Meatless March

For the past year, my backup dancers and I have treated ourselves to occasional themed celebrations. Remember our Harry Potter "party" ? Our Mocktoberfests ? Our Not-Christmas ? The recreation of our wedding ? We try to keep ourselves entertained and avoid languishing, which is one New York Times author's shockingly apt diagnosis of a feeling I've had for months  - see the description at the end of my Feb. 15 post . Some weeks ago, my small backup dancer requested a Chocolate Party, so we did it this past weekend. We made a garland from fabric scraps and toilet paper rolls that was intended to look like wrapped sweets, and we dressed in brown. We watched some educational and some  entertaining  short videos. We read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . Brainstorming for the party We made "Rocky Road Brownies" from a Hershey's cookbook (using no Hershey products, which I disdain). The brownies turned out well.  To get that toasted look, I recommend cookin

Happy Vegan Vednesday! There were two opinions in my household about " Butternut Squash and Green Curry Soup " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). According to one opinion, the soup was "good," but the people who held that opinion were clearly bananas, because the soup was excellent. I'm not the only one who thinks so - the recipe has a five-star rating and 145 comments on NYT Cooking. Note that you will need to skip the fish sauce to make it vegetarian/vegan. What were the some of secrets of its success for me? Homemade veggie stock - I always have some ready to go in the freezer, and thaw it quickly in a pan right before I need it, if I've forgotten to stick it in the fridge the day before. Dried ancho (poblano) chiles, which aren't very spicy at all. You will need fewer than the recipe states, because they are big - and the more finely you can slice/dice them, the better. "Thai Kitchen" green curry paste, which also isn't very spicy,

After embarking more than two years ago on this effort to cut my meat consumption, for the sake of fighting climate change, I have to say it has taken nearly all this time to form the habit of mostly-vegetarianism. I am surprised it took so long, but I guess it's a challenge to teach an old (tofu) dog new tricks. I've gotten there, though. I still enjoy occasional "meat as a treat" (burgers, bacon, Thanksgiving turkey), and I am comfortable with that. But I am finally ready to also put fish into that "meat as a treat" category. Fish came last because 1) I was never all that wild about poultry, so that wasn't hard, and 2) pigs and especially cows are much larger drivers of climate change (though I'm hopeful about a new idea to reduce cow methane emissions !). But I have been coming to terms with the particular ways in which eating fish is bad news for Mother Nature. For example, I thought that farmed fish sounded like a good alternative to overfishing