Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Earth Day 2014

Look at that spectacular globe!

            May already?  It feels like it was just February.  It doesn’t hurt that the weather still acts like it’s February.  I’m still wearing a hoodie and jeans outside.
            But today I thought I’d update about our Earth Day 2014.  Earth Day would be a perfect time for people to realize just how beneficial going vegan would be to the planet.  Raising farm animals for humans to eat is one of the biggest causes of climate change, which endangers everyone and everything on this planet.  Going vegan would be more helpful to the planet than driving a little less or replacing your light bulbs or recycling your paper bags (all of which are GOOD things to do but it’s vastly more beneficial to just go vegan).  It’s been said that going vegan is like taking a million cars off of the roads for an entire year.  Now imagine if we could get the percentage of vegans in the U.S. up above 1% that it currently is at.  That would be a huge!  You really can’t say you care about the environment or the planet, in general, if you don’t go vegan.  It’s easy!  If you’d like to learn more about the history of Earth Day, click HERE.
For various holidays throughout the year, my wife tries to make meals that have a cultural tie to that event or foods that have a theme.  On Earth Day, my wife and I typically eat special ‘Earth Day’-themed meals (dishes generally served with lots of color), take in one of those DisneyNature films (they donate part of the ticket sales the first week they’re out to various charities.), and whatever else we have time for.  This year was no different.
For dinner, my wife made a few dishes that had various colors in them.  First, she started out with a strawberry-mango guacamole from The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon.  When she first mentioned the guacamole I pictured a typical guacamole just with red and yellow streaks in it.  However, to my surprise, the guacamole was actually strawberries, mangos, and avocados diced up in a bowl.  Not that it mattered because it was still amazing!  The recipe made a lot of guacamole and I probably could’ve just had that for dinner and been satisfied.  I would definitely check out that recipe if I were you because while those 3 things may not sound like they go together, they do.  There was a really good balance of flavors going on.

Next up, my wife made Brian Patton’s meatball Parmesan burgers that she had seen in an issue of VegNews Magazine.  They were more like sliders but even so, I could only eat about 3 of them since I had already pigged out on our other dishes.  She also made homemade Rustica buns from Joni Marie Newman’s book, The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet (so far, that’s accurate).  The buns had sun-dried tomatoes in them and the burgers had marinara sauce, pesto, and vegan mozzarella cheese.  So, as you can probably tell, there were a lot of colors even in the burgers.  I’m not a huge pesto fan so 3 burgers probably would’ve been perfect even if I didn’t have other dishes to eat.
The pic doesn't do the burgers justice!

Lastly, my wife made another one of Brian Patton’s recipes – green bean fries.  They ended up basically being green bean tempura but they were really good, nonetheless.  Hell, tempura in general is just really good.  This recipe was from The Sexy Vegan’s Happy Hour At Home cookbook.  How sexy I felt after eating way too many green bean tempura fries is debatable.  The fries were accompanied with a tahini dipping sauce, which went well together.  I suppose if colors weren’t important you could just use soy sauce as a dipping sauce instead of the tahini but you’d be missing out if you did.


We rounded out the day with the DisneyNature film, Bears.  We’ve seen every one of their films that have come out on Earth Days in years past.  They’re all pretty entertaining and they’re a good way to expose people to the fact that humans aren’t the only creatures on Earth that form relations and have feelings.  I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s not hard to form an emotional bond to the animals they follow in each film.  Plus, like I mentioned, they donate part of their ticket sales in the first week to various charities that tend to deal with the environment or animals.  If it’s still out, I suggest checking out the movie.  John C. Reilly also narrates the movie.
So, that was 2014.  It was relatively low-key but the food was quite delicious!  I hope everyone had a good Earth Day.  Did anyone do anything special this year?  Let me know!
Until next time, keep calm and vegan on!

You can find Joni Marie Newman in a number of places online but you can follow her on Twitter at: @jonimarienewman
You can also find Brian L. Patton in a number of places online but you can follow him on Twitter at: @TheSexyVegan
You can also find Angela Liddon in a number of places online but you can follow her on Twitter at: @ohsheglows

P.S. - The photo of the Earth was found using Google Image search and can been seen
HERE.

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