It is as if some saturation point has been reached - weeks of consuming gravy-dipped sandwiches of prime beef sliced from a bar's mammoth steamship round, and tender filet at a wedding buffet, and pork loin with the weinkraut that Rieker's, the Fox Chase butcher, imports in big, yellow cans from Germany.

So I turn resolutely to a virgin cookbook on my shelf, Veganomicon by name. And in it, past the paeans to veganism and right-living and self-congratulation, I find a recipe for walnut-mushroom pate, which is introduced thus: "Our friend Paula brought this classy pate to a New Year's Eve party and we seriously couldn't stop freaking out due to its lush texture and complex, savory flavor. . . ."

For the new year, it dawns, why not give it a whirl, even though the patter reminds me (and not in a good way) of the snarky, pop-nutrish declamations of the runaway-best-selling Skinny Bitch books.

I am not, suddenly, alone. Not by a long shot. Vegan, vegetarian, vegetable love (in fact, that's the title of a 2005 Barbara Kafka tome), meatless, and less-meat cookbooks poured off the presses last year.

More encouragingly, vegetarian cuisine has been sprung from its health-food ghetto; slipped out of oily, mock-meat Chinese prison.

If plant-based cookery was about morality once (and there is a profoundly moral case to be made for it), its resurgent popularity adds pleasure to the brief.

It's not just to choke down anymore. It's to savor and celebrate. It's hip, not hair-shirt.

In a pub in South Philly (Royal Tavern, for example), gutsy vegan sloppy joes are listed confidently on menus beside meat-loaf sandwiches and Angus burgers.

At Horizons, the sleek vegan shrine on Seventh Street just south of South, the pan-roasted tofu with roasted winter vegetables (and sand-dollar-sized coins of creamy, truffled parsnip ravioli, $19) is more elegant, richly satisfying and memorably complex than anything you're likely to find at the local steakhouse.

No members-only card required. No consignment to lifeless brown rice, peanuts and broccoli. No suffocating, lemme-outta-here absolutism.

Say hello to the new veganism - culinary sophistication, patient craft, lovingly nuanced flavor.

Hasta la vista, Moosewood.