Meatless Minimalist?

Mark Bittman has made a name for himself as The Minimalist, the New York Times' meat n' potatoes food columnist, a guy who applies Occam's razor (Occam's cleaver?) to the art of cooking. He's also known for his best-selling cookbooks, perhaps especially How to Cook Everything, which has been described as a hipper Joy of Cooking.

Now, Bittman has come out with How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. That's bound to surprise many Bittman fans, who are used to seeing the man gnawing ribs or braising lamb shanks on his PBS cooking show. So what's up? Has the Minimalist given up meat? Not so fast. As he hastens to point out in his Amazon.com blog: "I’m not a vegetarian, and I’m not an advocate of a vegetarian diet; I’m an advocate of Americans eating fewer animal products - less meat, fish, poultry, and dairy."

...what motivated me--several years ago--was seeing the handwriting on the wall: That although being a principled, all-or-nothing vegetarian was not a course of action that would ever likely inspire the majority of Americans, the days of all-meat-all-the-time (or, to be slightly less extreme, of a diet heavily dependent on meat) could not go on. Averaging a consumption of two pounds a week or more of meat (as Americans do) is not sustainable...

Hat tip: 101 Cookbooks