Meatless March

It has been a kind of tough week. I got this sinus affliction, and then my computer spontaneously tried to upload a new operating system, and failed miserably. The whole thing had to get wiped. I have been good about backing things up since the Unfortunate Water Glass Mishap of late 2017, but still, I had to make 2 trips to the Apple store, I was frozen out of my work email for a bit, and getting Microsoft Office back turned out to be a chore. Nonetheless, I have religiously maintained my commitment to meatlessness. Naw, that's a lie, I'm afraid. I grilled beef burgers on Friday and they were SOOOOOO GOOOOOOD, and Saturday we hosted friends for brunch and I ate approximately my weight in bacon. Well, it's a marathon, folks, not a sprint, and today I turned a chicken recipe into a tofu recipe (" Coconut Noodles " from NYT Cooking; subscription required). I wish I could report that this was an act that represented a comeback, a triumphant return to my former ...

You already know I'm a fan of the Impossible Burger , so I had to try the Beyond Burger, which can be purchased uncooked at Whole Foods. It was Mother's Day, and my extended family got the option of trying them, too! Bless them for their open minds. Alas, I wasn't wild about them. To be fair, I had stuffed myself all afternoon with cheese and crackers, so I wasn't especially hungry. But they seemed a little dry, and simply lacking in the juiciness that a person craves in a burger. It certainly LOOKS good, served with potato salad and fruit! However, I still had two more patties in the fridge tonight, so I tried them again - this time on the stovetop (a non-stick pan is key) rather than the sandwich press as previously. They were better this time, and I think maybe they were overcooked the first time. I am still a little lukewarm, but hey, gotta save the planet, right? Tonight I served them on regular bread, cut to be round, because I couldn'...

As noted in my most recent post , even if you're not going the whole hog (ha) on vegetarianism, there are choices you can make that are better for the earth than others. Seafood rather than red meat, for example, and if you're doing seafood, anchovies rather than shrimp or lobsters. With that in mind, I made " Lemony Pasta With Kelp, Chile and Anchovies " today (NYT Cooking, subscription required) for lunch. I ordered my kelp from Atlantic Sea Farms. I fear that their pride in using environmentally friendly packing materials may be misplaced, given that they recommend you choose overnight shipping, because otherwise your frozen kelp won't stay frozen, because....of their environmentally friendly packing materials. But anyway, now I have plenty of kelp to last for a while. It was delicious and I would make it again, but I wasn't blown away. I think the kelp smoothie packets could have used a further puree; the kelp was a little hard to manage because...

Since Meatless March, I have been eating a lot less meat than I did prior to Meatless March. But I'm still dabbling in meat, and I don't imagine I'll ever go entirely vegetarian. When I eat meat, my choices aren't solely guided by environmental impact (cough cough bacon), but it's a consideration. And so when I have a hankering for seafood, I find this sort of information helpful: "A number of popular wild fish — anchovies, sardines, herring, tuna, pollock, cod, haddock — have, on average, a lower carbon footprint than chicken or pork. Mollusks like clams, oysters and scallops are also great low-carbon choices." - from the NYT Q&A on food and climate that I keep going on and on about Tonight, then, I sautéed scallops, and added them to Trader Joe's Linguine with Clam Sauce, which comes frozen in a bag. I cut the kernels from an ear of corn and threw those in too. The result was pretty good, and oh so fast! Large scallops only need a couple ...

March is perhaps not the ideal month to be meatless in the northern hemisphere, because you're stuck with winter produce - greenhouse-grown or well-traveled or cold-friendly. But here we are in May! Which means things like asparagus and fava beans! That was what inspired me to make " Asparagus empanadas with fava beans, peas and goat cheese ," from the Laylita's Recipes website. Well, never again, Laylita, never again. Why not? Because it takes an eternity to peel fava beans. Why? Because you have to peel them TWICE. Yeah that's right! Twice! And even when you start out with an entire pound of these crazy bean pods, you only get about 3/4 of a cup of beans! It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. However, you can fill empanadas with anything. I have made them a few times before, and I use a pastry recipe from NYT Cooking (subscription required). It is easy, but you will want to cook them at a higher temperature than recommended in t...

It rained allllll day today, meaning it was a perfect day for comfort food: mushroom soup served with fresh bread. I used this recipe: Naturally, I screwed something up: in Step 3, when instructed to add the FRESH mushrooms to the pan, I added the reconstituted dried ones instead, and didn't realize my mistake till I'd also added the stock. So I chucked the fresh ones in belatedly and hoped for the best. And as usual, it tasted good. Cooking is not always as exacting as one might think, which is lucky for me, since I mess up daily - and after so many years of practice! Shallot, garlic, and leeks. In deference to my onion-averse backup dancers, I actually pureed all the soup, not just 3/4 of it as instructed by the recipe. "Wild" mushrooms? Afraid not. Stop-and-Shop is not exactly a hotbed of gourmet ingredients. I'm sure the soup would be better with legit wild mushrooms, but these provincial baby bellas did the trick. I served the soup...

Screwing things up is perhaps the essence of my brand as a chef. When Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman makes this recipe for " Broccoli, Cheddar, and Wild Rice Casserole ," it has this gorgeous cheesy topping, a little bit browned in spots. When I made it, I somehow overlooked the "1/3 of" when the recipe stated "stir in 1/3 of grated cheese." Instead I put all of it into the sauce rather than 2/3 of it on top, and thus it had no gorgeous broiled topping. Cheese on top, cheese in the sauce....there is a difference, of course, but the key word is "cheese." You can't really go wrong where cheese is involved. It still tasted good. The only wild rice blend at Stop-and-Shop had very little wild rice in it, so that was a little disappointing to me as a Minnesotan. And while we're acknowledging my Minnesota roots, I should say that if you make this dish in my home state, you would call it hotdish. Odds are good that you would...

Doubtless you recall my March 20 blog post that mentioned my correspondence with NYT food editor Sam Sifton. I have been eagerly awaiting the outputs of his team's collaboration with the Times' climate team, and they issued it today. It is FANTASTIC. Seriously! The overview FAQ about various connections between food and climate is so artfully done: concise; well-researched; interesting; and not preachy, just informative. As I think about it, that one webpage is everything my own blog aspires to be, including the recipes! Of course, you can't learn pointless tidbits about my own life if you only read the Times' FAQ, so don't stop coming here, but please check out and share what NYT has done. It includes not just the FAQ but also some articles on specific topics. Back to those pointless tidbits about myself: I have suddenly rediscovered pop music, and decided I like it. I believe I am responsible for about 5 million of the 117,336,219 views that Taylor Swift...