I often dream of cheese but I never knew that cheese would make me dream.

We at Meat Neutral, recently came across a study commissioned by the British Cheese Board that investigated the phenomenon of cheese dreams, and more importantly cheese nightmares!.

While it should be taken with a grain of salt (and a glass of wine for that matter) the study followed 200 volunteers who, over the course of 1 week, ate 20g of cheese before going to sleep. The study found that cheese before bed increased the likelihood of remembering your dreams.

“ One of the amino acids in cheese – tryptophan – has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep so cheese may actually help you have a good night’s sleep,” says Dr Judith Bryans, Nutrition Scientist at The Dairy Council.

The most curious finding is that different cheeses caused different types of dreams (none of which were nightmares thank goodness). Our personal favorite was the likeliness of women to have “nice” dreams, such as Jamie Oliver cooking dinner in their kitchens after eating British Brie.

Hmmmmm… I can’t wait to hear about the dreams all our female readers will have once they try Meat Neutral’s Baked Crab Meat and Brie — a vision of the beefy hunks of the Woodstock Collective bringing them breakfast in bed perhaps?

Which brings up another question, what about meat dreams? Are there any specific meat dreams our readers would like to share?

That’s all for tonight. Meat Dreams. 

Meatpaper, recently featured in the New York Times, is a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. The term fleishgeist most appropriately describes the movement:

Fleisch-geist (flish’gist’) n. From the German, Fleisch “meat” + Geist “spirit.” Spirit of the meat. From Zeitgeist, “spirit of the times.”

Meatpaper goes beyond recipes and food, striving to capture the essence or spirit of meat. As Standen states: “Meatpaper is about every way of looking at meat. I think of it as a magazine that’s just as intended for vegetarians as it is for meat eaters.”

Some of our favorite articles included those that strive to examine people’s relation to the meat they eat. Our personal favorite: “Chris Cosentino doesn’t want to eat penis but if he has to, he will” is an interview of head chef Chris Cosentino who specializes in Offal meats. The interview touches on some important issues about how disconnected we are in urban settings from the meat we eat the animals it comes from, as Chris puts it (describing his more exotic dishes): “People say, “oh a tongue, I have one.” Or, “a heart, I can’t eat that.” What I try to do is make people understand a whole-animal ethic.”

The thing we liked best about Meatpaper is that it creates the space for an appreciation of meat that goes beyond the traditional “meat and potatoes” ethos. Meatpaper, like Meat Neutral endeavors to positively embrace our connection to meat. Eating meat is not something to be guilty of, nor should it be a divisive factor limiting our appreciation of vegetarian cuisine.

And finally a parting quote: “We find over and over again that bacon is the conversion meat,” Ms. Standen said. “Bacon is how vegetarians change their minds.” (related see Meat Neutral post: Bacon the Gateway Meat).

[digg=http://digg.com/comedy/We_are_all_meat_eaters]In past posts, we have mentioned how from a political perspective, Meat Neutral is about reclaiming the word “vegetarian.” Continuing in this thread,today, we are going look into the origin of the word meat.

The first meaning of the word Meat was solid food in general, in contrast to drink. This was the meaning in the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary ~900. It was not until ~1300 that meat was used to denote the flesh of animals and not until even later the definition in the dictionary was changed.

So there you have it. We are all meat eaters, whether you like it or not.

Leave your preconceptions behind, or take them with you, and join the Meat Neutral movement.

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.

Phew, thanks for that.

But wait… before we hop on the BC Liberal bandwagon there is a little more to this. We decided to do a little analysis of our own and it seems that there is room for arbitrary manipulation within the tax rebate process (see below). Arbitrary manipulation is not very “neutral” is it?

Tax rebates are nice, but stopping climate change is of a mutual benefit to us all. So the jury is out for now while we wait to see how well the BC Liberal’s “revenue-neutral” carbon-tax is implemented to meet this end. We at Woodstock do very little that is not “neutral” (like Switzerland) and we applaud the Liberals for embracing the “neutral” concept — because really when it comes down to it neutrality is the way of the future.

All genuinely “neutral” concepts are rooted in achieving balance (just like Yoga). Meat Neutral does this in two ways.

At a smaller scale we offset our meat consumption with vegetables. A true Meat Neutral dish will leave you with an unmistakable sense of balance between meat, vegetable, and all things food.

At the macro scale Meat Neutral balances lifestyles. It entices an equal number of people from each of the other diets. It fits in an important place amongst other lifestyles to close the “Meat Neutral Loop” (see below). Meat Neutral is an alternative to vegan and vegetarian lifestyles in the same way it is an alternative to a meat and potatoes lifestyle. Do you feel the balance?

Of course, the “neutral” concept has been applied many different things. For more on neutrality, see Cheat Neutral and Switzerland.

Lobby for tax incentives for meat neutrality!

– the woodstock collective

No Erika, she didn’t puke out of disgust. Rather, it was baby’s way of saying “wow, this is what I’ve been missing all my life.”

I have a feeling most babies would have also puked at the spread (a vomit of joy that is). Stuffed Portabella Mushaburger stuffed with Italian Sausage, Salmon Artichoke dip, baked brie, yam chips, bruschetta, and the first revision of the fabled pie pie — the unfinished masterpiece.

As we can see from the pictures, Tegan had a death grip on the plates, and couldn’t get enough. A true vegetarian, through and through.

We also had another special guest at the table, Russ and Jacquie’s yet to be born child, no doubt kicking in the womb at the delicious bites of “meat neutral” cuisine of her mother. It looks like we are ushering in a new generation of meat eating vegetarians.

Tofu Fajitas?? Sounds crazy — I know. Maybe in all reality we are a little crazy.

To give our readers a background, I have spent considerable time in Mexico and toured throughout the different gastronomic regions, from the dry northern deserts of Tamaulipas where baby goat is a delicacy, the rainforests of Veracruz home of the Jalapeno pepper, ridden horseback through the avocado ranches of Michocan, and eaten the succulent pollo asados of the Yucatan – all the while taking notes, wafting the aromas, and savoring the culinary creativity.

In all my Mexican travels, I have never come across a Tofu Fajita, which reaffirms the “meat culture” of the land. But sitting there in my Victorian kitchen, my adventurous side overtook me and I decided to try it. I sliced the tofu with ease, all 16 layers of my Shun knife effortlessly manipulating the firm soy. The onions, the chiles, the tomatoes and the capsicum blending and fusing to create an experience going beyond the sum of its parts. The Woodstock Collective seated ourselves around the table, and dolloped the ingredients of the pan on to the maize tortillas, and brought the creation to our lips.

The result – well sometimes you can only go so far. I learned an important lesson that day, while it is important to explore and to innovate, we must also stay true to our roots. Because without our roots we have no balance. The tofu fajitas were just missing something…

Meat.

To put it simply, Meat Neutral is a lifestyle.

Fusion. Innovation. Dialogue.

These are a few adjectives that come to mind. Essentially it’s about being open minded, and pushing our comfort zones to try new things and expose ourselves to new ideas.

The Meat Neutral Formula is simple: Vegan food + Meat = Enlightened Vegetarianism (i.e. Goodness)

Now some of you might say, well that’s nothing new, that’s just regular food. Well yes, to those of us at the Woodstock Collective, it is just regular food. But we would like to expose others to the wonders of enlightened vegetarianism.

Some of the critics are appalled by such a notion: “In this day and age, with such pressing environmental issues as scare resources and expanded animal rights, how can they actually be encouraging and promoting the consumption of meat? … Who are these Meat Neutral guys anyways… are they a right-wing propaganda machine from Alberta!?”

To respond to this valid “vegetarian” critique, I must state once and for all that Meat Neutral is not about promoting an increase in beef (Albertan or not), rather its about neutrality – kind of like Switzerland.

It’s about bringing a balance to your eating habits and offsetting your meat consumption with vegetables. Its about exploring the wonders of the vegan world, something often overlooked in our burger and fries, steak and potato food culture.

Our goal is to throw the carnivores a tofu bone. To introduce people to new vegetarian cuisine while staying true to our meat roots.

Meat Neutral… the eve of a renaissance is upon us.

This is a valid reason for being a vegetarian and we respect those choices, however, we would like to point out a reality … many vegetarian dishes (which are delectable cuisines on their own) quite often are better with meat. This is not to say that vegetarianism is inherently flawed or an inferior culinary persuasion – after all it was our love of a particular vegetarian dish that founded the Meat Neutral concept (Bacon Cheese Falafel Burgers). You will be happy to know that vegetarianism was the spawn of this work of gastronomic fusion.

After all we like veggies too!