Meatless March

This past Saturday was my mother-in-law's birthday, and we celebrated with our first visit to the newly revamped Orange Lawn Tennis Club dining room , now headlined by chef David Burke. His Lordship, Her Ladyship, Ekaterina, Mitzi, and Archibald The space is nice, although it got uncomfortably warm in the dining room. The food was very good. There was only one vegetarian entree on the menu, so I ordered it: cauliflower steak. It was prepared perfectly but I wish it had had a more aggressive sauce. And needless to say, I wish there were more vegetarian options on the menu. Cauliflower steak with green beens and a beet sauce I like Orange Lawn , which dates back to the late 1800s, because it is a fancy place within walking distance of my house. Being there gives me a feeling of aristocracy, such that the two times I have dined there (one was pre-renovation), I have been compelled to rename everyone in my party more pompously. I go by "Mitzi," and Pat became A...

Emma and I started today, as we often do, by walking to camp instead of driving. It's pleasant, it's good exercise, and it's earth-friendly. You have to build in extra time in your day, but you do that for everything that's important to you, from earning a living to raising kids to going to the gym to watching "Stranger Things." Right? Walking to camp. Go Yankees! Tonight's recipe for vegan "Falafel Wraps," from a cookbook called "The Mediterranean Table: Simple Recipes for Healthy Living on the Mediterranean Diet," came to me via a friend who reported this about her experience making the dish: "the kids were skeptical but I ended up having to make a second batch tonight because everyone wanted them in their lunch tomorrow. Score!!!" Score indeed; I had to try it! I only used half the cayenne. You know how when you add vinegar to baking soda, it bubbles? I got the bubbling effect when I added the baking soda an...

Fifty years ago this past Saturday, astronauts walked on the moon for the first time. Fifty years ago today, they splashed back down to Earth. A friend alerted me to a website that not only offered a "live" feed of every moment as it transpired exactly fifty years ago, but was interactive and allowed you to toggle between, say, the conversations of the mission's surgeon and its flight navigator, in "real time" at the mission control center. I LOVE this website. I felt like I was getting a deep insider view on a world-changing event that happened way before I was even born. The reliving gave me surprising emotions, like grudging sympathy for conspiracy theorists who don't believe the moon landing actually happened. When I saw it "live," I was staggered by the surreality of it. How did scientists and engineers manage to send three men to the moon in 1969, and bring them back alive, using only their primitive computers and their protractors an...

Has it started to seem to you like everything I cook has zucchini, tomato, or corn, or all three? Well me too, and I'm not sick of them yet! I can't get enough of those farmers market gems. The recipe for tonight's " Fettucine with Zucchini " (NYT Cooking; subscription required) called for salting the zucchini pieces, then later rinsing off the salt. But when I finished the dish, I felt it needed salt, so if I try it again, I'm going to see what happens if I don't rinse the salt. High blood pressure is probably what would happen to most people, but I have unfailingly healthy, low blood pressure. Also, a friend of ours who is a doctor once told me that my slow heart rate meant that it will tick forever, which I took to mean that I will never die. So, hooray! And pass the salt please. Right after adding the zucchini Another weird thing about the recipe is its claim that a pound of zucchini is about six medium ones. Here you see two zucchini that...

I have not posted since the weekend, but exciting things have been happening. Two days ago, I saw a woodpecker peck another woodpecker TO DEATH in my backyard, which was horribly disturbing, and yesterday I saw a house get hit by lightning, which burned a hole in the roof and started a fire , which was soon put out, thankfully. This reminded me a little bit of the time that I saw our neighbor's tree fall down, completely out of the blue. I just happened to be looking out the window when it fell. I wondered whether I might have special powers, but perhaps for the best, I have not since been able to fell a tree just by looking at it. On a brighter note, another source of recent excitement was Maplewoodstock , the annual local music festival. Maplewoodstock features bands you've never heard of, playing mediocre music you can safely ignore in the background while you catch up with your friends. My own friends include die-hard tent-assembling heroes, who stand on the edge of t...

I was meatless (apart from a few bites) for an entire month in March. How much meat do I eat now? I still cook seafood reasonably often, though I try to aim for the most earth-friendly choices. And I don't say no to bacon here and there....I mean, who could? And when we eat out, I am often uninspired by the vegetarian options on the menu, so I'll sometimes choose meat then, though I don't feel good about it. Of course there are excellent vegetarian and vegan restaurants, but I hope that non-vegetarian restaurant chefs will increasingly see an opportunity to offer appetizing and creative non-meat options. That's the future, right? Wake up, chefs! So there is all that, and then there are burgers. Darn it, I still love beef burgers. I don't eat them constantly, but I relish them occasionally. So I was interested to read that the James Beard Foundation held a contest in 2017, called the " Blended Burger Project™ ," for chefs to create burgers using at lea...

I have never forgotten an article I read about oysters many years ago, in The New Yorker ( "On The Bay," by Bill Buford, April 2, 2006 ). It was about oysters. I'm not sure I had ever even eaten a raw oyster before I read it, but this description made me seek them out, afterward: "Salt and sugar, briny and sweet, an evocation of air and clean water..." Oysters are not, obviously, vegetarian, but according to The New York Times' fantastic FAQ on food and climate change , which I'm always going on and on about, "Mollusks like clams, oysters and scallops are...great low-carbon choices." Bon Appetit provided further reassurance : "Oyster farms are beneficial to estuaries, and oysters eat algae, which helps clear the water. Also, shell beds provide a habitat for many small species." I'm not 10000% vegetarian anyway, so oysters remain on the menu for me. Still, the damn bivalves don't make it easy for a person to eat them. This...

During Meatless March, I was itching to make one of my favorite recipes, " Classic Tomato Pie " (A Garden For The House blog), but alas, it demands luscious ripe tomatoes, a laughable idea in March. But now it is July! And those farmers market tomatoes are things of great beauty. Actually all the produce for tonight's dinner came from the market. I always use my longtime trusty pastry crust recipe, "Never-Fail Pastry" (see  https://gomeatlessmarch.blogspot.com/2019/03/mushroom-parmesan-tart.html ), rather than the biscuits called for in the recipe. And rather than a cup of mayo, I do a spoonful of mayo and make up the rest with non-fat plain Greek yogurt. Healthier and, dare I say it, tastier! I don't know how other people seed tomatoes, but I slice them in half and then scoop out the seeds into the sink, and proceed. And I leave the slices in a strainer over a bowl for a while, so they relinquish a little of their juices before I stick them in the pie....

This recipe for grilled pizza dates back to an era when I would actually copy recipes out of a newspaper onto an index card and stick them in a little plastic recipe box. Now you know: I am ancient. You could use any pizza dough that you like, actually, and grilling them makes them sooooo good. The trick is to cook one side of the dough, then put toppings ON THE COOKED SIDE, then to stick them back on the grill so the bottoms get cooked and the toppings are heated/melted. Remove the pizza from the grill when it is getting brown on the bottom And here's a tip for what you might NOT want to do: create a whole spread of yummy vegetable toppings, and then watch two seven-year-olds top their pizzas with nothing but cheese. Sigh. Those toppings were super awesome on my own pizza, though. Basil from the garden. Bell pepper and tomatoes from the farmers market, and zucchini, too, lightly sautéed. Sliced pitted kalamata olives. And of course the cheese. Fre...