A friend of mine from New York had up the above away message, and it’s raised a couple questions for me and a whole lot of feelings. Firstly, what could she possibly mean? Did she succeed in not starting a grease fire in her kitchen? (Which I'm not minimizing - I have certainly made meals where that would have been an enviable feat) Did she succeed in keeping a straight face while saying carob chips are really just as god as regular chocolate? Did she succeed in creating a dish that can most positively be described as "interesting"? Certainly, she couldn't be trying to claim that she succeeded in making something just as delicious as that which allows for eggs and butter.
I used to work at a small non-profit that was riddled with unique dietary needs, and once, for a co-workers birthday, someone brought in vegan, gluten-free cupcakes. (Needless to say, the co-worker - one of just two males in the office who actually subscribed to the “fats and oils” capstone of the food pyramid - had a very happy birthday indeed). Now, I tried on of those cupcakes, and I am forced to admit that it certainly wasn’t horrible. In fact, far from being the worst thing I've ingested, it was actually kind of okay.
Given a choice between a vegan cupcake and no cupcake at all, I’d take the former every time. But what got me was that the women in my office insisted that you could not tell the difference between the vegan cupcake and the real thing. Granted, we’re probably talking about women who haven’t eaten a real cupcake since eating cabbage soup and smoking were on the cutting edge of dietary trends, but by no stretch of the imagination, are the two the same thing. We’re not talking about the subtle differences between say, regular and non-fat sour cream or even nuances only too obvious to connoisseurs like those found in Coke vs. Pepsi. We’re talking about a fluffy, sweet mouthful of deliciousness and something that is less so on all important metrics with a surprising and not necessarily pleasant texture to boot.
I have no problem with people who are vegans, pescetarians, raw, macrobiotic, or even armchair vegetarians. I don’t even have a problem changing my own eating habits for a night to accommodate them. But I do have an issue with people telling me - me, who eats butter, red meat, processed cheese, and pretty much every other objectionable food you think of - that they’re sure I can’t even tell the difference. I can tell you right now, that I can taste the difference, and it doesn't taste like success.
