I'm interested to hear what actual vegetarians say, but my impression is vegetarian cooking used to be more of a genre than it is now. Overlapping with the ‘hippie-derived’ cooking genre, which also has declined.
I think cooking vegetarian used to be more of A Big Change, and cooks went vegetarian without a tradition and were open to trying new inventions of recipes because they were vegetarian. I can browse the cookbooks not looking for anything just because I have a soft spot for the vibe.
Or from another perspective, American Veggie invented some unnecessary things from too small a culinary foundation, when people could have drawn more directly from existing vegetarian traditions.
(I do cook from Moosewood and American Wholefoods, but I would feel too limited if I had to stay inside those.)
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Date: 2014-12-25 08:23 am (UTC)I think cooking vegetarian used to be more of A Big Change, and cooks went vegetarian without a tradition and were open to trying new inventions of recipes because they were vegetarian. I can browse the cookbooks not looking for anything just because I have a soft spot for the vibe.
Or from another perspective, American Veggie invented some unnecessary things from too small a culinary foundation, when people could have drawn more directly from existing vegetarian traditions.
(I do cook from Moosewood and American Wholefoods, but I would feel too limited if I had to stay inside those.)