Meet loaf.

I love Jonathan Safran Foer's stuff- "Everything Is Illuminated" was one of those books that leave such a lasting impression that they become a part of you, and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" had me in tears in public.  So when my up-to-date S/O saw that he was writing a non-fiction book about vegetarianism, I was really interested in what he had to say.  And it was a lot.

Vegetarianism is a complex issue.  It's a relatively small choice, sometimes, but it has a huge social ripple.  I think my family was very concerned when I showed up for Thanksgiving and made a broccoli quiche for myself, and I was a little concerned myself.  Foer talks about his grandmother's signature dish, chicken soup, and how important it was to her to feed her children and grandchildren fatty pieces of meat after running from the Nazis and starving for years.  For him to give up her soup, and deprive himself and his son of the stories and family history inherent in eating it, was a very poignant illustration of the issues I'm sure many vegetarians battle (albeit sometimes unconsciously).

When I went veg, it was very important to me not to "make a big deal out of it."  I didn't want to make any family or friends feel the least bit guilty for eating meat, and I didn't want anybody to feel judged.  That's something I still feel strongly about, but it's been difficult to accomplish because the act of me turning down meat sometimes seems to make people uncomfortable about eating it no matter what I say.  Foer confronts that issue head-on too, and discusses frankly the moral and ethical issues that we grow up with concerning eating animals.  Not meat, animals.  As an aside, what an interesting book title.

Think about it: from the time that we're tiny we read the story of the three little pigs.  The wolf wants to eat them.  Why is the wolf bad?  It's in his nature to eat other animals.  But that doesn't matter, because he's going after a living thing and he wants to nom it, and he's bad because of it.  And then we wonder why we have guilt complexes while eating pork chops.

Before reading this book, I ate a lot of fish- not at home, but when I was eating at restaurants.  Because of the points that I can't reiterate eloquently here, I haven't had fish in a couple of months.  I don't want to make any shining proclamations about how long this will last or its universal application (I ate a small amount of meat in France this summer because so many of the issues that made me go veg weren't issues with the meat I was offered there), but having a plant-based diet has become something really important to me, surprisingly so.  I find myself becoming an outspoken advocate of reduced meat consumption more than almost any other issue.

Maybe some other time in a shorter post I'll talk about why I went veg in the first place.  There wasn't any one reason, and it's kind of a complicated story, so I'll leave it for another day.

Anyway, the whole point to this post was that I made this recipe for this vegan loaf that I can eat on my homemade tomato thyme bread.  I wasn't sure about it, as it had a bunch of stuff that I've never cooked with before (like nutritional yeast and vital wheat gluten) (which totally sucks since my friends with gluten allergies can't enjoy :-( ).  But it turned out yummy... it has the texture of sausage (with a hard outside and firm inside) and has a spicy-delicious-salty flavor that I totally want to eat with ketchup and mayo.  And maybe a tomato slice.  On an open-faced sammitch.  And maybe I can put it in the toaster oven.  Drool.  And my wonderful, supportive S/O likes it too.  Victoire.

So then I shamelessly stole said recipe and reposted in the hope that the three people who read this will make it and love it.  And there you go.  This is worth trying out, even if you aren't going the veggie route.