Dora v. Passive-Aggression: The upcoming family BBQ(Advice?)

See, like that! I never seem to hear guys say they aren't vegetarian but they've tried veggie burgers. Maybe women are just more willing to try different foods in general?

I would agree with that.


Tofu-
most people are scared of it and think it is bland , boring and not worth eating
Well right out of the package.. yeah.. yeeuch

Cashew butter, very LITTLE olive oil, water, sea salt and tamari mixed together as a topping for baked tofu?
HOLY COW.
Peanut butter steak ;-)

Well, I'm an unusual case in that I lived in a vegetarian housing co-op for a few years -- meals were included in the monthly fees and I couldn't afford to eat out much at the time. That's when I discovered veggie burgers. And developed a severe dislike of tempeh. (Only takes 83 times of it being prepared REALLY badly... blehhhhhhhh...)

oh yuck.
Yeah, bland tempeh.. oh good grief, I would enjoy eating tree bark vs Tempeh.
There is a packaged " smokey ' flavored tempeh..
WOW! Very well worth the try if you ever see it in the store.

Oh and my husband was a veggie when I met him, but I corrupted him. Oops. He'd been veggie for more than a decade, too.

I've never been purposely ideologically vegetarian, but have been for stretches of time due to circumstances. ("It's easy to give up meat, I've done it zillions of times...")

Actually, it is called Fakin Bakon.
I dont think it tastes like bacon.
But the flavor it has is REALLY good.. I cant quite explain it though..

I believe tempeh can be prepared well, but the dude who prepared it and nothing but it didn't know wtf he was doing and it was NAS-ty.

Well, dora, I remember when I was about 8 years old, my dad came home one night and announced we were all going to start a vegetarian diet. (He was one of those Dads, you know? With a capital D!)

So for a while we ate all the veggie products, which fell by the way side after a while. But I have to hand it to him for trying.

Anyway, there was another change he made at the time which really stuck. We started drinking skim milk instead of whole milk. Being a kid, I couldn't really tell the difference. So I was fine with it. I grew up drinking skim milk.

Then, when I was in high school, there were friends who'd invite me over to their house for dinner.

I remember once being at a friend's home, eating dinner with her family, and when I took a sip of milk? I almost gagged!!! I thought, "These people are drinking spoiled milk!! OMG!!"

But I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to say anything. So I just tried to choke down a few sips -- and hoped I wouldn't get botchilism.

The next time I went to a friend's home for dinner -- the same thing happened!! What's up with this?? Is my family the only family in town that has a refrigerator? Are these people leaving their milk out in the sun all day???

Finally, it hit me. We were the weirdos. We were drinking skim milk, and the rest of the world was drinking whole milk.

Blech! I still can't stand whole milk. Tastes like a cup of cream to me. Guess it depends on what you grow up with!

It probably seems like I take it way too seriously, but I deal with such strong reactions to vegetarian food all the time, because of my job. I think it might be surprising to others if they could see the level of-- I would almost say anger-- people have about coming into a restaurant that doesn't serve a lot of meat. It's odd. People tend to come in without knowing what we serve, and then get so VERY worked up when they call me to the table and say, "Don't you have meat?!" I have had so many tables where some of the party (usually the woman or women) want to stay, and the others (generally the men) sulk like children and won't order anything. That 's why I've spent some time wondering about it, since I see it cause such strong reactions in people...

I felt exactly the same way.... I always had skim, and whole milk really did taste spoiled. Isn't that odd? I never understood why people would act like my skim milk was gross, I thought it was great--now I think I liked it just because it was less like real milk. See, I've always been veggie at heart-- the less something tasted like an animal product, and the more it grossed other people out, the better I liked it! That's why I like all those veggie foods that others think are weird, like tofu and tempeh and smart dogs, hee heehee.

I have yet to find anyone who can actually MAKE tempeh taste good.
Packaged , pre flavored is all I will touch..
just.. bleeach

I love smart dogs, and have some in my fridge, along with some Boca Burgers. I'm gonna have to try those Morningstar Farms burgers too.

I like tofu -- but I've never tried tempeh. To be honest, I have to go along with the others here -- it just doesn't look all that appetizing to me. Maybe it's not bad if you really know how to prepare it.

Where I work we have a dish called spicy fiesta tempeh, and that (and fakin bacon) is the only way I've had tempeh. I had no idea it can be so icky if it's fixed wrong! The owner of the restaurant is an excellent vegetarian chef and she comes up with incredible recipes. I guess I'll just stick with her version of tempeh then!

Dummy here with a sort of bias, which I'll explain - what is tempeh?


I am not a vegetarian but like vegetables and often eat food sans meat for fair spans of time, cooked re recipes of different cuisines and not from vegetarian cookbooks, though I own a few.

I am biased against constructed food, made to look or taste like something else, just to get that out of the way.

I don't mind tofu, have been shown to like it several times, even rave, but I don't want to see it as a hotdog or turkey. I must be missing the wit button again.

I guess I don't get the whole processed veggie thing. Lots of cuisines have veggie food, certainly many asian, and at least some french and italian, to start with.

You could say protein as an answer to me, but hey, eat some beans, or mung bean threads, or french cut grean beans or pasta e fagioli.

To hone down to where I guess I am annoyed, it is the fake food thing that triggers that. I suppose it was once taken as funny and may stlll be, now at big industry style.

A few years ago, I think on a2k, but maybe on another forum, I had a thread about vegetarian thanksgiving. The first several posts mostly offered me help in doing a tofuturkey..

but me, I wanted to use vegetables found in common thanksgiving feasts as a part of a several course dinner, with an italian, in that case, emphasis, though I can see doing that in different cuisines.

Vincent got it. Long live Vincent, I still miss him, though most here haven't heard of him. I think Cav was in on that thread too.

Point being that garden burgers are just a start for a whole cuisine that I don't think should be built on phonyness.

End/osso rant

but tempeh may be part of regular asian cooking, which is why I brought this up before I tangented into a rant.

but tempeh may be part of regular asian cooking, which is why I brought this up before I tangented into a rant.

wow, so many things to say, where oh where to begin?!

okey dokey, tempeh: not a faked up "meet" substance. It's (cue the programmed explanantion I give the customers ) a mix of grains: bulgar, oats, millet, barley, and soybeans, which is steam cooked like rice and can be prepared in numerous ways. Yum! It can be used to bulk up veggie dishes and make them more hearty, or it's available pressed and packaged as fakin' bacon[size=7]tm[/size]. It might be used for other types of fake meat things, I dunno. But it is a traditional, "real" food used in other countries.

As far as the funky meet products, I pretty much agree wit ya osso. If you're going to eat veggie, why not just....eat vegetables? The fake stuff doesn't seem gross to me, like some people find it, but I also prefer to just eat vegetables, beans, tofu, etc. I find regular veggie food to be quite versatile enough. But I do use veggie dogs for easy camping food, garden burgers if my boyfriend wants to grill and I don't have time to make homemade "burgers", things like that. And fakin' bacon is just plain yummy.

I love bacon, but as you could expect am picky even on that, and I don't get a chance to work out my preferences since I eat it so rarely. I do know I don't actually like Niman's reallywellgrownnatural bacon. Which is too bad, as it is expensive and I'd rather hoped to like it.

I'll mention this again in a few months when I have some more, probably at a coffee shop with eggs and cottage fries.

I think we need an a2k bacon test...

okay, anther thread..