Normally, I hesitate to eat meatless meat products like veggie dogs, veggie sausages, tofurkey, that sort of things. I don't mind eating vegetables, but I just can't wrap my head around soy protein and wheat gluten. For one thing, they're generally flavorless and strangely mushy to a carnivore's palate. I only eat vegetables on the condition that they taste good.
I'm slowly finding out that a carnivore's idea of being vegetarian is different from a vegetarian's idea of being vegetarian. Let me explain. I think of being a vegetarian as eating vegetables. The meatless meat products are often strange to me because I don't think of them as "vegetables" even though they are meat-free. Whereas, a vegetarian would often add mock meat items for variety and dietary reasons. It's hard for me to appreciate the mock meat items. Some of them are pretty good, but obviously they can't compare to the real deal.
That said, this vegan biscuits and sausage gravy recipe is pretty good. I was surprised that I couldn't taste the soy milk. Generally, I like using real milk and real cheese because soy diary products taste.... well, like soy. But in this case, using soy milk does not affect the flavors of the gravy that much. I even had seconds! That's a sign of good biscuits and gravy.
That only tends to be true of modern American vegetarians. Chinese and Indian cultures have traditionally included a lot of vegetarians. And while they ate plenty of soy and other beans, or even pressed soy products like seitan, they didn't eat too much mock meat of the heavily-processed variety available to us today. I'd rather eat a fresh slab of cold tofu with a little soy sauce and chopped scallions than a pressed piece of TVP masquerading as andouille. ~P
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