#Food Today's advice column inspired grouse:
Starter salads are not a vegetarian entree!
I am a breathing embodiment of the stereotype that vegetarians love salad. I really do! I love salad A LOT.
And yet, not being a cow, I still cannot digest roughage. Folks who seem to fully understand for themselves and their meat-eating guests that a bowl of greens is not a meal should not have trouble grasping that it is not a meal for a vegetarian, either.
#Food If you are providing a meal for vegetarians and you really don't know what to offer you can go ahead and ask the vegetarians in question. But a good guideline is that vegetarians have the same macronutrient needs as everyone else. Our meals typically contain some combination of carbs, fat, and protein.
Fun fact: lettuce contains none of the above. All it is is fun to crunch. Basically the bubble wrap of the food world.
#Food Getting several replies to this from lettuce fans talking up its nutritional value. Lettuce is great!
...but it's not a meal, which is the point of this thread. Meals contain actual calories in sufficient quantity to fuel daily activities. In situations where a meal is being served, vegetarians deserve to be served an actual meal, and green salad is not a meal.
@Annalee there should at least be croutons.
And a sammich.
@Annalee Oh no, we're still having to have this conversation. :P 30 years ago, it was either pasta primavera or salad...you'd think most people would have caught up by now, particularly with so many gorgeous and yummy options (which there were fewer of 30 years ago). Alas, progress still eludes us.
P.S. I strongly dislike pasta primavera.
@mikeofmany I mean I enjoy both bubble wrap and lettuce!
But I do not mistake them being fun for having substance.
@Annalee :
— Here a fish for the vegetarian !
— Sorry but vegetarians don’t eat animals
— But it’s a fish!
— I’m not specialist in biology but I’m pretty sure fish are not plants.
— Vegetarians eat fish!
(happened to me at a wedding)
@ploum @Annalee @sharpblue Indeed! Mind you, you’re not *very* closely related to a truffle. But yes: more closely than either of you are related to a carrot.
Also: a number of seaweeds regularly eaten by humans are no more plants than an elephant is.
@sharpblue @ghusk @ploum @Annalee People are fish? Well [somewhat sniffily], sarcopterygii, anyway.
Reptiles don't exist? Of course they do. There's one tweeting on the feeder outside my window as we speak. Or swap out "reptile" for "amniote" and include us as well.
For many purposes, one no more need insist that an ant is a wasp than that a tomato is a fruit. That doesn't hold true in systematic biology, though.
@Annalee @ploum Same here. Though I was a vegetarian for a number of years. Most of them spent in Bavaria, where being vegetarian was… not easy. (It’s much easier now.)
ME: I don’t eat meat, so I’ll have a salad, please.
[Waiter brings salad liberally sprinkled with crispy bacon lardons]
ME: Umm. No meat, remember?
WAITER: Oh, that? That’s not meat. That’s just bacon.
I don't understand why people who are not vegetarians (I am not) overthink this. We all have lots of favorite meatless recipes that we make on a regular basis. I think sometimes it's a brain block thing happening. Like "I eat fettucine alfredo with spinach frequently for dinner but I'm not vegetarian so that doesn't count" or something like that.
Lettuce = crunchy water, as I call it.
Annalee
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A Vernal Pool
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ploum
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