Michael and I are trying to make a conscious effort in the new year to eat less meat and Melissa Clark’s NYT article about eating less meat in 2020 got us thinking…about faux meat or meatless meat. Is it good? Is it actually healthy? Will the kids eat it? Will we like it and replace meat with it?

On date night, in Pleasantville, we bemoaned our current Williamsburg-less life and instead went out to eat at a lively upscale pub where Michael ordered… a plantburger. The first bite screamed Boca Burger to me— a frozen convenience that I frequently ate when single. It wasn’t terrible, with plenty of fixins, it could fulfil the burger craving. But it easn’t yummy and neither of us finished it.

The first cooking experiment was Saturday night when I replaced our normal beef tacos with Beyond Beef Tacos. As a pushed the mush around in the pan, trying to mask it with lots of taco spices, memories of my microwaved plastic-y Boca burgers flooded back. It looked fairly repulsive and the ingredient list was long. Wasn’t this against my resolve to eat REAL food, something I’ve stuck to for years? I forged on and as the burger cooked and slightly browned, it started to look and smell more appetizing.

We didn’t tell the kids that we were substituting meatless beef— I just set the table as always and told everyone to dig in. Michael and I exchanged glances over the boys but neither said anything like this tastes weird, or I don’t like this. Nate, uncharacteristically, only ate one taco but no complaints were uttered. Still, it just wasn’t as delicious and hard to know if it was a success. The next day, we noticed a high volume of gas eminating from ourselves and our kids and vowed to not make meatless meat a habit.