Meatless March

At multiple points on most days in January, I curse winter. I am cold all the time, and weary of layering, and I pine for summer produce. If a person in New Jersey wants to eat sustainably, she's compelled to seek out produce that wasn't grown in Central America or some other far-off locale, and what does that leave her in January? Celeriac. It even SOUNDS uninspiring. But okay, there's this site called Eat Winter Vegetables , and last week's noodle/Brussels sprouts dish from that site was a hit, so today I tried " Celeriac in Brodo ." It was NOT a hit. It wasn't awful, I just have no interest in eating it again, and I believe my backup dancers feel the same. Also, it unclear how long to cook it for the broth to be absorbed. And is it too much to ask for a recipe to instruct on the level of heat at which to cook something? This is what celeriac looks like on the inside. Interesting, no? There are probably better celeriac recipes ...

Go ahead, congratulate me on today's Vegan Vednesday victory! Marvel at my dedication to the likes of oatmeal, orange slices, crispy sautéed potatoes , and " Umi Organic Yakisoba with Brussels Sprouts " (EatWinterVegetables.com)! I get bored of photos of a person holding a plate of food. So I try to be creative. But I think we can all agree that this pose is just weird. But first, take an entirely unrelated trip down memory lane with me. I have a thing for old-school musicals, passed on to me by my mother, and I like to play them in the car over and over and over until my backup dancers and I are humming them at all hours and we know all the lyrics and we're totally sick of them. The latest musical to receive this treatment is "Fiddler on the Roof," checked out from the library. I half-remembered most of the songs from when I was in a 4-H production of this musical at the County Fair, and I was unexpectedly flooded with memories when I listened...

Let's say you like Butter Chicken, an Indian dish, but are trying to cut back on eating meat. Good news: you may enjoy not only EATING " Indian Butter Chickpeas " (NYT Cooking) but also NAMING it. I recommend loudly calling it "Butter Chick-" and then whispering "-peas" instead of "-en," as I did to my backup dancers tonight. We all thought the dish was very good, but one of my backup dancers felt it was missing SOMETHING. As we considered what I might add to the recipe to give it the SOMETHING he felt it lacked, he wondered whether that something was simply chick- (-en, not -peas). And that is certainly possible. Chick-ens taste good, I'm afraid. But next time I make this, rather than resorting to meat, I'll try throwing in an extra teaspoon each of cumin, garam masala, and paprika, and I'll add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, too. Maybe that will do the trick. I do like cinnamon sticks. Here's a question I ha...

You--yes you!--and I are trying to eat less meat and dairy because of the outsized negative environmental impact of livestock agriculture. We've heard alarming things, like cheeseburgers for a family of four "create more than 800 balloons worth of greenhouse gas emissions...equivalent to a 90-mile drive in a typical car" (The Telegraph, 2019) . So we aim for mostly vegetarianism, and on Vednesdays, we even go vegan, no matter how much it pains us, which is usually a lot. For many of us, it's a lot easier to avoid meat and dairy than to avoid driving our "typical cars" all over the place. I walk wherever I can, but I live in a suburb where a lot of things I need and want are not walking distance, or not walkable in the time I have available. I drive, reluctantly, several times a week. But maybe YOU live in a place where there is something that's scarce around these parts: buses! Ah, the humble city bus. I have a lot of bus stories, but not so man...

Happy Vegan Vednesday! It's not my favorite day of the week, but it went well enough today, thanks to a solid plan: slow cooker oatmeal for breakfast (with a new addition of Maldon salt flakes along with a liberal maple syrup dressing), peanut butter toast for lunch on a fresh bakery loaf, and then Creamy Curried Cauliflower Lentil Soup (Minimalist Baker) for dinner, with a hunk of the aforementioned loaf and a Beyond Sausage. Lunch. Not exciting, but it got the job done. The soup was better than average, though I might not go for it on another day of the week. I had actually made it last week and frozen it, and it reheated beautifully on the stove. Ah, but there was one odd thing about this recipe: "2 Tbsp coconut cream"??? Like the stuff in pina coladas? Maybe there's another kind of coconut cream that I should know about? I shrugged and put it in, and couldn't taste it in the recipe. If I make this again, I'll skip it, not only because ...

I have previously shared my recipe for " Never-Fail Pastry ," and I'm afraid I have discovered the limitations of this recipe: it only succeeds when you actually follow it. Finding myself short on flour, I decided to halve the recipe, and proceeded to add half of all the ingredients...except the water. I added all the water. I am such a geek-dork. Anyway, I soldiered on, because people needed to eat, right, and actually it turned out okay. I took my soggy pastry and patted up up the sides of my mini ramekins, and then I put them in the oven at 350 for ten minutes or so, to pre-cook and hopefully dry them out. Then I filled them with a vegan mushroom filling.  The mushroom filling was from a recipe called " Vegan Mushroom Pot Pie with Sweet Potato Crust ," and you know what? I screwed that up too! But again, no sweat. All I actually screwed up was omitting the beans because I thought I had beans, but I had no beans. It would have been better wi...

I'm from Minnesota, and there is a lot of ice-based recreation in my frozen homeland, but until this Tuesday, I had never seen the weird and wonderful sport that is synchronized ice skating. Yep, this is a thing! And when one goes to the free performance of The Synchroettes at the local ice arena, one needs sandwiches, so I tried out " Roasted Pepper and Goat Cheese Sandwiches " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I have previously roasted red peppers in the oven, but gave the recommended stovetop method a whirl, and it worked out well. Either way, you just have to be patient and give the peppers a really good char. It took about 15 minutes on the burner. I felt very odd about putting them in a plastic bag to cool: hot food in a plastic bag? Does that degrade the plastic, which could then get on my food? I figured I would be removing the skin anyway, so I tried it (which a bag I was reusing from another purpose - you know a plastic bag ...

I am typing this post with the Golden Globe ceremony playing in the background, and while I can't help focusing on what I consider to be a regrettable trend of women neglecting to wear a shirt under their jackets, I'm tickled that the event planners changed their menu to vegetarian . Maybe there is hope for humanity, after all! Fleabag: great show. Season 2 even better than season 1 Melissa Clark at the New York Times is on exactly the same page as me: trying to eat less meat, even though she loves meat, and spreading the word . Bonus: Her readership is a smidge broader than the four or so of you that read this blog! Tonight I made a really lovely and easy vegetarian recipe: " Roasted Mushroom and Gruyere Sandwich " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). Two thumbs up, even though the small backup dancer didn't finish hers because she was chowing on pretzels in NYC shortly before dinner. Upside: I got to finish the leftovers of her sandwich. ...