Apricot Bread and Eco-Friendly Fashion
In the current Dark Times, while I have been cooking a lot, I have not been trying a ton of new recipes. I usually stick with comforting favorites, like tagine, and cassoulet, and grain bowls.
My most recent grain bowl used up a billion odds and ends from the kitchen, which was always pretty satisfying even in the Before Times. In the current Dark Times, when I spend a lot of time stalking particular food items online, it is very satisfying indeed to use what's on hand and avoid waste.
This grain bowl featured couscous, green lentils, roasted beets, pickled carrots, roasted pumpkin seeds, chopped spinach leaves (leftover from pesto), and peeled, chopped, roasted stems of broccoli. Each of us chose our own sauce from among the condiments in our fridge: barbecue sauce, coconut/peanut sauce, even ketchup. I also threw some hot sauce onto mine.
We're still baking our way through the pandemic and I pulled out an old recipe from my Grandma on my father's side. The recipe comes from a certain era - the 1980s, probably? - when Crisco was more of a baking go-to than butter. I remember eating this after she'd baked it. Delicious; butter be damned.
My apricot bread loaf turned out really well, but it took a heck of a long time in the oven - even longer than the 50-60 minutes indicated on the recipe. Probably more like 70-75 minutes.
Since the Before Times, I have been thinking about writing here about clothes. I know right now many of us just throw on our loungewear every darned day because we can't go out, but I have hope that someday we'll have the opportunity to make an effort again. And when we do, here's some food for thought, since this is, after all, a food blog.
The clothing industry has a very large negative environmental impact, I have learned.
Sigh. I know. It seems like everything we like has a very large negative environmental impact. Try not to be discouraged.
One strategy to minimize the clothing industry's negative impact is to avoid driving the demand for the industry to produce new clothes. You can do this by buying used clothes, and by maintaining the clothes you already have, instead of buying a lot of new clothes. (Side note: COVID-19 has dried up the market for new clothing, with disastrous consequences for garment manufacturers in places like Bangladesh. But my points below are about changing the market over the long term, when the pandemic is someday behind us.)
Remember when I spontaneously darned a sock? Well that's just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce - remember, it's a food blog)! Now the cool new thing is "visible mending," where you WANT someone to see the repair you made to your garment, and you're going to make it fancy. The New York Times recently published an inspiring piece on this topic.
My small backup dancer had a mishap with a pair of scissors not long ago. Fear not, she was unharmed, but the pair of jeans she was wearing got a snip. I have used iron-on patches in the past for holes in the knees of jeans, and I do love those, but I decided to try something different this time. I put a little piece of lining material behind the hole, and then sewed an asterisk shape over it with purple thread.
It turned out so nicely! Emma was frankly delighted.
Speaking of jeans, they are especially a culprit among clothes polluters, as described in a piece from The Guardian. The article offers recommendations for reducing the environmental impact of your denim: buy vintage; buy "raw" (less processed) denim; avoid material with stretch; buy products made from recyclable cotton; wash in cold water (enviro-friendly for all clothes, not just jeans); and repair rather than throwing away.
My most recent grain bowl used up a billion odds and ends from the kitchen, which was always pretty satisfying even in the Before Times. In the current Dark Times, when I spend a lot of time stalking particular food items online, it is very satisfying indeed to use what's on hand and avoid waste.
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| Roasting beets in the toaster oven |
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| Why is my backup dancer wearing socks on her hands? I do not know. |
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| Everything mixed together |
We're still baking our way through the pandemic and I pulled out an old recipe from my Grandma on my father's side. The recipe comes from a certain era - the 1980s, probably? - when Crisco was more of a baking go-to than butter. I remember eating this after she'd baked it. Delicious; butter be damned.
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| My grandma with my dad and my grandpa, circa 1972 |
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| Eight-year-olds take copious photos when you hand them your phone, and yet generally none of them turn out any better than this one |
The clothing industry has a very large negative environmental impact, I have learned.
Sigh. I know. It seems like everything we like has a very large negative environmental impact. Try not to be discouraged.
One strategy to minimize the clothing industry's negative impact is to avoid driving the demand for the industry to produce new clothes. You can do this by buying used clothes, and by maintaining the clothes you already have, instead of buying a lot of new clothes. (Side note: COVID-19 has dried up the market for new clothing, with disastrous consequences for garment manufacturers in places like Bangladesh. But my points below are about changing the market over the long term, when the pandemic is someday behind us.)
Remember when I spontaneously darned a sock? Well that's just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce - remember, it's a food blog)! Now the cool new thing is "visible mending," where you WANT someone to see the repair you made to your garment, and you're going to make it fancy. The New York Times recently published an inspiring piece on this topic.
My small backup dancer had a mishap with a pair of scissors not long ago. Fear not, she was unharmed, but the pair of jeans she was wearing got a snip. I have used iron-on patches in the past for holes in the knees of jeans, and I do love those, but I decided to try something different this time. I put a little piece of lining material behind the hole, and then sewed an asterisk shape over it with purple thread.
It turned out so nicely! Emma was frankly delighted.
Speaking of jeans, they are especially a culprit among clothes polluters, as described in a piece from The Guardian. The article offers recommendations for reducing the environmental impact of your denim: buy vintage; buy "raw" (less processed) denim; avoid material with stretch; buy products made from recyclable cotton; wash in cold water (enviro-friendly for all clothes, not just jeans); and repair rather than throwing away.
That pesto sounds delicious! Also, the quarantine beard is nice!
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