Meatless March

There is a Thanksgiving episode of the TV show "Friends" in which Rachel attempts to make a "traditional English trifle," but she doesn't realize that two pages of her cookbook are stuck together. She's reading a combination of two unrelated recipes, and gamely adds a layer of meat to the dessert that is not supposed to be there. Then everyone pretends the result is not awful.   Googling taught me that plenty of people have recreated this dish with meat...yikes. But I came across a recipe (Bren Did) to make it LOOK like it has a meat layer, but really the "meat" is coconut coated in Nutella. I was intrigued, and Thanksgiving is coming, and things that would have sounded like a pointless amount of effort eight months ago have now started to sound amusing.  With time on my hands, the day before assembling the trifle, I made my own pound cake (NYT Cooking; subscription required). It came out great, but needed at least an hour and 45 minutes to ...

The song of the first leaf blower rang out clear and true at 7:51am this past Saturday in my neighborhood.  From The New Yorker Here in the suburbs, leaf blowers are...how shall I put this delicately?... they are over-used. On any given day between March and November, at any daylight hour, I can usually hear one or more of them whining (I can hear one right now). The worst offenders are the gas-powered models, which are unholy loud, stinky, and polluting, but even electric leaf blowers blow around a lot of debris that makes a person sneezy, and disturb the ecosystem on which pollinators depend . I'm selfish enough to enjoy my home's grass lawn and plenty of non-native plants, which aren't doing the Earth any favors, but I have instructed our paid lawn mowing service* not to use leaf blowers on our property. It's funny, by the way, that when I asked, the guy initially argued with me! He protested that they needed to clear off the lawn to mow it, and I said "surely y...

I'm always on the hunt for good alternatives to meat-based meals. As we know from yet another study , the global food system is a big contributor to climate change, and food from animals causes more environmental harm than plant-based foods. Yesterday, my hunt took me to the depths of my own freezer. I had two tubs of roasted butternut squash in the freezer, left over from previous recipes , and the moment had arrived to defrost the stuff and put it to good use. First, I adapted a NYT Cooking recipe, " Cheesy Baked Pumpkin Pasta With Kale " by Sarah Jampel. I seized the opportunity to use vegetables I had over-bought earlier this week: broccoli and bok choy. It was also a chance to use up some really dreamy ricotta (thank you Baker Street Market !) that was a day past its expiration date but still good. Very, very good indeed, actually! Cheesy Baked Butternut Pasta with Veggies (serves 3-4) 8oz pasta (shells, penne, etc) ~1.5 cups veggies - kale, bok choy, broccoli, etc -...

I love costumes and so I love Halloween , normally. This year, there was no way I going to waste weeks crafting costumes only to forsake festivities for the sake of safety. I was sad, of course, but what's new there? We all have been sad about basically everything since March. Such a sad eight months it has been. But we couldn't dash the annual sugar dreams of our eight-year-old backup dancer. We tossed out an idea: what if she trick-or-treated inside our house? We have plenty of rooms with doors! She was game, so that's what we did. We also had ghost pancakes for breakfast. Not done with scary yet? You're in luck, because now it's Election Day. You maybe want some comfort food, but you also want something to make you feel less guilty about all the Halloween candy you'll binge-eat while binge-watching the election returns. Here is your solution: " Creamy Mushroom Linguine " (Discover Delicious).* "Not helpful, Jaylbyrd," you're chiding me...