Mango Tofu Burrito Bowls

Happy Vegan Vednesday! Choosing plant-based foods at least once a week is a great pro-environment choice for an individual, but I was heartened to read that New York's mayor recognizes the potential huge impact of city-wide policies that reduce meat procurement. This week, the mayor "vowed to reduce emissions tied to city food procurements by 33 percent by 2030," up from his predecessor's goal of 25 percent, according to the New York Times.

The Big Apple, where the mayor responds to climate change and cats hitch rides on motorbikes

The Times quoted Mayor Adams saying: "It is easy to talk about emissions that are coming from vehicles and how it impacts our carbon footprint, it is easy to talk about the emissions that’s coming from buildings and how it impacts our environment. But we now have to talk about beef. And I don’t know if people are really ready for this conversation." 

I hear you, Mayor. A person I know reminded me recently that she had given up meat for Lent last year, and--apparently not realizing that I only ever eat meat as a treat nowadays, because of the greenhouse gases generated by animal agriculture--she made it sound like the experience was awful. I'll grant you that it can take a while to adjust your mindset away from meat as your meal default, but I'm continually surprised that not everyone is ready to have a conversation about the problems with beef and other meats, after years of increasing evidence about the causes and consequences of climate change.

Of course, just as when you cook WITH meat, not everything you cook WITHOUT meat will necessarily be amazing. For example, no one in my household was blown away by "Mango 'Burrito' Bowls with Crispy Tofu and Peanut Sauce" (Cookie + Kate); the response was "it's good," and if that wasn't followed by an actual shrug, well, I could hear the shrug in their voices. The mango is a fun update to a typical grain bowl, though, and the dish is vegan. So choose it over a merely "good" dish that features meat.

I recently made a minty, brownie-like dessert called "Andes Mint Cookie Dough Truffle Bars" (Inside Bru Crew Life) that could also easily be vegan if you used a butter substitute, because it has no eggs. No eggs?! I marveled at the egg omission through step 3 of the recipe and then realized I hadn't pre-heated my oven, so I looked back at steps 1 and 2, which mentioned nothing about pre-heating. So then I read through steps 4 and 5 (yes, a smarter person would have read through all the steps BEFORE starting to bake) and lo and behold, this dessert doesn't go in the oven. That was a welcome surprise on a 90-degree day, for which--given that it is April--we can probably blame global warming.

We had some extra backup dancers to help us eat the bars, which followed a meal of asparagus and linguine with frenched green beans (a terrific meatless entree!)

Like the burrito bowls, the bars were not especially noteworthy for their taste. I like to note even the unnoteworthy recipes, though, so that I don't stumble on them in the future with no recollection of having made them before, and try them again expecting them to be terrific. Scroll through some of my 200+ previous blog entries, or search the blog by a favorite ingredient, if you're looking for some meatless dishes that really are delicious and worth making repeatedly. Coming back around on my own calendar soon, for example, are sheet-pan "sausage" and vegetables, sun-dried tomato chickpea one-pot pasta, and vegan "lox" rice bowls.