Since my son became a vegetarian, I’ve mostly given up my Meatless Monday posts. Obviously, every day is meatless for him, and many are for me. I’ll sometimes have something different or I’ll add some shredded chicken or something to our vegetarian base. But if you’re interested in that practice, or just want some vegetarian meal suggestions, I recommend you search for “Meatless Monday” in my blog search function to bring up a bunch of our favorite vegetarian meals.

Of course, I wanted to do something special for Martin Luther King Day, ESPECIALLY this year when his wisdom and love is so needed in our country. So my son and I decided to make a MLK Stir Fry.

Now, this is totally non-authentic. Rev. King mostly ate (and absolutlely enjoyed) good old fashioned Black Southern Soul Food. Fried chicken, BBQ Pork Ribs, Brunswick Stew, and the like were supposed to be his favorite. So this is MLK in name only.

We decided to make a stir fry based on ingredients that started with the letters M, L, and K. So we chose Mushrooms, Leeks, and Kale. Only one problem with that…I’m allergic to mushrooms. So my son cooked those separately and added them only to his meal. He said they added a lot, so I suggest you include them if you are replicating this dish.

We ended by adding a Black Pepper sauce we bought from a local Asian market. So we thought we acknowledged Dr. King’s heritage and his primarily Black American supporters and co-workers. But it was also really delicious!

Now, the observant among you might be thinking, “But mushrooms, leeks, and kale are not red, yellow, and orange.” And you would be right. We decided to flesh this out a bit by adding multicolored bell peppers–red, orange, yellow, and green. That represents Dr. King’s work with people of all colors. The civil rights movement he led not only raised the status of Black people. It led to a better life for all Americans–Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, etc. So we thought it was an appropriate addition to our stir fry.

Finally, we served it over brown basmati rice. This symbolizes that as great as Dr. King was, he also was building on the shoulders of those who came before. He was vocal about that it was the nonviolent protests of Mahatma Gandhi in India that inspired his nonviolent civil rights movement. Therefore, that was an intentional ingredient to our stir fry as well.

Here it is. It was very satisfying, both physically and emotionally. This may be our new MLK Day tradition!

(Sorry, this is the non-mushroom variety. Imagine mushrooms as well.)

Note: There is more to this story that I hope to share soon. However, I’ve heading out in a little bit to Free America Walkout protest event on this first anniversary of President Trump’s second inauguration, so that tale will have to wait for another time.