COME BACK, VEGGIE BURGER, ALL IS FORGIVEN

MEATLESS FOOD, THE BLOSSOMING  
OF THE AMERICAN VEGGIE BURGER 

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com - They were the four syllables that used to have the power to make both carnivores and vegetarians cringe: veggie burger.  Across the country, chefs and restaurateurs have been taking on the erstwhile health-food punch line with a kind of experimental brio, using it as a noble excuse to fool around with flavor and texture and hue.  As a result, veggie burgers haven’t merely become good.  They have exploded into countless variations of good, and in doing so they’ve begun to look like a bellwether for the American appetite.  If the growing passion for plant-based diets is here to stay, chefs are paying attention.  Food critic Jeff Gordinier says: “Last week I found myself in a situation that many a cheeseburger die-hard might have scoffed at.” 
 
“There I was, standing in a kitchen in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with Lukas Volger, 29, the author of ‘Veggie Burgers Every Which Way,’ a cookbook that came out last year.  To open my palate to the vast spectrum of veggie options, the exceedingly gracious Mr. Volger had decided to cook me three of his favorite recipes: one with mushrooms and barley, another with tofu and chard, and a touch-of-peanut Thai-style rendition with carrots.  He showed me why it’s important to fry the patties in an oiled pan, first, to get that crucial crispness, but then to finish them off in the oven so that they firm up without blackening.  They weren’t trying too hard to act like beef.   ‘This isn’t just an approximation of a meat burger,’ Mr Volger told me as I bit into one. ‘It’s an expression of a vegetable’.”

Gone are the days, it seems, when the veggie burger was almost a source of shame.  “It gives you a lot of room to create,” said David Burke, the chef behind New York restaurants like Fishtail and David Burke Kitchen.  He eventually prepared a portobello mushroom with roasted peppers, basil mayo and mozzarella. “We treat it like an Italian sandwich without the meat,” he said.  Apart from the fact that vegetarian foods contribute to our health and happiness - while other kinds of food cause suffering and disease - a vegetarian diet is a part of the Vedic system for making spiritual advancement.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?  

Dear friends of Sanatan Dharma, stop the spreading of meat, fish and egg eating in holy India (Bharat Varsa).  It is very shameful that in the land of Lord Ram and Lord Krishna the amount of people eating dead animals is increasing, while in other parts of the world vegetarianism is increasing and more and more people are actually eating pure vegetarian, Maha Prasad, from the many new Krishna temples which distribute large amounts of food to the people.  Help today to reverse the killing of animals in India including our Mother Cow, Go Mata.  Let us act now and start a chapter of the ‘Go Veg Again’ campaign of the Original Kingdom of the Spoon Revolution in your office or home.  We need all of you. Let our joined voices be heard in every town of india. Become an activist today.

Bharat Go Raksya - Cow Protection - Go Veg Again
Omi (Original Mercy Identity) 0104.
http://bharatgovegagain.blogspot.com/ 
http://bharatgovegagain.blogspot.com/2009/08/omi-0104.html