Monday dinner: Quinoa burrito bowls (and the debut of Meatless Monday)

UPDATE: Al Dente’s Binghamton Canandaigua bureau chief Brian Moritz reports that his Wegmans carries store-brand freshly made pico de gallo. Very disappointing.

Meatless Monday has become a national movement backed by the geniuses at Johns Hopkins University in an effort to reduce our overall consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol. It has its roots during those skirmishes in the early to mid 1900s, where Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman asked Americans to go meatless one day a week to make sure we could feed our soldiers abroad. Or something like that.

(Tangent: We can get into the politics of this, but I don’t believe that food should be political. It should be safe. It should be accessible. It should be served to politicians. It shouldn’t be a political statement. There are too many people who lack access to quality fresh food. A 12-week per year farmer’s market in a Northeast city is a nice gesture, but is a fingertip bandage on a fissure. If people are hot to make a political statement about food, they should try fixing that.)

For our purposes, Meatless Monday is not going to be a grand statement. It’s my challenge to reach out and try new things that are healthy, and approach the stove without a chicken thigh, pork tenderloin or other piece of animal flesh in hand.

We’ll see how long this lasts.