TofuFriends had a supper party last night. It was all vegan fare except a lentil salad someone else brought; and she left the goat cheese out of one portion to leave it vegan for the host (the hostess has leveled off at vegetarianism). I suppose I would miss flesh eventually, but if I were willing to expend this much effort on my food, I could easily be at least vegetarian. I'm not; I'm hardly willing to cook at all. RDC cooks without flesh mostly; at home we have fish occasionally and fowl more seldom than that and four-footed flesh only rarely. And of course he doesn't cook as if for a supper party on a regular basis. This was good stuff.
An asparagus and onion stir-fry over rice; soy cakes with soy sauce for dipping; the lentil salad; and the prize of the meal, a fruit and tofu stir-fry. I figure tofu ought to taste as least like itself as it can possibly manage, so it's far better to disguise it with fruit, which is inherently yummy, than with vegetables, which are--at least the stir fry varieties--another duty food. This had apricots, cranberries, and something else, perhaps as basic as apple, with cinnamon. Very good.
RDC avers that he would cook more vegetarian if I liked beans and lentils, but I don't, so he doesn't. This is completely true. Any bean I have ever tried has had the consistency of a lima bean (which I understand is a legume) and is therefore unpalatable. And the first (and only) time I attempted refried beans, when I was grown and more willing to experiment, I choked my taco down only because I was at someone else's house.
My qualms about flesh are not for the physical suffering of animals or the idea of human domination. Homo sapiens sapiens is an omnivore, as are our nearest relations; flesh in small quantities cannot be unnatural or unhealthy. My qualms lie in the production of flesh, the huge volume of water expended on what is, given the resources it demands, an inefficient source of protein and other nutrients. Factory-farmed fowl are commonly (in the U.S., the only country I pretend to know much about) fed the manure of other fowl. The flesh of cattle transported to the slaughter is tainted with the chemicals of the terror they experience as well as meat by-products. And the oceans are being fished out; the average weight of a swordfish caught in U.S. fishing waters is a third what it was 20 years ago.
And the "overpopulation" of prey animals is really the overpopulation of humans, resulting in loss of habitat and reduction of predators. However, as a deer's death by gunshot is preferable to that by winter starvation, I consider hunting of such "overpopulated" species for consumption a reasonable solution in the interim (until the human population readjusts, I'd say drastically and within the next five centuries).
In the years when I ate no four-footed critters, I missed meat at first but gradually came to a point even the smell was unappetizing. Now I eat meat occasionally, guiltily. I figure not reproducing is the best way for me not to propagate humans along the garden path.
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