Vegan TV?

I watch a fair amount of TV.

For the past 6 months or so my favorites are (in no particular order):

Good Eats
The Next Food Network Star
Top Chef (& Top Chef Masters)
Chopped
Iron Chef America (& The Next Iron Chef)
Jamie at Home
Hell’s Kitchen

After not too long, I noticed a trend…practically no meal was without a dead animal. Oh, sure a couple of the challenges were vegetarian and one was even vegan (gasp!) but a majority of the chefs went right to the old eggplant lasagna…oh my, how creative. It also seemed that the vegetarian challenges were framed as "a pain in the ass" or "tasteless".

It’s just amazing that the professionals get to this point in their careers and can’t figure out for the life of them how to prepare a tasty meal without any animal products.

I’ve daydreamed that I get on one of these shows (not that I’m even close to being that good…the light from the village of good chefs takes 1.5 million years to reach me) and “amaze” them when I make a cream sauce from cashews, water, lemon, olive oil & garlic or a cheese cake with tofu. But then I realize that I wouldn’t last one elimination round as I would not use the mandatory “proteins”.

I used to wonder why there weren’t more vegetarian based cooking shows (I know, a vegan cooking show is a long shot) but then you look at the sponsors for most of the shows and you find your answer.

It’s definitely not that vegan or vegetarian cooking lacks flavor as I’ve even managed to wow the omnivores that I work with, hang out with or are related to with the dishes I’ve prepared.

It’s also not for a lack of talent that these shows aren’t being produced…just look at Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Sarah Kramer (just to name a few).

Maybe it’s just not meant to be.

There’s always other ways to spread the word…