I enjoyed Chicago Diner the last time I was out there, pre-pandemic. I'm due for a trip out to Milwaukee soon and Twisted Plants is going on my list along with Anodyne Coffee

twelvepoint wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 2:56 pm I enjoyed Chicago Diner the last time I was out there, pre-pandemic. I'm due for a trip out to Milwaukee soon and Twisted Plants is going on my list along with Anodyne Coffee

If you make it back to Chicago, the following vegan places should be on your list, if you're into that: Fancy Plants (dinner menu is best), Heaven 17 (vegan deep dish), Alice & Friends', Urban Vegan (thai), Upton's Breakroom (breakfast/lunch). Vegetarian/Vegan: Handlebar, Ground Control, Uru-Swati (Indian). Arya Bhavan used to have an excellent vegan Indian buffet pre-COVID. No idea if that returned.

ovo-lacto since 1999. I might go vegan at some point, but I like cheese, eggs, and liquor a lot.

penningtron wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 7:56 am This may be a few years off but I'm curious about the vegetarian take on lab grown meat and animal products.

It's been long enough that I don't really desire to eat/taste meat so I'm not the audience for this, but with that salt taken: if I had some kind of nutritional deficiency that meant I needed to eat it, and the energy calculus worked out as you mention, I'd consider it. It does feel a bit like a Rube Goldberg machine, though - for that reason I'm skeptical that the energy problem would ever get solved.

enframed wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 9:45 am Factory farming sucks, yes, but it's not going away until capitalism does.

FYP

re: burgers - black bean burgers feel a bit like the token half-hearted try at this point. The chaff greatly outnumbers the wheat there.
I think the thing about Impossible is that they are actively trying to make all their stuff taste like McDonald's, which is basically just swinging into the social conditioning. Beyond can have a weird skin on them sometimes that's extremely off-putting.

One of the better veggie burgers I've ever had was at Max and Rosie's Café on Lexington Ave in Asheville, NC. The patty itself did not resemble a hamburger in any way - was clearly baked in a deep sheet pan and chopped into "large brownie"-sized segments. Still fantastic. Some kind of mixture of grains, nuts, legumes, and vegetable with a real consistent texture and a little bit of a crust on it from the pan.

brephophagist wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 8:22 pm I think the thing about Impossible is that they are actively trying to make all their stuff taste like McDonald's, which is basically just swinging into the social conditioning.

I have definitely noticed this.

If you put an Impossible burger in a boring, squishy seeded bun, melt a slice of American cheese on it, and top it with ketchup, mustard, pickles, and onions, it is a dead-ringer for an MCD quarter pounder.

(They will put pounds on you.)

It's sort of odd, then, that it was Burger King, not MCD, who jumped on the Impossible burger train. It isn't awful but tastes a little out of place in a Whopper.

Cooking every day and maintaining a reasonably varied diet is stressing enough for me as it is. For this reason, rather than any particular attachment to meat, I will not be going veg anytime soon.

The thing about flavouring influencing degree of satisfaction that twelvepoint mentioned earlier is very true.

I eat a little meat w/ dinner 2, maybe 3 times a week. It wouldn't be a big push to give it up, but I have no ethical issues w/ eating animals and an occasional raw steak is one of life's more basic pleasures. I taught myself to cook as soon as I left home and just won't eat ready-made and / or cheap garbage food.

I can understand the arguments veggies make, but vegans (IMO) go way too far- there's no way I'm giving up eggs, cheese and milk / cream.

I'm old enough to remember back in the late 90s / early 00s when real vegans were very rare. They always reminded me of junkies: visably malnourished, mildly antisocial, OBSESSED with what they were consuming. (Obvs not making a direct comparison, but the general vibe was very similar). It was not cool or attractive back then at all - at least over here in the UK. We didn't have any Earth Crisis style bros - it was a burn out / drop out scene over here.

Nearly all my middle class friends/ couples have gone vegan in the last 5 years - it seems weirdly mandatory for that tribe atm - but their diets are just dreadful. None of them can cook so they're swapping one kind of pre-made rubbish for another - I've had vegan cheese (on pizza) and vegan ice-cream recently and was surprised how disgusting it was. That kind of contemporary, hipster consumerist veganism is total crap.

Also, I really do not understand the fish is ok to kill but all other animals are not. I fail to see why our ascribing intelligence ought to save one animal and condemn another. Death by suffocation.

enframed wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 8:38 am Also, I really do not understand the fish is ok to kill but all other animals are not. I fail to see why our ascribing intelligence ought to save one animal and condemn another. Death by suffocation.

I suspect it's partially based on historical (religious) precedent, i.e. Catholics giving up "meat" for Lent but instead gorging themselves at all-you-can-eat fish frys.

Anyway, I agree, it doesn't make sense to me, either.

enframed wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 8:38 am Also, I really do not understand the fish is ok to kill but all other animals are not. I fail to see why our ascribing intelligence ought to save one animal and condemn another. Death by suffocation.

I am pescatarian. This is precisely the point where my self-interest chooses to overlook that issue. There’s no excuse for it other than my own concerns about sustainability and animal welfare have limits and that’s presently the line I set. I may move that line at some point. Also, my experience may be - and likely is - different from others.

As a follow up, I think everyone has some kind of hypocrisy in their lives they have to reconcile. I think that’s a natural thing, and makes us more humble and accepting of others.