AHHHHHHAhahahahahahahaha!
Oh, I’m not a vegetarian at all, whether for ethical or health reasons. What I was saying earlier is that it just never occurred to me before I had so many vegetarian friends, how often corpse turns up in our food.
yes, yes, yes Jodi but frankly, vegetable stock tastes crap.
Give me strength. Nuke, that’s not what you said. You said: “stock is made by boiling the bones of a chicken.” This is . . . well, if ain’t necessarily wrong, it ain’t necessarily right. Which is the sum toto of the point I was making. Frankly, I don’t give crap about whether you think veggie stock tastes crap; that’s your O and welcome to it. 
(Slight Hijack) I make refried beans from scratch. I have made them for years. You don’t need to add lard at all. Most of the recipes that I have seen require a pound of bacon. It is easy enough to delete out the bacon though and make them. You can add a little more salt which is what bacon kind of adds but it is not necessary. To make them, you make borracho beans (which can be found in the crock pot recipe thread that was posted ages ago) and then later after you enjoy the borracho beans (like the next day) you put them all in a skillet and mash them until most of the water has boiled off. Simple, delicious, and gets rid of leftovers in a wonderful way.(/slight hijack)
I am not a vegetarian any longer but still enjoy eating a lot of vegetarian meals. When I was a vegetarian, it was for two reasons, one was like SwimmingRiddles and the other was that meat was too heavy that it was upsetting my stomach. I now eat meat but never do I eat a lot of it. I think if I wasn’t with a meat eater I would go back to vegetarianism but don’t do it now because it is very hard to cook meals that are vege/meat seperate.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Jodi:
Which reminds me of a really good recipe:
Take a can of black beans and pulse them in the food processor with about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of their liquid until they’re good and mushy.
In a pan, in a tablespoon or so of oil, saute a diced yellow onion and a can of drained, chopped green chiles. Once the onions are clear, add the bean puree and cook at high heat, stirring and flipping them over constantly until they start to develop a little crunchiness on the outside.
In another pan, in oil, fry some plantain or banana slices (sliced the long way, not in circular cross sections.) Serve up the beans with the fried bananas. Woooohoo!
Perhaps not as inconsistent as you may think. Some years back, I had a conversation with my philosophy professor, who was a staunch vegetarian and animal-rights activist. His position was that it is unjust to cause pain for any selfish reason, whether to an animal or a human. He went on to say that some studies showed that fish don’t really feel “pain” the way that other animals do. Although fish may exhibit “panic reactions” when, for example, they’re removed from the water and unable to breathe, pain doesn’t chemically register on their little 1-watt brains like it does on the brains of us mammals. So, some animal rights groups were debating whether eating fish may in fact be morally OK, since “pain” wasn’t any more an issue than when eating plants.
I don’t know what’s happened in the years since this conversation, but I thought you might be interested.
Yes, fat is a carrier of flavor, and you’ll probably be amazed to learn that fat can be derived from vegetable sources and be equally as tasty.
Hmmmmm, I see, then why come in here and say something so deliberately antagonistic and which does not address the OP?
Okay, number one, lest you think I’m stupid, I will clarify for you that I do, indeed, know how meat-based broths are made. In fact, I’ve made them in my lifetime as I’ve only been a vegetarian for 9 years. Number two, if you will scroll back up to my post, you will find the words “light garden vegetable broth”. Number three, I make some awesome soups using vegetable broth and veggies which I would put up against the beefed up versions anyday.
That said, Jodi, just so you know, I think both Ortega and Old El Paso have come out with low (or non-) fat vegetarian refried beans which I use often. I like to mix in a touch of BBQ sauce to jazz them up and thin them out a little (the lack of old does make them a little thicker but water, broth or sauce can thin them to their customary consistency fairly easily).
Cheers!
Peta
Of course, I meant the “lack of oil.”
PHIL, I was with you 'til you got to the fried bananas. Ick! But I actually use a similar recipe to make black bean cakes that I shape into patties and fry (in a non-stick pan), but I put diced roasted red peppers in mine instead of chiles, and cilantro (I LOVE cilantro) – I’ll have to try it with the chiles. And I generally serve them with marinated chicken breasts, not bananas – but I know what your reaction to that would be. Black bean cakes are not only a good way to use up leftovers (as Squirrel pointed out), but are pretty good when left over themselves – either straight-from-the-fridge or heated and with a slice of cheese and some veggies on a bun.
PETA, thanks for the tip – I’ll look for the low-fat vegetarian refried beans the next time I’m in the store.
With a respectful nod to the vegetarians here, I am a meat eater. It gives me great pleasure to pop the odd chunk in my mouth while cutting up a roast for the stew pot.
Aside from medical reasons, I see no reason to abstain; as long as the animal was cared for and killed humanely, I don’t have a problem with it.
That’s the rub, the modern, industrial food processing industry isn’t a humane thing by far. Food animals are rarely raised or killed in good conditions. I eat meat but I don’t delude myself into thinking the animal products that fill my supermarket are remotely close to “cruelty free.”
A good ovo-lacto-veggie friend put her stance eloquently: she didn’t want to eat or use things that required slaughterhouses to exist.
The human body IS meat. Thus, evertime you swallow you are swallowing meat anyway…
HANDY, your posts continue to fascinate me – in part because I never know if you’re kidding or not. If you are – ha! If not –
Precisely what meat am I swallowing when I swallow? Are you saying that I ingest a part of my own body? Which part would that be? I can see how you might say that I use meat (meaning, flesh/bone/muscle/etc.) to swallow, but not that I am actually swallowing meat. By that rationale I am inhaling meat every time I take a breath of air. Rememer, logic is our friend.
I’m a certified omnivore. My favorite meals are a big ol’ fresh salad and a big ol’ juicy burger. Preferably at the same time.
The only vegetarian I’ve met was this girl who was staying with my family for a month (long story). The weird thing is, she didn’t eat salads. Nothing wrong with that, just struck me as odd to meet a vegetarian who didn’t eat salads.
The really weird thing is that the day before she left, she cooked us supper as a way of saying thanks. Supper included pork chops.
I could be wrong (and probably am) but perhaps HANDY meant that you would be swallowing potential meat. That is, what you are eating will become “meat” on your body. I hope I’m wrong, 'cause that doesn’t really make any sense.
Not all soup is made with chicken broth. I always ask when I get soup at a restaurant…
Uh… yeah whatever. Actually what tastes like crap is that hint-o-death in chicken or beef broth. I can smell chicken stock in most soups and just the stench alone makes me ill.
Um… I don’t really like salad much myself.
At least two times at Vietnamese restauraunts, some of my friends have ordered vegetarian noodle bowls that most clearly had fish stock in them, even though the waitress swore they were true vegetarian.
If you drink only blood but don’t eat meat are you a vegetarian?
After about a mounth of knowing me most people will ask if I’m a vegetarian. I’m not, I’m just one of those tender stomached people for whom complex proteins are a challenge. I just don’t enjoy much meat. I will happily steal a bite of steak from my friend tomorrow when we go out to dinner. Other than that I’m fine with my baked potato.
The greatest thing ever was when I discovered black beans. I’m from Michigan. Michiganders eat meat. Cow usually, with white meat being considered sissy. I think there may be seven vegitarians over the age of 15 in MI and they all live in Ann Arbor. (Nothing wrong with Ann Arbor, its MI’s only source of culture. They have to live there or they would starve. )
Now I am in Pittsburgh. People can do the greatest, most edible stuff with black beans! I love it!
Salads however are a different story.