I go back and forth on eating vegetarian, what I finally settled on is that I avoid meat for the most part and eat almost all vegetarian dishes. After all eating lower on the food chain is more efficient from an energy standpoint and better for the planet overall. Still, from time to time meat calls to me, and I answer, what can I say, on this one thing I am not a fanatic :-)
There is one thing I can say with certainty though, and that is:
Do not use "meat substitutes" ever.
If you are going to eat a meat dish, eat meat! Trying to put some soy substitute crap or tofu into a recipe that normally has real meat just seems lame to me, it never tastes the same and the very fact that you are using a substitute encourages you to compare it to the same dish with real meat. I will tell you now, the real meat wins the competition every single time. (Garden burgers not included, those are not really substitutes but a thing of their own.)
There are an infinite number of vegetarian dishes that are meant to be vegetarian dishes from the git go, those don't have to compete with meat dishes because there are no meat dishes to compare them to. You can make veggie lasagna or spaghetti with no meat substitutes and they are delicious! In fact there are many dishes where you normally have meat that you can just leave the meat out of them and they are pretty tasty, but meat substitutes would make you wish you were eating real meat. Veggies are veggies and meat is meat and we should not confuse the two.
The same goes for dairy substitutes and that Vegan silliness. I was kind of leaning toward going Vegan at one point, until I read some Vegan wacko say that I could not eat Honey and be a Vegan... say what? OK then I'm not going to bother with being Vegan, it's just way too extreme. Which, in the end, drove me all the way back to omnivore status actually. First it was, Honey is good, and so is butter and cheese and eggs... and the occasional steak or slice of bacon for that matter :-) Sure I'd like to do the right thing for the planet and I sure don't want to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals but dude, you gotta eat!
So, I try to buy organic free range eggs, dairy products from farms that treat their animals decently and meat from animals that have a chance to move around outdoors and are not juiced up with drugs... and I really don't eat meat all that much, but I'm not going to be a fanatic about it either.
There is one thing I can say with certainty though, and that is:
Do not use "meat substitutes" ever.
If you are going to eat a meat dish, eat meat! Trying to put some soy substitute crap or tofu into a recipe that normally has real meat just seems lame to me, it never tastes the same and the very fact that you are using a substitute encourages you to compare it to the same dish with real meat. I will tell you now, the real meat wins the competition every single time. (Garden burgers not included, those are not really substitutes but a thing of their own.)
There are an infinite number of vegetarian dishes that are meant to be vegetarian dishes from the git go, those don't have to compete with meat dishes because there are no meat dishes to compare them to. You can make veggie lasagna or spaghetti with no meat substitutes and they are delicious! In fact there are many dishes where you normally have meat that you can just leave the meat out of them and they are pretty tasty, but meat substitutes would make you wish you were eating real meat. Veggies are veggies and meat is meat and we should not confuse the two.
The same goes for dairy substitutes and that Vegan silliness. I was kind of leaning toward going Vegan at one point, until I read some Vegan wacko say that I could not eat Honey and be a Vegan... say what? OK then I'm not going to bother with being Vegan, it's just way too extreme. Which, in the end, drove me all the way back to omnivore status actually. First it was, Honey is good, and so is butter and cheese and eggs... and the occasional steak or slice of bacon for that matter :-) Sure I'd like to do the right thing for the planet and I sure don't want to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals but dude, you gotta eat!
So, I try to buy organic free range eggs, dairy products from farms that treat their animals decently and meat from animals that have a chance to move around outdoors and are not juiced up with drugs... and I really don't eat meat all that much, but I'm not going to be a fanatic about it either.
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