Why a good cooking wine is tastier than Haterade.

(That cute little bugger up there is Hezzie, our new tofu-plushie mascot, made by a student named Julia who was inspired to have a vegan bake sale and also, consequently, rules.)

I'd like to take a brief break from our regularly scheduled Le Deliciousness to have a little chat about the ginormous MetaFilter post that showed up about Hezbollah Tofu a few days ago. But first I should point out that said chat is a twisty-panty-free zone. As in, those of us who do actually wear underwear are not getting our knickers in a bunch, because this project is not a he-said, she-said, anonymous-internet-asshole-said war of the words; if you want one of those, just start a PPK topic with the subject line "IS HONEY VEGAN?" (But please, for the love of Seitan, do not actually do this.)

This is, from its conception, a charity project. Nobody will make money here except for the vegan-oriented nonprofit of our choosing. So I don't feel the need to strap on my Xena armor, give my sidekick Gabrielle a bi-curious smooch and march off to defend my cause; the cause is explicit, and you're in or your out. (And you have to make it work! [The melding of Xena and Project Runway is clearly symptomatic of my recent sleep deprivation.])

Anyway, if I were in a bitchier mood, or had consumed more caffeine, I might go through point-by-point to refute the posters who felt that the contributing chefs and cooks here were just scraping by with the "gimmick" of veganism, those who said that the resulting recipes would be tragically bland, or those who merely took the opportunity, in boorish Bourdain fashion, to trot out all the limp, haggard anti-vegan remarks that most of us could probably recite backwards, half-asleep, while stirring a pot of soup.

But instead all I'll say is this--bring it. Seriously. Any bored 14-year-old in his parents' basement can criticize recipes on the internet that they haven't so much as tasted, let alone attempted. So in the spirit of keeping the content of Hezbollah Tofu as varied and rich as possible, I will invite the haters to exchange the haterade for a nice dry sherry and see what they can do with adapted French recipes. Test the recipes posted here. Adapt your own recipes and send them in. Leave the meat and cheese in if you want; that just makes it more fun.

Or, you know, just hang out and talk shit. Although I wouldn't necessarily count on that as a life plan or a career; that really only worked for one person in this scenario, and we're pretty much kicking his pockmarked ass.