One more "small change" you could make to the bean soup to make it more healthful, ethical, and sustainable would be to remove the one or two links of chorizo and add a bit of oregano, cayenne, garlic, pepper, cumin, and vinegar to replace the flavors.

I know some of you out there might be concerned that bean soup without a little pig in it might be nutritionally deficient and will cause protein deficiencies, but I assure you, it will taste every bit as good and will actually be healthier.

First of all it's not soup in the picture and second of all it looks more like ham than chorizo in the picture. The chorizo would give it an orangeish hue. Not to mention a lack of chard.

And John this is about taking small steps not big ones.

Latenac, you're right.  Making bean soup is an incredible task for the average American these days.  Asking them to omit one of the 11 ingredients on the list and to add a spoonful of herbs in its place would definitely confuse them.  We need to take little bitty bitty itty baby steps.  Maybe instead of "one or two chorizo sausages", they could say "7/8 or 1 3/4 chorizo sausages" and that would be a small enough step for you and others to handle.  

Somehow when I make bean soup, I don't feel the need to put pork products into it.  I guess I'm just gifted.

They could change the ingredient list to say:

"one or two chorizo made from free-range, hormone-free pigs fed on food scraps and sustainably-harvested acorns."  That should be an item pretty easy to come by at any quaint farmers market in rural Vermont towns.  That way they wouldn't be encouraging people to purchase pork products from Dean Foods or the other suppliers of CAFO products.

Of course, chorizo is expensive in general.  I suppose if you were trying to feed a family on a budget, omitting the chorizo from a bean soup recipe might actually be a financially (and environmentally) responsible choice.  But then I know a lot of people in Vermont who don't worry that much about money...1/3 of the state's GDP comes from trust funds.

You won't miss it if it isn't there, it will still taste great and be just as nutritious and cheaper and environmentally responsible!

It's about learning to compromise with your family to make better food choices. If you have someone in the family that feels no meal is complete without meat, the small step of reducing the amount of meat in a meal is the logical place to go not telling them tough we're going completely green and vegan whether you like it or not.

Good lord why does the environmental movement for green food have to be so black and white and my way or the highway? Compromise getting everyone to move with you a little bit is far effective and green than being fundamentalists and saying all or nothing and thus only getting a very small portion of the population to go green.

And it's still not a representative picture of what the recipe will look like.

You don't really know many Vermonters if  you think 1/3 of its gdp comes from trust funds.

mon ami John former Marine.  Why people in this country are so squeamish and/or frantic about "getting enough protein," when Americans are generally far too highly proteinated, is an interesting question in cultural anthropology.  A vegan bean soup, with a good whole-grain bread on the side, should be fine.

That is another cultural-anthropological issue of interest: why some people believe no meal is complete without meat, while I (and many of us of Italian origin) believe no meal is complete without bread.

Another suggestion is, add brown rice, or a small whole-wheat pasta, to the soup.  That would alter the character of the soup, to be sure, but in a pleasant way.  Italians have long mixed pasta or rice with peas, beans, lentils and the like, in their soups, to excellent effect.

Cranky ol' LATenAC, keep crankin' on.  At least you are right about how poor Roz got caught with the wrong illustration.

but at least I have better reading comprehension and understand the point of an article. Living with an english major and having majored in literature myself I do get cranky when people don't actually read things that they comment on.

Dude, we read it.  The fact that they apologized for the "pig" in the title of the recipe points out they know it's the part that offends.  It's not like it's  a recipe for steak, which is awfully hard to make without meat.  It's a bean soup recipe, which is incredibly easy to make without meat.  Including this recipe as it is just makes me think the author admits we CAN'T solve the whitebread problem.  Why would I want to read a book like that?

Besides, who can buy one or two links of sausage at the store?  You'll be buying a lot more, and then have to use it or be wasteful, and that's not solving anything at all--environmentally, healthwise, financially (never mind the poor pig).

Let's hope the other recipes in the book cop out less.

Besides me? From the article-

Short answer: She takes it slow. "I started this meal makeover with a bang, immediately alienating all three beloved members of my family and increasing tension in the home," she says. Chastened, she switched from giant steps to baby steps: "Taking it one step at a time and practicing more than I preach are both helpful."

This book isn't for someone who isn't already a vegan or vegetarian or someone who doesn't give a damn about what the rest of the family thinks in terms of food being served. She's trying not to alienate everyone in her family and thus she takes it slow by baby steps. Getting my husband to eat legumes would be huge step and a minor miracle like the author a workable compromise would be to add a little sausage or something else that he likes to a legume dish.

And you buy a package of sausage and break it into smaller packages to be used for different meals. Not too difficult and very economical.

Reading articles before commenting on them helps a lot.

Yes, I agree that the photo couldn't possibly be of a soup made from this recipe. No, I had nothing to do with choosing the photo. The art department does that. BTW, the photo of the vixen with the heavy eye shadow and false lashes that accompanies the article on organic wine? That isn't really of me either, just in case you are wondering...

Strangely enough I read the article based on the picture.

Right, Diesel.  There is no point in pointing fingers, but the title of the recipe, "... Just a Little Pig," makes me wince.  It reminds me of the commercial tactic of all those exploiters of animals, who festoon their logos and containers with cute cartoon images of happy pigs, cows, chickens -- as though the chiefest joy of their lives were being slaughtered or otherwise exploited for the sake of mindless hungry human consumers, and we were fulfilling them by providing them with that experience.

Even Jesus Christ is not remembered to have skipped and danced to Calvary ...

LATenAC,
there are English majors and then again there are English majors.  In this household, we are a librarian plus a classicist.  And the classicist has learned from teaching experience that there are all kinds of ways to read, at all depths, and wisdom can come from most of them.

In this case, dear Roz's vaguely alcoholic subtitle "One Step at a Time" is excellent advice in many situations requiring ethical decision-making.  I certainly agree that meatlessness should not be imposed suddenly and non-negotiably on a smugly carnivorous household by a vegan jihadist cook.

You folks are funny and those offering the suggestions that all meat must be removed immediately must not have the same kind of children that I do. If I tell them that the dinner I made is "good for you" they'll promptly make gagging noises for the next twenty minutes and refuse to eat it.

So every new vegetarian recipe I try has cheese or sour cream on it to convince the kids that it's not health food and if it flies, I scale back on that stuff the next time I make it.

Changing a family's diet takes time, but it can happen more quickly than trying to change a society's. In my experience, trying to force a big change quickly will lead to massive resistance and nothing will change.

I.e., "soy chorizo" is an expression you need to be careful with, with native Spanish speakers.

Ursa major nigra, aka BlackBear,
having no human kids of my own, I can only say:

Pip pip!  And, coraggio!  Keep them happy, healthy and well-fed -- however you can manage that -- ; and once they fly off, they will notice that they had conscientious grown-ups looking after them; and of course it is entirely up to them what they want to do with that information subsequently.

I am afraid I have not followed all along the issue about "changing a family's diet"; why suddenly should an adult-in-charge change the menu of children?; is the adult an over-night convert to veganism? -- way weird!  This deserves a fuller presentation.

On dairy foods, including eggs, as a bridge between carnivory and vegetarianism: Well, that has been done often enough, in spite of the horrible real situations of dairy cows and egg-laying hens.  Hopefully others with experience and patience can offer advice.

Please be assured, for what it is worth (very little, I guess), that parents of highly mobile children (why, there are a couple of them right now, thumping up and down over and over again just above my head!) receive my full moral support.  (Never mind what else the parents upstairs receive.)  Being an adopted only child myself, I have no idea what the joys are, of joining with a sibling in full-throated mutiny against a parent who is feebly insisting, "Eat this, this is good for you!"

Our own beloved David Roberts, father of two bouncing boys, might be able to shed some light on this subject, himself having converted recently to something like vegetarianism.

The American people must be put in EU or UN-run concentration camps to learn how to cook and eat food, instead of swallowing feed.

The cost-effectiveness of such concentration camps is extreme, the benefits tremendous: no more genocide on the American people (30% of all new born American babies will be clinically obese before the age of 3), no more environmental destruction, no more wars (because Americans' feed consumption lowers the populations IQ, making it easier to treat the mass as cannon fodder for war).

In short, if you are in favor for culinary concentration camps for the U.S. populace, say "aye".

Mais je vive en terreur des meres americaines ...  C'est leur sentiment qui vaut.

Latenac,

      Yes, I know many "Vermonters", most of whom are from New Jersey or New York.  They live in big houses, they have money from out-of-state, they pay land trusts to preserve their views, they eat lots of "local" gourmet cheeses, and send their kids to ski schools.  Vermont, being a state with poor soils and steep fields, was never suited to agriculture, really, or much else other than eking out a living.  Yet the dairy industry has convinced Vermonters that agribusiness is part of their identity.  It's totally greeenwashed propaganda but everybody says "it's a dairy state."  I know for a fact that you can get tempeh up there in Coops from locally grown soy.
     Anyways, yes, I know a lot of Vermonters.  I tried making a living in that state for two years before I realized I'd never have any hope of owning a home because I'd have to pay New York City prices on old farmhouses and double-wides.

Of course you'd all think that there's no need for the sausage or to even consider it since you've never actually had to deal with a small child not wanting to eat something or take into consideration a partner's food preferences.

It was irresponsible to use the picture of the food for a recipe it doesn't go with especially posting it so close to the recipe. Why have a picture at all?

And DogYeast or Caniscandida, you're not doing a classicist reading of the article or your own comments for that matter, you're just doing a very bad post modern reading of it. Derrida is turning in his grave. However I'm surprised as someone who speaks French and claims to be a Classicist you didn't recognize the name of a Victor Hugo character, it's Latenac.

And John, while there are "Vermonters" like that the vast majority of Vermonters are lower to middle class. Real Vermonters don't even ski.

I hear you about the kids.  I know a lot of parents who talk about the "chicken nugget stage" as if it was a chapter in a child development book.  Some kids just eat what you put in front of them for some reason and others won't eat anything that doesn't come in a Happy Meal.  It must be genetic...

....... Betsy needs a makeover. She looks about as plain Jane as humanely possibly. Almost as though she cultivated that look.

Are you kidding?  She's totally cute.  Wear the makeup yourself--many of us don't see the point in it.

Funny that you said "humanely," since cosmetics made that way are hard to find.

Do women have to "cultivate a look" when they do the same as men: shower, comb hair, smile for picture?

This is your second warning. No more insulting personal comments toward authors, commenters, or subjects of articles. There won't be a third warning.

I have something to say about everything and wrong or right i believe in eating only fruits vegetables,nuts and grassfed beef and non farmed fish and fowl personally i dont think people should eat any grains or beans and you can add salt and sugar to that list.  for me it was a matter of my health as every doctor i saw could not do anything for my condition. but to offer me more medication and then write in their reports that it did not work. just got tired of being a test animal.