[QUOTE=Justin_Bailey]
I don’t think this is true. Your mind makes you sick because you don’t want to eat the meat.
In a case like this, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.
[/QUOTE]
Not true. Once I bought vegetable egg rolls, ate them, threw up after. Checked the ingredients closely - chicken broth, chicken fat. I did that to myself with some other food product as well. On probably 3-4 occasions, I have had inlaws sneak meat/meat products into my food because they were convinced I was faking my intolerance of meat. I became ill while at their house (unaware of the adulteration), and went home ill, or sometimes after returning home. After I became ill, the culprit fessed up to what they’d done - the first time, it was my father-in-law, and he was calling our house as we walked in the door (with me running to the bathroom to vomit), with my husband picking up the call. My father-in-law was gloating, “See? She can eat meat!” and my husband’s tirade included the fact that no, my stomach was rejecting the food without my even knowing it was in there.
I also have no qualms about making meat for others, and cook it nightly for my omnivorous husband. I’ve even hand-made sausage on a number of occasions; I debone chickens without a thought. I am not one of those “dead animal - oh I’m gonna be sick” shrinking violets.
I will add the side note that I know much Thai food includes a small amount of fish sauce, but I can eat that - either the very small amount of sauce used in a dish or changes to the meat proteins from fermentation seem to make it acceptable to my gut. I’ve been lucky so far, and fish sauce is pungent, so one would easily be able to detect large amounts of it.
[QUOTE=bouv]
As far as ingredients of the food is concerned, you can always, gasp ask! Ask the server if there is cheese in XYZ salad, or if you don’t want to bother to wait for her/him to go back to the kitchen to ask, then just say "no cheese/onions/bacon. (though if they do this, they are either new, the menu item is new, or they’re a bad server. Servers should know what goes into the food.)
[/quote]
I know, I just don’t like making a fuss about it. The way I figure, a restaurant will have selected those items to go together for a reason (good restaurant: because the chef feels that is the best culinary experience; bad restaurant: the frozen item comes premixed that way), and so if I have any doubt, I go with something obviously “safe” rather than cross-examine the waiter. I worked in a restaurant long ago and I vowed - successfully so far - that I would rather work in a factory or in retail than go back to food service, should circumstances require. I know what kind of time pressure waiters are under, and my asking about the soup, this particular entree, oh and that appetizer, etc., would be a pain in the rear.
Typically the most I’ll do is ask about one item, and rarely ask if it can be substituted. At one Italian restaurant I saw some lovely-sounding butternut-filled ravioli but the sauce was poultry based. I told the waitress straight out that if it was possible to substitute the broth in the sauce for something vegetarian I’d love that, but otherwise I would be absolutely delighted with the gnocchi and they shouldn’t go to too much trouble. She came back with the news that the chef would be making a veg version; I thanked her graciously, the food was wonderful, and we gave her a very good tip.
Actually, just a week ago my husband and I went to a restaurant for the first time, and I tried ordering a pan-Asian noodle dish without any meat (said “neither” when prompted for the choice between two meats). When the - obviously new by other cues - waiter looked confused, my husband interjected that I didn’t eat meat, and the waiter recovered quickly and asked if I would like tofu. I said that would be fine. Our entrees took longer than I expected, but when I tasted the tofu in mine, I figured out why - it tasted like they had taken the time to press fresh tofu back in the kitchen, then lightly batter it and fry it. It did not have the texture of frozen tofu (chewy, stays together well, but better for simulating “ground meat” - would be an easy way for a busy kitchen to fry tofu that would hold together), nor of unpressed (too soft) tofu. I was very impressed by this attention to detail.
