No. [digg=http://digg.com/food_drink/Is_This_A_Joke_2]

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.

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.