Eva & Rachel Participate in Veguary: Crispy Lentil and Sweet Potato Tacos
As you may have seen on our social media and through our newsletter outreach, Kelly’s Kitchen is partnering with AfroVegan Society in February in honor of Black History Month to amplify the work that AfroVegan Society does to make vegan meals and vegan recipes available to as many people as possible.
While this fourth food demo was the final one in the Veguary series, we are excited that this partnership will continue in the future with other opportunities and will help AfroVegan Society continue to be more inclusive of people with disabilities in their programmatic opportunities.
This partnership has included Kellys Kitchen doing the following:
Participating in weekly Veguary cooking demos (typically held every Friday at 1 pm EST)
Provide feedback about the recipes from our perspectives
Provide advice or tips to increase accessibility of the culinary process or recipe itself
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring every Veguary cooking demo has an ASL interpreter present for the live demos and to be featured in the recordings.
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring recorded Veguary demos have Captioning included.
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring there is a screen reader-friendly plain language version of the recipe available on their website for download.
We know that often times cooking in of itself is not accessible or inclusive of people with disabilities. One of the main goals of AfroVegan Society is making sure that vegan cooking and a vegan lifestyle are available to as mnay people as possible - and this includes people with disabilities!
Last week AfroVegan Society held a new (and final) cooking demo in the Veguary Series on Friday, February 28 at 1 pm EST, and Rachel, Operations Director, and Eva, Food Security Network Coordinator attended and made the recipe to give you feedback on how it went, what they loved, and any additional tips for accessibility!
“We wrap up Veguary with a Tuesday night favorite...tacos! These Crispy Sweet Potato Tacos are packed with fiber, nutrients, and protein. I am always looking for creative ways to sneak some additional fiber into my diet and these might be my new favorite trick. This recipe is already super affordable, however, I decided to cook my own lentils and sweet potatoes to make this recipe cost even less. This takes two extra pots and about 20 extra minutes, but these ingredients could easily be meal prepped the day before. Jessica recommended adding mushrooms for an additional savory flavor -- something I will be trying with the leftover lentils in my fridge!“
- Eva Houston, FSN Coordinator
“I wasn’t surprised that these crispy lentil and sweet potato tacos were good, because meatless tacos have always had an appeal to me. I love lots of vegetables as toppings. What really surprised me was how much I liked the lentils in the taco. When I think of lentils, I think of soup - and I don’t think of using lentils in other capacities. This recipe really opened my eyes to using vegetables in different ways than I would traditionally use them.
One thing I want to mention is that I had whole, raw sweet potatoes at home already, so instead of buying frozen, pre-chopped sweet potatoes I could heat up in the microwave, I added a bunch of extra steps to my recipe by cooking the sweet potato and dicing it.
In terms of user-friendliness, this is a pretty easy recipe to make and do at your own pace. The things you want to be mindful of are how long you are keeping food on the hot stovetop so that things don’t burn as you work through the recipe steps. It’s nice that the recipe is already pretty gluten-free friendly since the tacos are corn tacos. And there is minimal chopping and cutting involved, which can be difficult for someone with limited hand dexterity or mobility.”
-Rachel Kaplan, Operations Director
Watch the recorded cooking demo and make the recipe yourself by visiting the following links: