Since recorded history, vegetarians have been around for a long time, going back to the ancient Greeks. Even we Americans, despite our love of cooked meat hastily put between two buns, have a fondness for the vegetable—or did at one time in the not too distant past.
I was just looking at a Thanksgiving menu in a Good Housekeeping magazine, 1900. It was suggested by Mary Foster Snider. The bill of fare showed the following:
Celery soup Nut butter sandwiches
Olives Salted almonds
Lentil cutlets with tomato sauce
Rice croquettes with red currant jelly
Vegetable turkey Brown gravy Cranberry jelly
Italian chestnuts (boiled) Creamed onions
Grape sherbet
Nuttose timbales Mushroom sauce
Apple and nut salad
Granose biscuit Almond butter
Pumpkin pudding Lemon pie
White fruit cake
Pears Apples Oranges Nuts
Coffee
This all looks quite appetizing to me. And not a speck of meat (well, there might have been milk and an egg or two but that would be no problem today with our substitutes).
For the temperate carnivores among us some foods served at the earliest Thanksgiving were oysters and eels and other kinds of sea foods. Incidentally, it was Native Americans who introduced the white settlers to their first taste of oysters, not to mention it was the American turkey that won the hearts (I mean stomach) of the European. Even Charles IX (27 June 1550—30 May 1574) of France served turkey at his wedding banquet!
In addition to my last comment I would like to add that the current name of the game for the young american teens in US
trying to escape the horrid conditions of their parents poverty, is NeuroSky. In a way tomorrows next Google or Intel. NeuroSky has developed a cost effective bio sensor and signal processing system for the consumer market where a game or tool can be controlled by thought power. In a way they offer the young ones semi-siddhi-powers. Very addictive and a ground for an escapism that will outmatch anything mankind have seen till this day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWBfCg91CU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuroSky
We speak of the "food" of tomorrow here. Is it healthy as in strenghtening the concentration abilities of our next generation or will it become another cut in the dying body of a confused nation?
Posted by: zman | November 28, 2009 at 06:57 AM
Mrs, Snider's menu was once made by "peasants" themselves. Hmmmmn. Now "peasants" go to McDonalds where the food is all ready for them made by other peasants. It's more than ironic.
Posted by: Ted Bagley | November 27, 2009 at 09:01 PM
In these tough times it is far cheaper for a family to dine at McDonalds or Burger King, then spend money on that "deluxe" menu by dear mrs Snider.
The mere fact that more then 1/3 of the US population is on food stamps with a very grim future ahead of them, clearly makes carefully selected "Buddhist food" something entitled for the rich. Ironic huh?
Posted by: zman | November 27, 2009 at 12:59 PM