Blue Dog’s Blog

Today I went to one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants to celebrate a friend’s birthday: Cafe Flora. Anyone who thinks you can’t have a good meatless meal should try their French Dip sandwich. Very yummy! We had a wonderful dessert, a nectarine tartlet, to celebrate her birthday as well. It was a sinfully wonderful meal.

Did you know that you can save 2.675 pounds of CO2 for each day you eat vegetarian for every meal? Vegetarians save 976.375 pounds of CO2 a year. Don’t think you could do it every day? Not a problem! If you were to eat vegetarian meals all day once a week, you’d save 139.1 pounds of CO2 a year and if you were to eat one vegetarian meal a day, you’d save 325.4 pounds of CO2 a year (based on 3 meals a day)! No cheating and doubling up on meat with your next meal.

It’s not always easy to find good vegan desserts. The “ice creams” tend to be chalky and the pastries tend to be dry. I have found four wonderful cookbooks that give lots of great tips for getting around the problem:

• Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
• More Great Good Dairy-free Desserts by Fran Costigan
• The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
• Sinfully Vegan by Lois Dieterly
• Vice Cream by Jeff Rogers

So no more excuses about eating vegetarian meals! You help yourself and the world as an extra bonus.