At a housewarming party last weekend, Alex brought along Veat Fillet, a vegetarian salmon. I’ll admit: I’ve never tried faux-fish. I wasn’t much of a fan of regular fish to begin with, but I was obliged to give the Veat a shot. After all, the company’s done well with chicken, so maybe they managed to get a pretty close approximation of (my least favorite of all seafood) salmon.

While it’s not the most appealing looking item, I was impressed with how similar it tasted to salmon. The consistency was a little bit off, and the seaweed skin was a bit strange at first, but the flavor was a goog imitation. And while it doesn’t offer up much in the way of Omega-3s, like many fish, it’s 15 grams of protein gave it a little bit of a nutritional punch.

The Veat Fillet is vegetarian, but not vegan (it has whey protein) and can be found at many health food stores.

Waiter arrested for ’serving chicken to vegetarian’

In India, a Pizza Hut employee was arrested for serving chicken pasta dish to a customer that asked for a vegetarian version. The customer claimed that it was a “deliberate act intended to give religious offense.” The waiter was arrested without bail. Pretty harsh.

Eggplants of all shapes and sizes are best fresh from the garden

This Seattle Times article has some good information on growing and cooking eggplant. I’ve really grown to enjoy eggplant, though I don’t think the articles assertion that eggplant “is often used as the centerpiece of a vegetarian meal” is necessarily correct. Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that eggplant parmesan is a much—for lack of a better term—”friendlier” dish than its veal counterpart.

I’ve heard a lot about how eggplant has almost no nutritional value (aside from vitamin K), but looking at the nutrition facts for eggplant, it looks to be a decent enough source of a number of vitamins and minerals as well as fiber. However, this is raw eggplant (and note the numbers refer to an entire medium eggplant, probably enough for 3-4 servings). Perhaps the cooked version loses a lot of the nutritional value. In any case, a serving of eggplant only has 25 calories, so clearly it’s a good vegetable to cook with occasionally for the calorie-conscious.

The Salon interview with Ted Nugent that everyone seems to be linking to is interesting: both sides seem to consider it a great article because it proves their point. While his arguments against factory farming are familiar to ethical vegetarians: “Chickens are incarcerated; some are more feces-pecking, deathrow toxic than others”, his opinion on vegetarians is also made painfully clear: “Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians — except for the occasional mountain lion steak.”

At least he plants trees, though, right? … Right?

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately, so let me play catch up and pass along a handful of links I’ve been meaning to post:

Vegan Blog: The (Eco)Logical Weblog… Aside from the bird noises that greet you when you open the page, this new blog is very thorough and full of news and opinion. My only concern: there’s so much new content every day, will he be able to keep up the pace? It doesn’t matter—even 25% output on this blog would still be great reading.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad… I really enjoyed Christiane’s recipe over on Haught Cuisine. It was easy, fresh tasting, and tasted great the next day. Click through and read the comment about my basil blooper.

Africa ‘needs GM crops to survive’… This BBC story was passed along by Veg Blog reader Ann C. Many African scientists are looking at the widespread starvation and disease on the continent and are convinced that GM crops are the only solution. “At a cost of maybe five cents we could have distributed vaccine in a food easily eatable by most of the people in this country who normally would not have access to it.”

A Better Way to Feed the Hungry… Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé (of Diet for a New Planet fame) argue against the (Bill) Gates Foundation’s funding of fortified processed foods as a way to fight malnutrition. “Gates seems to believe we don’t have time to address the complex social and political roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus, top-down, technical intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people he wants to help.” Also passed along by Ann.

Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation… And one more from Ann. Attorney John Banzhaf (the first person to sue the tobacco companies in the mid-60s) now plans to prosecute the junk food industry for making Americans obese. Interesting tactic, but a wasted effort, I think. I’d much prefer to see the money that will be spent fighting this out going towards health-education campaigns promoting whole, unprocessed foods.

Ethics and Vegetarianism… The author of this paper, Deepak Tivedi, dropped me a note to let me know about this “technical work in Applied Ethics.” It looks to be a good read and has been published by Green Planet.

Research at Great Lakes meeting shows more vitamin C in organic oranges than conventional oranges… There hasn’t been much research done about whether or not organic produce has more nutrional benefits than conventionally grown produce. One researcher set out to prove that organic oragnes would be lower in vitamin C content than conventionally grown ones because of the smaller size. However, he found that organic oranges—even though they are half the size of their conventionally grown counterparts—contain up to 30% more vitamin C! This is something to keep an eye on. (via Vegan.com)

The Washington Post has a good article on fresh summertime herbs that’s worth reading. The included recipes aren’t vegan, but most of them are vegetarian.

The truest phrase in the article: “[Cilantro] is the herb with which people have a love or hate relationship; there is no middle ground.”

Palo Alto chews on organic school lunches: Pupils give a thumbs-up to meatless meal options

While I think that the switch in Palo Alto school lunches to organic foods is a good thing, I’m even happier that they’re making such strong efforts to provide vegetarian options to the kids.

The elementary school students gave the proposed fare a taste-test. Much of the food got very high praise from the kids: “Compared to our regular lunches, this is kings’ food,” said one fifth grader. “Our chicken nuggets are like grease balls. The thousand island dressing tastes like vinegar. And the pizza’s like cardboard—you could play Frisbee with it.”

Another specifically praised the school’s proposed meatless selections, “I’m a vegetarian and sometimes when I ask for cheese pizza, they’ll give me some with pepperoni on it.”

Only in Palo Alto would they be able to afford an all-organic program, and I don’t think this is necessarily where other schools need to focus, but I’d love to see other schools in the country making a move towards healthier selections and more varied vegetarian options. Bring on the Boca Burgers!

(via VegSource)