Under a headline promoting them as "A feast in a single bite," the Los Angeles Times is enthusiastically sanctioning a new kind of pot pie flourishing in Southern California.

It's not a chicken pot pie, a turkey pot pie, or a beef pot pie. It's a root vegetable pot pie.

Would you care to know what makes these pies especially great? Allow me to quote from the Times article: "The brilliant touch is a wild herb salad that sits atop the pot pie, a tangle of spicy cress."

First of all, the headline is confusing. They are not one-bite pot pies, crusty hors d'oeuvres. For that matter, the article gets the fundamental importance of the pot pie wrong.

Nobody wants to find a tangle of salad greens atop their pot pies. I sure don't. What I want to find is plenty of meat inside.

I get depressed when I buy one of those supermarket pies and they're little more than carrots and gooey gravy. I'm always poking around under the soggy microwaved crust, desperately trying to find one more gristly chunk of protein, muttering to myself, "I had two bites. That can't be all the beef they put in there."

Vegetarian pot pies are like vegetarian hot dogs, a fundamental culinary mistake. I'll tell you what this country needs: A vegetable-free pot pie, served with a tangle of spicy meatballs on top.