Here's a Poser

I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant yesterday. The food was wonderful.  It tasted much like a non vegetarian restaurant.  Why? What is it with people who claim to be vegetarian and then go to all the trouble to make their food taste like meat or fish or poultry? I actually brought home some noodle prawn thing that is really yummy. No prawns, but they went to the bother to put together some 'things' that even look like prawns, right down to the orange stripes on the body.  You dont see carnivores taking a slab of bacon and making it look like a french fry, do you?  Or a rack of ribs sliced into slivers and dyed orange to look like carrot sticks.  Why do they bother?  This particular place is vegetarian because of religious belief. They cannot use garlic or onion because that enhances the flavour of the food, and that would cause a person to desire food instead of need food. Holy moley.  They danced around that rule with a nice two step.  Everything in that restaurant is very tasty - but I still dont get it - why do they try to make it taste like meat? I have been vegetarian a few times during my life. I did so because for some reason all meat smelled and tasted bad. I finally got over that when summer came around and bbq steaks, ribs and chicken brought my tastebuds back to meat. But those others who claim to do this for animal right, religious beliefs, or horror at eating flesh, what's up?  Why would you want something to taste like that nasty flesh?  And the Laksa I had at the restaurant appeared to be full of fish and all those illegal bits; but it wasn't.

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