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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

Try starting with one less meat meal a week. When that no longer feels difficult, try one less meal again.

Even if you don't settle on a meat-free diet, any reduction in consumption makes a huge difference en masse.

I had the same thought actually - what did it for me was realizing that I started to eat meat 3 times a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner all had meat in them, almost always. But when I was growing up in Poland, you'd have meat maybe 2-3 times a week - not because we were poor, but purely because no one looked at a meal of vegetable dumplings(or many other meat-free dishes) as something worse compared to meat - it had the same cultural status as a porkchop. But now I live in the UK and not eating meat for dinner is almost immediately seen as weird, or "oh you're a vegeterian now?" - no....I just don't eat meat for every meal? Why is this immediately seen as suspicious? And again, no one in Poland ever thought of these meals as "vegetarian" - they were just normal meals, not a special lifestyle choice.

Do you have any recommendations/recipes for vegan Polish dishes (i.e. dishes that happen to be vegan)?

Deep fry tofu squares in potato starch. Eat them with rice and broccoli.

Dip the tofu in spicy red Korean paste sauce or skiyaki sauce.

Vegetarian dishes are common. Vegan dishes are a tiny bit more rare.

- Pickle soup is a classic (use a recipe with fermented pickles, which are pretty easy to make at home, but larger grocers often also sell them refrigerated as a kosher product). Aside from the sour cream it's naturally vegan, and a vegan sour cream might work fine.

- Borscht is a delicious beet soup.

- Wild mushroom perogies are also pretty close, save for egg and sour cream in the dough. Vegan substitutes would definitely work there, else if you experiment a bit with the hydration a basic hot water and flour dough would be close.

- Cabbage soup is similar to pickle soup in spirit (using sauerkraut, another lacto-fermented vegetable).

- Placki Ziemniaczane (somewhat similar to US hash browns) is often served with mushroom sauce. Sometimes it'll have egg as a binder, but that's not essential for a very similar dish (replace it if you'd like, or add a bit more flour and water, or just leave it out).

- Braised sauerkraut

- Krupnik is a barley soup, often made with meat stocks, but vegetable stocks aren't bad either.

Thanks!

But remember that Polish beet soup has often milk or cream added on it. If is pink it has milk. If is purple not necessarily.

That's a fair callout. I think the best borschts I've eaten had dairy, but somehow I had bright purple soups in mind when I wrote that and forgot about the others.

With any luck, a vegan sour cream ought to get you to that pink classic. No promises though, and the purple version is also great.

Question for vegans, are they allowed to eat bread (on account of the yeast)?

Assuming this question comes in good faith (because I had many bad faithed questions of this type, unfortunately): Yes.

It is in good faith. I don't understand why though?

Vegans avoid eating animals. Yeast is a fungus.

Exactly.

Funnily enough, same question is often asked of devout Muslims, since your average loaf of bread is 1-2% ABV, and the answer is also yes, yes you are.

Why is the answer yes in that case?

Culture and chemistry are separate entities.

Because leading Islamic scholars have decided it's ok. Just like leading Jewish scholars have decided that even the most orthodox Jews can drink fresh water, even though all water everywhere in the world contains microscopic creusteceans. Religions and belief systems don't have to be perfectly logical(not in the "ah gotcha" scope anyway).

To be fair, all that does to me is highlight the inconsistency and illogicality of these archaic religious customs, which were rooted in sanitation concerns at a time when no one knew what bacteria was, but have become venerated as part of a global control mechanism by the elite.

Every good cult needs a list of low-stakes, illogical rituals, because they serve as nuclei for adherence to higher-stakes illogical beliefs and acts.

Unfortunately, science has made it increasingly difficult to justify the absolutism of many of these religious practices, and so somehow these religions skate by by saying, "oh we're just being practical and realistic" even though they continue to stray further from the dogma which defines their religious beliefs.

It shows you unequivocally that these religious institutions are more interested in maintaining power than adhering to their own belief systems.

It’s not a religion, nothing is allowed or forbidden.

But yes, bread is usually part of a vegan diet.

I'm not an expert on Polish dishes, but I learned that it's pretty easy to make any dish vegan if you are an average cook. If you live in a bigger cities, you'll find many meat alternatives. Pick the ones that you think comes closest to replace the meat in your dish. Replace butter with olive oil or margerine. Replace milk with oat milk (or soy milk).

Replacing cheese is the hardest, but there are increasingly better options now.

My parents both grew up on farms and for them meat was something you had on Sundays. The belief that a meal is only complete with meat seems pretty new.

Ten people halving their meat intake has more positive impact than four people going full vegan. Unfortunately the idea of "less meaty" dining is entirely unknown where I live, it's either completely meatless or meat as the defining element with some sides as fillers. Meatless is high status (even if hated by some), meat-heavy is high status (even if hated by others), but simply does not happen, except perhaps behind closed doors.

I have found that sometimes with a vegetarian diet I feel like I need more protein. But a balance I've found that works is 1-2 meat meals per month is enough to balance it out.

I felt the same way when I started reducing meat. But then I started substituting it with Whey protein and Greek yogurt, and now I eat meat once in 3 to 4 weeks.

Make sure you get a lot of beans. They are pretty good on protein.

How do you notice that you need more protein? I hear that quite a bit but I have no idea how it manifests.

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