Mushroom Bourguignon

I'm drinking coffee this morning, and caffeine is clearly behind the amazingly good idea I just had to start learning French. That way, I can pronounce dishes like "Mushroom Bourguignon" (Smitten Kitchen), and when it is someday safe to go back to restaurants, I can stop avoiding the French restaurants whose names I can't pronounce. Yes, I really do this.

Imagine if I had been able to speak French when I encountered this intriguing ad in a Paris subway station in my college years!

I thought this recipe turned out well, but I actually made it with beef broth rather than vegetable broth. I found the can of beef broth when I recently cleaned out my cupboards, looking for foods close to their expiration dates. I probably purchased it at least a couple years ago, before I went mostly vegetarian for the sake of fighting climate change. Food waste is also a climate change contributor, so the broth went into the dish. It almost certainly made it taste better than if I'd made this vegetarian, but I imagine a good homemade veggie stock would work well too.

My one tip, which is probably very obvious but of course I screwed this up, is to put the mushrooms into a bowl after their initial searing, not dump them onto a towel you happen to have sitting next to the stove because you had gathered the pre-seared mushrooms on it. The towel absorbed all their liquid, which would have been nice to add back to the mix.

I write this blog to inspire people to take whatever individual actions we can - like reducing meat and dairy consumption - to fight climate change and avoid pollution. But it is no secret that the future looks pretty bleak without large-scale policy changes. A member of my town's Environmental Commission recently circulated a video (long, but interesting, and the speaker is also funny) in which the speaker points out that for individuals to make a difference with our actions, ALL OF US would have to "do the right thing" (like walking vs driving, eating plant-based foods, using a clothes dryer, etc) ALL THE TIME to make any difference. It's unrealistic, clearly.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't keep doing what we can as individuals, because every action helps, but it does mean we should look for opportunities to influence policy change. That is why I spent time this week slogging through the 241-page draft of my town's new Master Plan, and provided comments about how I hoped that they would strengthen the environmental sustainability language.

Look for those opportunities. And meanwhile, thank you for considering primarily plant-based meals. Au revoir. Don't forget le pre´servatif.