Chag Purim!

There are many Purim parties in New York City, but the only all-vegan one I know about will take place on Tuesday at Sacred Chow. The festivities will include graggers, megillah reading, and tasty vegan dishes (including slow-roasted hamentashen seitan). Sacred Chow's blog had this to say:

i was reading about the sheer number of feasts that king ahashuerus and queen esther gave during the course of the story of purim. it is truly astounding! but it is for this very reason that the holiday of purim is very much connected with feasting, food & wine--to pay homage to the feasts of the king and queen. food and wine that speak to a persian influence, in honor of the late, great queen esther, will be the focus of chow's purim menu. let's give a big cheer 4 queen esther! when queen esther was hiding the fact she was a jew, while she was living in the king's court, i was wondering if she kept kosher? i think she may actually have been the first vegan queen. research shows many of the foods of the purim feast were vegetarian, yeah a bit of lamb, chicken or fish were thrown in here and there, but by and large, vegetables and fruits and lots of wine were the rule.

Last week, The Jew & The Carrot featured a Purim-themed post about mock meats, titled "What Does Queen Esther Have in Common With Your Veggie-Burger?" Here are some excerpts:

Purim offers the opportunity to contemplate costumes in many form—including disguised food, which vegetarians may encounter more than others. …

On a veggie discussion board, one answer to the question, “why fake meat?” was simple: to fit in. Posters gave examples of going to a bbq and wanting to eat a veggie burger or veggie hot dog, as opposed to something entirely different such as a salad or other dish that requires a fork. This resonates particularly well with the Purim theme: Esther sticking to a vegetarian diet in the palace, rather than eating non-kosher meat.

Think of Michael Pollan’s advice to eat something your grandmother would have recognized as food. In those days, it was easy to see what was food and what was not. …

These fake meat products often have a long list of ingredients (sodium, color, preservatives), some of which might be unpronounceable. (For example, this Smart Bacon has 14% of your RDA of sodium, and tastes like it).