A carnival of technology

I just threw out about $20 worth of food.

Last night, Moshe threw a party at his house out in distant extremes of northeast Cobb to celebrate his final weekend in the United States before his upcoming year or whatever in Spain. As in other times that Moshe has thrown a party, food was provided in a potluck fashion, with a request made that all dishes be vegetarian, out of fear that us gentiles will bring something non-kosher. I remember bringing some sort of sweet potato dish the last time, using a recipe from Mom, that was prepared in the biggest rush ever, since I woke up around 2pm for a 4pm party (Moshe learned a little of a lesson for this one and set the time at 5) with no ideas or ingredients for a vegetarian dish. It was pretty good, though I don’t think it went over well with the other party goers, favoring the store-bought vegetable lasagna and assorted breads, instead. Ungrateful bastards, all of them. Anyhow, this time, out of a desire to say that I brought bacon cheeseburgers, I bought some veggie burgers, veggie bacon, and veggie cheese. Holy crap, all of those things suck. The burgers, a brand recommended by my vegetarian sister, whom I had to call to find out where the veggie burgers and bacon are kept in grocery stores, were very reminiscent of the bizarre patty-shaped salads served at Brittain dining hall that I tried one time, late at night, after becoming bored with the chicken patties, the only other item still made available at 10pm. I think that Mike, eater of fish paste and bizarre Asian foods, was the only person to try one, and his reaction to them was not one of enjoyment. The veggie bacon was disgusting for trying to taste like bacon. The reddish strips of protein slurry seemed to depend upon the “NATURAL SMOKE FLAVOR” for their bacon taste, and it just tasted overpoweringly wrong. The soy protein offers no flavor, of course, so the only taste provided by the crumbling mass of vegetable matter is a sickly sweetness, a dead imitation by something that has never known death. It was pretty gross. Frying the strips of fake bacon did little more than make them warm and soak up all of the oil that I put in the pan.

I don’t mind vegetarians. I even tried being one myself in 2001, motivated in part by the realization that the line for crappy vegetarian food at Brittain was shorter than the line for crappy meat, and partly because a girl I liked at the time cared about animals and stuff. It wasn’t too bad, really, and, though I do enjoy the taste of flesh, I can live on a vegetable diet. What bothers me, though, is when people try to make meat out of vegetables. It’s not meat, and it will never taste like meat, no matter what you do to it. Reproductions through tofu and textured vegetable protein will always scream of falsity, and, if you’re seeking these products out, perhaps vegetarianism isn’t really your thing. If you want animals, eat animals. If you want vegetables, eat vegetables.

I did keep the fake cheese, though. I don’t know why I bought it in the first place—I suppose that I just wanted as many fake ingredients as possible, and I would have bought fake bread if I had found any—but it tastes pretty much like a Kraft single. A little less salty, perhaps, but still well within what’s expected out of fake cheese. I don’t have a definitive answer for why fake cheese is an acceptable food whereas fake meat is not, but my guess is because products like Kraft singles, the fake cheese’s inspiration, don’t pretend to be anything other than pretend cheese. Pretend bacon is not bacon, no matter what it claims, and I think that its uniquely foul qualities, acquired in the name of trying to taste like meat, prevent it from becoming the American cheese of animal products. Maybe if the manufacturers tried harder to create something palatable rather than something similar to their competition, fake bacon would have a place in the American refrigerator, but, for now, it belongs nowhere but the trash.