Meatless March

Backup Dancer #1: "What's for lunch?" Me: "Mac and cheese. But--" [sees look of wild excitement on Backup Dancer #1's face] "it's not the stuff from the box. It's...a different kind." Backup Dancer #2: "Any mac and cheese is good mac and cheese!" Me: [sweats nervously and dishes it out] ----- Before I tell you about vegan mac and cheese, allow me to point out a personal failing. Sometimes I get a little amnesia about why a largely plant-based diet is a good way for individuals to fight climate change. Sometimes (all the time, really) I desperately want a beef burger oozing with grease, topped with mayo and cheese (and a slice of perfectly ripe tomato, but the tomato is inoffensive). Sometimes I give in and eat that burger, and I savor every bite. I would eat one of those RIGHT NOW. Then I read something like a recent New York Times article, " Belching Cows and Endless Feedlots: Fixing Cattle’s Climate Issues ," and I re...

"Life's too short not to eat dessert first," wise people say, and I'm figuring that the parallel axiom is "life's too short not to blog about dessert first." Let me tell you about a drool-worthy apple pie. My backup dancer had the idea to top " Apple Pie by Grandma Ople " (AllRecipes) with stars, using a cookie cutter on the pastry, rather than making a latticework crust as suggested in the recipe. It turned out great.  You're wondering, of course, how I screwed up this recipe, and the answer is that I put the butter, flour, sugars, and water onto the stove all at the same time. Fortunately, it was perfectly fine, so go ahead: save yourself a couple minutes and make that mistake just like me. I have a persistent problem with apple pies that are too juicy. They overflow in the oven, and then they don't cut well, even though they taste great. Next time I make this, I would cut down on the sauce by at least a third, but if anyone has a bet...

I caught myself making a mistake almost as soon as I started cooking " Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I screw up recipes all the time, but usually it takes me a while to figure out that I have, for example, halved only SOME of the ingredients. Sometimes it takes until I sit down and put a bite in my mouth before I realize I have done something laughably wrong. But last night, as soon as I popped my potatoes and garlic into the pot of boiling water, I looked back at the recipe and realized the potatoes should have been not only diced, but also peeled. Whoops. My failure to dice just meant I'd need to cook them longer, which I did (I fished out the garlic after 15 minutes), and that was fine. But I was chagrined by those skins, as I watched the taters cook. I tried to reassure myself that even fancy restaurants sometimes offer skin-on mashed potatoes, albeit for unfathomable reasons. But when I started squeezing my cooked potatoes and garl...

Tonight's dinner used a recipe from a local woman who not only has a blog with very delicious-looking vegan recipes, but has just started a meal delivery business . It would be fun to meet her someday, if we ever get to meet people again. " Butternut Squash Miso Mac n’ Cheese " (The Colorful Kitchen) does not, of course, contain cheese. It is plenty tasty, though, thanks to the miso and nutritional yeast, which balance out the sweetness of the squash. While the recipe suggests liquid smoke, I turned instead to a favorite seasoning: smoked paprika. I could put that stuff on/in everything. Here we see the sauce before I blended it, staged in front of my attractive new collection of air plants: I have judged that the main things standing between me and emotional collapse this winter will be 1) heated gloves, and 2) houseplants. The gloves and plants are shouldering a heavy burden. I hope they will not let me down. Here's the pasta with the sauce before I threw in the ro...

Back in the Before Times, you'll recall, I observed Vegan Vednesdays . I recognize that dairy farming, in addition to meat farming, contributes to climate change, and despite my undying love of dairy, I wanted to do my part to move toward a more sustainable diet. It was always hard for me and I failed a LOT, but I felt good about my efforts. Maybe I even got some of you thinking about it, too. And then in March, the pandemic left all of us scrambling for comfort wherever we could find it--from cheese to cheesy TV shows--and faced with a sense of doom, some of us gave ourselves permission to make some dubious choices. What did it matter, if we were potentially all going to perish? I'm lookin' at you, empty bottles of alcohol But for the lucky lot of us who did not contract the virus (or at least, not yet), we're still muddling through, seven months later, and maybe it's time to stop using COVID-19 as an excuse for our waywardness, and embrace personal responsibility...

Guten Tag! Oktoberfest, the annual Bavarian celebration, was canceled this year. And it's not as if we would have been there anyway. But we need cheer and revelry and something to distract ourselves from the world's chaos, now more than ever, and thus my backup dancers and I have just celebrated Mocktoberfest two weekends in a row, with one family at a time as guests, in our back yard. Everyone was masked unless eating or drinking, at which point our families kept our distance to be safe. I was a German minor in college, and I spent a school year studying abroad in Salzburg, Austria. So I have Mocktoberfest street cred. Back in the day. The Austrian hills were alive with the sound of music. This blog is about reducing our meat consumption as a way to make an individual contribution to fighting climate change. So forgive us for serving real sausages alongside fake ones (I like the Beyond brand sausages), but we practice " meat as a treat " on special occasions. We also...