Lemon-Tahini Slaw

We were invited to a small outdoor block party this past weekend to say goodbye to some friends who are moving away. It was such a breath of fresh air to catch up with people we had not seen in person since the Before Times, and the adults were unmasked! Noses and teeth are back, baby!

Early on in the festivities, displaying the grace for which I am known, I knocked a glass bottle of tabasco sauce off a table, shattering it and splattering orange liquid everywhere, including on my pants and shoe. A couple of friends picked up a gigantic water dispenser and proposed to pour water down my leg. Their enthusiasm was infectious (might masks have prevented that?), and in the spirit of the occasion, I consented to the pouring. Then I was wet AND adorned with tabasco sauce, but the laugh was worth it.

Later, a conversation with my friend Joe turned to my blog. I relayed how I had recently looked through some old posts, like this one, and I lamented that lately I've lost the fun spirit of those earlier days. The posts have gotten kind of gloomy, I noted. "I'm going to change that," I told Joe. My next post, I said, would include the light-hearted story of my tabasco incident. He probably thought I was joking when told him I would publish his photo to mark this moment of epiphany. 

Blame the gloominess of the world for my sometimes gloomy blog posts. But just as I can enjoy a block party while dripping water and stained by tabasco, I can also poke fun at myself in the blog even as the world is hurtling toward climate catastrophe. If you can please do your best to be a "climatarian", then I won't have to belabor the point with many depressing facts.

Yesterday was Vegan Vednesday and I tried "Lemon-Tahini Slaw" (NYT Cooking; subscription required). It was easy and plenty good, and difficult to screw up, even for me. 

I served it with Beyond Sausages and vegan mashed potatoes. It was all so good that we had eaten half of it before I remembered to take photos.

You are wishing, of course, that I would stop blathering on about cabbage and tell you about THAT AMAZING RED DRINK! It was as delicious as it was beautiful: a "Kentucky Buck" (Epicurious). Make it only if you have very sweet, very red strawberries, like the ones I got from the farmer's market yesterday.

You may also be wondering about the note by my plate: it is a standing offer of assistance from the young members of a new secret society, the SES Club, with headquarters at the "front yard of Chappy Lumbers," which is my house.