I often dream of cheese but I never knew that cheese would make me dream.

We at Meat Neutral, recently came across a study commissioned by the British Cheese Board that investigated the phenomenon of cheese dreams, and more importantly cheese nightmares!.

While it should be taken with a grain of salt (and a glass of wine for that matter) the study followed 200 volunteers who, over the course of 1 week, ate 20g of cheese before going to sleep. The study found that cheese before bed increased the likelihood of remembering your dreams.

“ One of the amino acids in cheese – tryptophan – has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep so cheese may actually help you have a good night’s sleep,” says Dr Judith Bryans, Nutrition Scientist at The Dairy Council.

The most curious finding is that different cheeses caused different types of dreams (none of which were nightmares thank goodness). Our personal favorite was the likeliness of women to have “nice” dreams, such as Jamie Oliver cooking dinner in their kitchens after eating British Brie.

Hmmmmm… I can’t wait to hear about the dreams all our female readers will have once they try Meat Neutral’s Baked Crab Meat and Brie — a vision of the beefy hunks of the Woodstock Collective bringing them breakfast in bed perhaps?

Which brings up another question, what about meat dreams? Are there any specific meat dreams our readers would like to share?

That’s all for tonight. Meat Dreams

Meatpaper, recently featured in the New York Times, is a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. The term fleishgeist most appropriately describes the movement:

Fleisch-geist (flish’gist’) n. From the German, Fleisch “meat” + Geist “spirit.” Spirit of the meat. From Zeitgeist, “spirit of the times.”

Meatpaper goes beyond recipes and food, striving to capture the essence or spirit of meat. As Standen states: “Meatpaper is about every way of looking at meat. I think of it as a magazine that’s just as intended for vegetarians as it is for meat eaters.”

Some of our favorite articles included those that strive to examine people’s relation to the meat they eat. Our personal favorite: “Chris Cosentino doesn’t want to eat penis but if he has to, he will” is an interview of head chef Chris Cosentino who specializes in Offal meats. The interview touches on some important issues about how disconnected we are in urban settings from the meat we eat the animals it comes from, as Chris puts it (describing his more exotic dishes): “People say, “oh a tongue, I have one.” Or, “a heart, I can’t eat that.” What I try to do is make people understand a whole-animal ethic.”

The thing we liked best about Meatpaper is that it creates the space for an appreciation of meat that goes beyond the traditional “meat and potatoes” ethos. Meatpaper, like Meat Neutral endeavors to positively embrace our connection to meat. Eating meat is not something to be guilty of, nor should it be a divisive factor limiting our appreciation of vegetarian cuisine.

And finally a parting quote: “We find over and over again that bacon is the conversion meat,” Ms. Standen said. “Bacon is how vegetarians change their minds.” (related see Meat Neutral post: Bacon the Gateway Meat)

One night last December in Tofino, the Woodstock Collective was sitting around a fire, drinking wine and laying the groundwork for the Meat Neutral cookbook when an interesting question arouse: What about desert?

Staying true to our roots of expanding our culinary consciousness, we instantly thought of our some favorite deserts such as vegan cayenne chocolate cake, and carrot cake with cream cheese icing — deserts which clearly paid homage to the “vegetarian”in all of us. With a little more thought, we came were reminded of the meat based gelatin dishes from our childhood, just like grandma used to make. But how to combine the two, that was the question. Then, finally after searching high and low, we came across an innovative chocolatier who trailblazed the meat neutral desert world with the creation of the Applewood Smoked Bacon Chocolate Bar.

Award winning Vosges Haut-Chocolates, based out of Chicago, introduced the world to the bacon/chocolate creation with Mo’s Bacon Bar, designed by owner Katrina Markoff. Hand picking exceptional ingredients of the highest quality she has created the piece-de-resistance:

The bacon bar is pure brilliance, a joy to the senses — the smells, textures, and tastes all combine harmoniously to create a chocolate experience like no other. Merging savoury with sweet, the fusion wisps the palette away in a lusty promenade, remnant of a geisha tangoing with Astor Piazzolla.

And it was proven… dessert can be meat neutral. What a sweet sweet victory we savour. The doors have been blown wide open.

Meat Neutral Tip: Try with wasabi peas to take Mo’s Bacon Bar to the next level for a spicy-savoury-sweet trifecto.

PS. Vosges also gets extra points for sourcing 100% of their energy from renewable sources, and for being certified organic.

In past posts, we have mentioned how from a political perspective, Meat Neutral is about reclaiming the word “vegetarian.” Continuing in this thread,today, we are going look into the origin of the word meat.

The first meaning of the word Meat was solid food in general, in contrast to drink. This was the meaning in the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary ~900. It was not until ~1300 that meat was used to denote the flesh of animals and not until even later the definition in the dictionary was changed.

So there you have it. We are all meat eaters, whether you like it or not.

Leave your preconceptions behind, or take them with you, and join the Meat Neutral movement.

No.

Its not. Meat Neutral may sound to good to be true, but it is a living, breathing, reality. We are writing a cookbook and the people from the Woodstock Collective are going to help. This week, the Meat Neutral blog celebrates its 1000th visitor and the momentum continues to build.

Already we have received several recipes our reader’s favorite Meat Neutral creations. Some of our favorites so far include Lovely Laura White’s scrumptious creation, Yummy Yummy Squash Curry (with Chicken) and our European correspondent, Nicole Porteous’ Speck Lasagna. These foreign fusions keep raising the bar higher and higher.

Our goal is to collect at least one recipe per week over the next year, so that we can put them together into a cookbook — with each recipe profiling the creator chief.

So take this as a call out to all you closet vegetarians. Start exploring your pantry and think of the frying pan as your canvas. Send your recipes to meagan@gomeatneutral.com

Help us take back vegetarianism!

PS: “…Meat is fine if you like it.”

Recently, an astute Meat Neutral reader pointed out that Mollie Katzen (author of one of the best selling cookbooks of all time, the Moosewood Cookbook) has been endorsing the Meat Neutral concept.

Ms. Katzen who holds a charter seat at the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable recently commented: “Vegetarianism is a negative statement about meat. My cooking is a meat-neutral positive statement about the joys (for everyone, no matter where they get their protein) of eating plant-based foods. I don’t like to draw lines in the sand with meat eaters in one category and vegetarians across the border in another club. I just want everyone to eat a lot of vegetables, whole grains, fruit, nuts and legumes. Meat is fine it you like it. Eggs are fine if you like them.”

Woodstock. Moosewood. Its all Meat Neutral.

• Vegetarian food is good… its just missing meat
• Meat Neutral = Balance (like yoga)
• We promote culinary creativity
• Meat Neutral is about promoting vegetarian cuisine
• Meat Neutral can reduce your carbon footprint

Another pillar of the Meat Neutral lifestyle/philosophy is that we do not condone or support fishism.

What is fishism? For those of you not familiar with the term, fishism (\ˈfi-ˌshi-zəm), is a phenomenon quite common in the “vegetarian” world. It is a situation where an individual has made a strong political statement about their beliefs and ethical code that is reflected through dietary habits. (i.e. “It is morally wrong (and cruel) to kill sentinent beings to sustain our lifestyle”). This is a respectful choice that people have a right to make. However, more often than not, the fishist, does not extend this moral framework to the aquatic species. They bend the rules for when it comes to fish. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase: “I’m vegetarian, but sometimes I eat sushi.”

In essence, this statement entrenches the prejudice that our scaled friends endure on a constant basis. The fishist, acting as if they were nature’s omnipotent anthropocentric judge, grants freedom and rights to certain animals whilst taking them away from others.

Meat Neutral would officially like to state that we do not judge animals by their scales (so as we may not be judged by theirs). Instead we strive to spread and reduce our inevitable impact on the living world due to our perpetual need of victuals.

And remember:

Fish are animals too.

In addition to the obvious health and tastiness benefits of a Meat Neutral diet, this week we are going to explore another bonus. Reducing your carbon footprint.

As a case study, we are going to see how this week’s featured recipe, Stuffed Italian Sausage Portabella Burgers, actually decreases the meat consumption (and CO2 emissions) of your average BBQ.

Lets do a brief analysis and see how:

As we can clearly see, the Meat Neutral version actually decreases the meat consumption of your average BBQ by 500g.

Jamais Cascio, former editor of Worldchanging.com determined that 2.85 to 3.1 kg of carbon emissions (see Treehugger.com article) can be contributed to the average hamburger. As we normally eat large burgers at Woodstock, we’ll assume the CO2 emission for each burger is on the high end, around 3.1kg.

Lets calculate the total amount of CO2 equivalent emissions of four burgers:

Let us then calculate the CO2 reduction for the 500g decrease in meat consumption:

We can see that by eating Stuffed Italian Sausage Portabella Burgers we actually reduce the carbon footprint of an average BBQ by 8.86kg or 71%.

–Put that in your salad and toss it.

Phew, thanks for that.

But wait… before we hop on the BC Liberal bandwagon there is a little more to this. We decided to do a little analysis of our own and it seems that there is room for arbitrary manipulation within the tax rebate process (see below). Arbitrary manipulation is not very “neutral” is it?

Tax rebates are nice, but stopping climate change is of a mutual benefit to us all. So the jury is out for now while we wait to see how well the BC Liberal’s “revenue-neutral” carbon-tax is implemented to meet this end. We at Woodstock do very little that is not “neutral” (like Switzerland) and we applaud the Liberals for embracing the “neutral” concept — because really when it comes down to it neutrality is the way of the future.

All genuinely “neutral” concepts are rooted in achieving balance (just like Yoga). Meat Neutral does this in two ways.

At a smaller scale we offset our meat consumption with vegetables. A true Meat Neutral dish will leave you with an unmistakable sense of balance between meat, vegetable, and all things food.

At the macro scale Meat Neutral balances lifestyles. It entices an equal number of people from each of the other diets. It fits in an important place amongst other lifestyles to close the “Meat Neutral Loop” (see below). Meat Neutral is an alternative to vegan and vegetarian lifestyles in the same way it is an alternative to a meat and potatoes lifestyle. Do you feel the balance?

Of course, the “neutral” concept has been applied many different things. For more on neutrality, see Cheat Neutral and Switzerland.

Lobby for tax incentives for meat neutrality!

– the woodstock collective

No Erika, she didn’t puke out of disgust. Rather, it was baby’s way of saying “wow, this is what I’ve been missing all my life.”

I have a feeling most babies would have also puked at the spread (a vomit of joy that is). Stuffed Portabella Mushaburger stuffed with Italian Sausage, Salmon Artichoke dip, baked brie, yam chips, bruschetta, and the first revision of the fabled pie pie — the unfinished masterpiece.

As we can see from the pictures, Tegan had a death grip on the plates, and couldn’t get enough. A true vegetarian, through and through.

We also had another special guest at the table, Russ and Jacquie’s yet to be born child, no doubt kicking in the womb at the delicious bites of “meat neutral” cuisine of her mother. It looks like we are ushering in a new generation of meat eating vegetarians.

Over the course of writing this cookbook, we have embarked on a journey pushing the boundaries of traditional cuisine. Quite often we begin our explorations with “traditional vegetarian” cuisine and attempt to capture of the essence of what is missing… (meat). To recall one anecdote, a couple of weeks ago I was investigating new combinations of food, trying out new recipe ideas. One of my creations was Tofu Fajitas.

Tofu Fajitas?? Sounds crazy — I know. Maybe in all reality we are a little crazy.

To give our readers a background, I have spent considerable time in Mexico and toured throughout the different gastronomic regions, from the dry northern deserts of Tamaulipas where baby goat is a delicacy, the rainforests of Veracruz home of the Jalapeno pepper, ridden horseback through the avocado ranches of Michocan, and eaten the succulent pollo asados of the Yucatan – all the while taking notes, wafting the aromas, and savoring the culinary creativity.

In all my Mexican travels, I have never come across a Tofu Fajita, which reaffirms the “meat culture” of the land. But sitting there in my Victorian kitchen, my adventurous side overtook me and I decided to try it. I sliced the tofu with ease, all 16 layers of my Shun knife effortlessly manipulating the firm soy. The onions, the chiles, the tomatoes and the capsicum blending and fusing to create an experience going beyond the sum of its parts. The Woodstock Collective seated ourselves around the table, and dolloped the ingredients of the pan on to the maize tortillas, and brought the creation to our lips.

The result – well sometimes you can only go so far. I learned an important lesson that day, while it is important to explore and to innovate, we must also stay true to our roots. Because without our roots we have no balance. The tofu fajitas were just missing something…

Meat.