crack the plates

Hello friends! Sorry I’ve been MIA for the last several days. Turns out, wedding our haste to flee to Chicago with a pragmatic zeal for unplugging appliances meant we accidentally unplugged our router–oops!I had hoped to blog my food adventures from the windy city, but that inability means I’m just gonna have to catch up now, from Richmond. Le sigh.

Relatedly, tonight marked a glum return to cooking for myself. After spoiling ourselves with Chicago Diner, vegan marshmallows, an Indian buffet, plenty of stuff from the vegan+macrobiotic bar at Whole Foods, and not to mention the fact of other people cooking, serving, and cleaning up, I sought the most fuss-free dinner imaginable. To be completely honest, this was only after resisting cooking anything for about 2 hours. Yeah, I whined.

But it is wonderful to be able to eat, to have full pantries from which to cook, to own all the tools necessary for the job, and to have the energy and ability to make something tasty. Noting these blessings (albeit a bit grudgingly), I settled on tacos. They may be embarrassingly easy to make (see below), but they’re special in their own way: tacos are one of the first main courses I learned to make vegan.

The year was 2002 and I sought something to serve to my then-major-meat-eating BF. Using the Boca crumbles, a dash of spice, and the ability to lie well, I totally passed em off on him. Not only that, but I taught my best friend (a very lovely, very Southern lady called Jessica) how to play the same trick on her flesh-loving country husband. Veg evangelism, I tell ya what.

For those who are interested in spreading the good news: Reconstitute some veggie beef crumbles (these days I use the dry stuff from Dixie Diner) in boiling water with vegan bouillon.  Saute an onion in oil with garlic and whatever seasonings one prefers. Add the veg*meat and cook. Add more seasonings. Stuff taco shells, bake at 350-400 for a few minutes, serve.

They’re not fancy, complex, or even all that attractive, but tacos get the job done.

I know, I know…not the kind of headline one would expect for a post during Vegan Month of Food Writing. Taco Bell?! Shouldn’t a responsible vegan just have some tortillas, a can of beans, and a jar of salsa on hand for that sort of thing? Well…yeah. It can certainly be much less expensive to make your own.

But for all of us, there comes a time when our schedule just does not permit even the slapping together of a couple tortillas…and we’re drawn like moths to the neon lighting of the fast food restaurant. Of course, this presents much more of a challenge to vegans than to flesh-eaters. Relatively-enlightened Burger King may have started offering a veggie burger years ago, but it’s still a Morningstar Farms Garden Veggie Patty made with egg whites and calcium caseinate. Sigh.

So vegans and fast food: ne’er the twain shall meet? Not if you’ve got a Taco Bell nearby. There, harried vegans can get 99 cent bean-burrito, fresco style. When you order the item “fresco style“, the preparer omits the cheese and replaces it with a pretty darn good pico de gallo (often with discernable cilantro!). You don’t have to say “no cheese” but I do anyway, just to be safe–at least a couple of the times I failed to do so I was unhappily surprised by its presence in the wrap.

It’s really a rather good deal for a quick vegan meal…BUT I wouldn’t do it on a regular basis because, despite the availability of some vegan options, eating at Taco Bell presents a major ethical dilemma. It is owned by Yum! Brands, a company that also manages A&W, Pizza Hut, Wing Street, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s a mammoth corp that satisfies its shareholders with the deaths of millions of animals a year, and it has even been tagged for human rights abuses in Florida. So while the burrito might satisfy in a pinch, I still regard it as a last resort.