and started back on the English mustard. Just this evening I thought it wasn't enough and maybe I need to find some good horseradish.  Or wasabi.  :demon:
Any sensible (ie potentially available) suggestions gratefully received...
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Clare on 21 March, 2017, 11:01:54 pm
We make a veggie pasta dish christened Spag Unbol.

Similarly we have chilli sin carne.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: ian on 22 March, 2017, 07:44:12 am
Quorn isn't slime mould, it's a mycoprotein grown in vats. Sounds horrible, but hey, that's how we make beer. Of course, mycoprotein doesn't sound as nice. Before I fell off the veggie wagon, I found it useful, sometimes I liked a kind of meaty texture in chili and things. Yeah, yeah, proper vegetarians and all that.

For the record, slime moulds are cool. Look 'em up.

I like the veggie sausages partly because I avoid pigs as part of my not-eating-cute-animals policy and partly because they taste nice.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Wombat on 22 March, 2017, 11:12:31 am
Pigs, cute?  ::-)  you haven't seen one lately, have you?  Ickle baby piglets may be cute, but an adult pig is quite likely to be a vicious evil bastard.

This is totally unconnected with the fact that I like eating them.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: ian on 22 March, 2017, 11:15:53 am
Nope, all pigs is ace.

The only meat I eat these days is chicken. But you know, they're kind of like feathery kittens.

Mind you, I'm often inclined to put Bad Cat in the slow cooker. Though she's a bit of a duck-filled fattypus, so probably not good eating.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Mr Larrington on 22 March, 2017, 03:57:16 pm
The Chinese apparently reckon that older cats make for the best eating, while the reverse is true for dog meat.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: ian on 22 March, 2017, 06:30:54 pm
I have a China Chicken Mime for those restaurants in China where no one speaks English and I fear any menu-derived ambiguity. It's got foot scratching and everything.

Despite all this, the last time I still managed to get bullfrog. Frogs do not have wings, not even in China.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Mr Larrington on 22 March, 2017, 06:47:37 pm
Something tells me the Fiendish Communist Hordes of Beijing are not yet on wavelength to have their Thoughts Led, or at least not in that direction.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: pcolbeck on 22 March, 2017, 06:54:53 pm
Quorn isn't slime mould, it's a mycoprotein grown in vats. Sounds horrible, but hey, that's how we make beer. Of course, mycoprotein doesn't sound as nice. Before I fell off the veggie wagon, I found it useful, sometimes I liked a kind of meaty texture in chili and things. Yeah, yeah, proper vegetarians and all that.

Quorn isn't strictly speaking vegetarian, same applies to all fungi as they exist as a third separate kingdom, they aren't animals but they aren't plants either.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: ian on 22 March, 2017, 08:31:51 pm
We're all Opisthokonts though.

I think, unless things have changed since I was an evil molecular geneticist, there are three domains (archaea, bacteria, and eukaryota). There's six kingdoms/groups/supergroups (depending on your taxonomic bent) in the eukaryota (animals, plants, fungi, brown algae and their drinking buddies, amoeba and slime moulds, and a couple of different groups of protista that we used to merge together but it turned out that when we looked that their genetics and rRNA they were really rather different*, other than being mutually small and squishy. Very small squishiness turned out not be a very useful taxonomic characteristic. Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants, but that doesn't mean much.

*six is a bit arbitrary, people keep finding things that don't fit, but then taxonomical boundaries require some arbitrariness. And there's a movement against strict definitions and hierarchies as it's all a bit Victorian, and life is, it seems, a rather messy affair. And what the fuck we do with colossal bellends like Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins, no one knows, but we're sure no taxonomical groups want them.
Title: Re: 'Veggie' meat dishes
Post by: Martin on 23 March, 2017, 11:20:11 am
I like the veggie sausages partly because I avoid pigs as part of my not-eating-cute-animals policy and partly because they taste nice.

I don't think there's anything wrong with liking the taste / texture of meat type items without actually eating meat. I didn't give up meat because I disliked the taste / texture (although i don't miss the gristle little hard white bits and fat that Quorn lacks), it was mostly for health / compassion grounds (although the latest Vegan posters would dispute this)

and also it was just after my (German born, lived in the war) Mum had made a turkey curry about 10 days after Christmas, the people who make mechanically recovered meat would have been  proud of her!  :sick:

anyone remember SosMix? that really was horrible, they also made a version for shaping into bacon-stylee burgers