The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook

I first crossed paths with Kim O'Donnel soon after she moved for Seattle, when she was writing for the Washington Post. She ordered a quesadilla at a farmers' market, regretted it when she saw that it had beets, enjoyed it anyway, and wrote a post about the experience for her Mighty Appetite blog. I became her symbol of the fact that beets weren't that terrible after all and she became my high-profile-reformed-beet-hater poster child.

Kim has been instrumental in popularizing the Meatless Monday movement, a campaign to accesibly promote plant based eating to folks who wouldn't be caught dead calling themselves vegetarian. When I heard that she was working on a meatless cookbook targeted towards meat eaters I mentioned that I struggle daily at my market booth with prejudices against meatless food. She responded that the solution was simply to make the meatless food tasty enough that even meat eaters could enjoy it.

I wasn't convinced. If it were that simple then I wouldn't keep encountering those market shoppers who feel the need to exclaim every time they walk past my booth, "I'm a carnivore!" Meat eating has countless layers of meaning. Its appeal is not simply a matter of flavor.

The Meat Lover's Meatless Cookbook approaches the issue brilliantly, by blatantly celebrating the joys of eating meat while simultaneously offering an alternative. The introduction has a wonderful baby picture of the author covered in grease and enjoying a t-bone. For all practical purposes, she's winking at the reader and saying, "This is great stuff. Now let's move on. At least one day a week."

Oh, and the recipes are fabulous too.