Roasted Mushrooms With Braised Black Lentils
Another veek, another Vegan Vednesday. It's gotten easier over time, and I hope it will continue to get easier, but still I struggle to avoid animal products on these Wednesdays. Why do I keep it up? Because of "Vorld Scientists’ Varning of a Climate Emergency" (misspellings my own), that's vhy.
Read it and literally weep, friends: "more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world" stated "clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency" in the new (Nov. 5) Bioscience piece. It's only about a five-minute read that summarizes evidence from other sources, and suggests areas for action - including reducing meat consumption.
After the Trump administration waved away its obligation to address the problem by withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change on Monday, I hope you voted on Tuesday, Election Day, for candidates who are brave and smart enough to face the climate emergency and take actions to address it at all levels of government.
And yesterday, I hope you did a better job than me at adhering to whatever animal product reduction goals you had, and forgive me for my failure, and encourage me to try harder next week.
Vegan Wednesday started well enough for me: I had a solid plan. I would have slow-cooker oatmeal for breakfast, then oat milk hot chocolate. Then a tomato sandwich for lunch, and slow-cooker minestrone for dinner.
Things were going swimmingly through lunch time. In assembling my tomato sandwich, I walked to the fridge and automatically pulled out a jar of mayo, and then stopped myself. I know mayo is made from eggs, and yet I read the ingredient list, hoping irrationally that eggs would somehow not be on it. Obviously, they were. I put the mayo back in the fridge and squirted my sandwich with some olive oil. Crisis averted.
But then things started falling apart. I realized with horror that I had forgotten to put the minestrone in the crockpot, so it wasn't going to be cooked in time for dinner. But no problem: I could pick up vegan ramen for dinner, on the way home from an outing with one of my back-up dancers.
When I called Ani Ramen at 5:25pm to place a takeout order, though, I learned they don't do takeout. BOOOOOOOO Ani Ramen. And I didn't want to eat in: it's too loud there, and the portions are large (and expensive) enough that I didn't want to buy two of them. I wanted to share one huge order of ramen with my backup dancer in the comfort of my home while we watched short videos from www.thekidshouldseethis.com.
So there I was with the dinner hour upon me, feeling foggy from the effects of low blood sugar, my vegan plans A and B having fallen through, steeped in the wretched blackness of daylight savings time, miserable and cold and hungry. "Can we have sushi for dinner?" asked Emma, and I said yes.
So we're back where we started: next week will offer another Vegan Vednesday, and I'll give it a vhirl again.
Meanwhile, for simple vegetarianism, I can recommend "Roasted Mushrooms With Braised Black Lentils and Parsley Croutons" (NYT Cooking; subscription required).
I wish I'd had more interesting mushrooms (I just had cremini and shiitake) and I went to two stores that didn't have black lentils, so I used French and regular lentils that I had on hand. They took about 20 minutes to cook.
A couple tips: Don't overdo the water over the lentils. And you don't need a whole stick (!) of butter. I used 3/4 of a stick and feel I could cut it back more next time I make this.
The croutons were divine, and in general this was a tasty dish that I'm about to enjoy as lunchtime leftovers.
Read it and literally weep, friends: "more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world" stated "clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency" in the new (Nov. 5) Bioscience piece. It's only about a five-minute read that summarizes evidence from other sources, and suggests areas for action - including reducing meat consumption.
After the Trump administration waved away its obligation to address the problem by withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change on Monday, I hope you voted on Tuesday, Election Day, for candidates who are brave and smart enough to face the climate emergency and take actions to address it at all levels of government.
And yesterday, I hope you did a better job than me at adhering to whatever animal product reduction goals you had, and forgive me for my failure, and encourage me to try harder next week.
Vegan Wednesday started well enough for me: I had a solid plan. I would have slow-cooker oatmeal for breakfast, then oat milk hot chocolate. Then a tomato sandwich for lunch, and slow-cooker minestrone for dinner.
Things were going swimmingly through lunch time. In assembling my tomato sandwich, I walked to the fridge and automatically pulled out a jar of mayo, and then stopped myself. I know mayo is made from eggs, and yet I read the ingredient list, hoping irrationally that eggs would somehow not be on it. Obviously, they were. I put the mayo back in the fridge and squirted my sandwich with some olive oil. Crisis averted.
But then things started falling apart. I realized with horror that I had forgotten to put the minestrone in the crockpot, so it wasn't going to be cooked in time for dinner. But no problem: I could pick up vegan ramen for dinner, on the way home from an outing with one of my back-up dancers.
When I called Ani Ramen at 5:25pm to place a takeout order, though, I learned they don't do takeout. BOOOOOOOO Ani Ramen. And I didn't want to eat in: it's too loud there, and the portions are large (and expensive) enough that I didn't want to buy two of them. I wanted to share one huge order of ramen with my backup dancer in the comfort of my home while we watched short videos from www.thekidshouldseethis.com.
So there I was with the dinner hour upon me, feeling foggy from the effects of low blood sugar, my vegan plans A and B having fallen through, steeped in the wretched blackness of daylight savings time, miserable and cold and hungry. "Can we have sushi for dinner?" asked Emma, and I said yes.
 |
| Rueful. |
Meanwhile, for simple vegetarianism, I can recommend "Roasted Mushrooms With Braised Black Lentils and Parsley Croutons" (NYT Cooking; subscription required).
I wish I'd had more interesting mushrooms (I just had cremini and shiitake) and I went to two stores that didn't have black lentils, so I used French and regular lentils that I had on hand. They took about 20 minutes to cook.
A couple tips: Don't overdo the water over the lentils. And you don't need a whole stick (!) of butter. I used 3/4 of a stick and feel I could cut it back more next time I make this.
The croutons were divine, and in general this was a tasty dish that I'm about to enjoy as lunchtime leftovers.
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