Sequestration Meal #592

 

This is a variation of the gochujang mushroom bowls at Budget Bytes. I wanted more protein, though, so I made some Gardein sweet and sour porkless bites to go with the mushrooms, and I substituted some sauteed onions and bell peppers for the shredded carrots. And I used regular old white mushrooms rather than portobello, because I've never been that fond of portobellos. (They're fine, but definitely not my favorite thing.)

This was an interesting meal to me, because although the porkless bites were fine, the mushrooms were amazing. I really want vegan meat substitutes to exist--heck, they're really helpful in a meal like this one, where I need to dial back on the effort a little--but I also like what I cook from whole foods so much better. I can't imagine this was always the case, so I assume my tastes have changed. In any case, I loved those sweet and spicy mushrooms, and I will make them again. They're like the Asian fusion answer to the Mexican mushrooms I love.

The quick pickled cucumbers were nice, but I knew they would be, as I make something similar a lot. It's such an impressive, easy side dish.

I can say the same thing for the onions and peppers, which I am sure you can tell if you read here often: I just love throwing some onions and peppers in a skillet with salt and pepper and letting them cook down while I cook everything else.

It's definitely not a bad thing to be meh about processed food. It's just a bewildering development to me. But here's to self discovery and embracing the changes that catch us by surprise. I've been thinking a lot recently about how the long isolation of COVID-19 (we used to call it the coronavirus) changed how I cook and how I eat, and then, how the sharp and terrifying inflation that followed the isolation changed it some more. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. As I've always said to people who say negative things about my veganism to me, I enjoy my food. You may not like it, but I do. And the fact that I still genuinely enjoy my food in spite of all of this upheaval is a profound comfort, for which I am grateful.