Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [98]
Part I
Tips for Making Meals Without Meat
1.
What Is a Meal Without Meat?
WHEN AS CHILDREN we asked our mothers, “What’s for supper, Mom?” the shorthand answer always came back “Pork chops” … “Chicken” … “Meat loaf.” The meat course defined the meal.
These menus, which many of us take for granted, are inherited from our physically active forebears. But in our mechanized society we often need many less calories each day than did our great-grandparents, who worked the fields, carried water, and washed by hand. This fact has become well known, if not well heeded. The trouble is that it is virtually impossible to avoid consuming too many calories per meal as long as you define a meal as meat-vegetable-starch-salad-bread-and-dessert. It just can’t add up any other way than too much.
But once meat is no longer the center of the menu, then the whole pattern of habit falls apart. Anything goes. We are free to respond to our own appetites in planning menus. In my family what seems most natural is a one-dish meal into which we put our care and imagination, accompanied by one simple side dish such as salad, good hearty bread, or a steamed vegetable. Therefore, the majority of the recipes in the book, and all those in the first section of the recipes, are not merely main-dish ideas but really “meal-dish” ideas—meals in themselves with (if you choose) the addition of a simple salad, etc.
In focusing on how to get protein without meat in the first two editions of this book, I fear I reinforced a preoccupation with protein. In this edition I’ve tried to correct for that, emphasizing how much easier it is than most of us thought to get the protein we need. (My “Hypothetical Diets” in Figures 10 and 11 make this point.) Once we lower our estimation of the amount of protein our bodies need, and realize how many foods provide protein—even those, such as green vegetables, that we’ve never thought of as protein sources—we gain much more flexibility in meal planning. We no longer have to pack scads of protein into a dish filled with cheese and eggs. We can use more vegetables, grains, and fruit. We achieve greater variety and lighter meals.
Letting go of the meat-starch-vegetable formula and experimenting with new foods was, for me, satisfying in yet another way. Because there is no Betty Crocker of plant foods telling me what a dish should be like, I became more experimental. I recall the first nonmeat dinner party I ever gave, for which I made a walnut-cheddar loaf. Never too confident about my cooking, I was comforted by the thought that at least no one would be comparing my dish with Julia Child’s version (who else ever tasted walnut-cheddar loaf?). After you become comfortable with the ingredients, you will become a creator, taking foods that are in season and on hand and creating your own favorites.
But let me offer one important caveat that I also included in the first edition of this book: don’t expect yourself to change overnight. Start with one new menu a week, or one new ingredient, until you gradually build up a repertoire of dishes you enjoy. Suddenly changing lifelong habits of any kind on the basis of new understanding does not strike me as very realistic or even desirable, however great the revelation. At least, this is not the way it has worked for me.
Why Meatless?
In Book One I explained the difference between the diet I advocate and “vegetarianism.” I said that what I advocate is a return to the traditional diet on which our bodies evolved—a plant-centered diet in which animal foods play a supplemental role. But the recipes in my book have always been meatless. Isn’t this a contradiction? If I’m not advocating a totally meatless diet, then why don’t the recipes contain meat? Well, here’s where the personal and the intellectual parts of me come together. Intellectually,