A vegetarian meal should not be a "fake" meat or fish item - even if it is soy. And a veg meal should (obviously) have no meat ingredients.
I agree the special meal orders are pretty crap at DL. I ordered a special meal for my flight I took yesterday and it was neither loaded onboard the aircraft or even addressed by the FA's.
DL really needs to get the catering in order for both special meal issues, as well as the endemic gong show over at the Connection carriers (in particular Comair) with FA's having no clue and serving the meals for the inbound flight on the outbound flight etc.