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sailordave,

I think your analogy is close, but not quite right. I think being a vegetarian foodie is like being a music lover who doesn't like stringed instruments. Any of 'em. Being a foodie vegan is like being a music lover, but not liking stringed instruments, wind instruments, brass instruments or percussion. I guess a cappella music is nice... but it's hard to understand a music lover who dismisses all those other wonderful sounds.

5 days a week we eat a basically vegetarian diet. But there's simply no way I could give up the magical food-binding, sauce-emulsifying power of the egg. To those of us who will eat basically anything, veganism can seem a little empty. And extremely hard to understand.

But good luck to you vegan foodies! I may not understand you, but I wish you all well!

Hurray for offal! Really, American culture already embraces some nasty bits, so long as they're hidden. As a friend of mine enjoys pointing out - we serve a bone marrow extraction sweetened and coloured as a dessert for small children (Jell-o). And pressed sandwich meats come from some of the less savory parts of meat. However, organ meat has largely been ignored.

Let's celebrate organ meat. Huzzah!

There's no lactose in cheese. Cheese is made from milk protein, and any remaining lactose that contaminates the protein is the first thing to be degraded by the Lactobacillus that ferments the milk.

You may have a milk allergy. But it t'ain't lactose intolerance.