Caramelized Zucchini Pasta

My mom lives in England, a country that persisted until a month ago in requiring even fully vaccinated people to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival. When they finally lifted that requirement in August, I booked a flight for the first time since the Before Times, and this photo shows me me on Wednesday at 6:58pm, double-masked and full of excitement for the plane to take off from Newark Airport. 

Well, the plane didn't take off. We had seen Tropical Depression Ida on the radar, heading slowly toward us after it hit Louisiana as a hurricane, days prior. Lightning started, we sat there on the plane for a while, then we were deplaned. The airport was mobbed with stranded passengers. In my mind, they all had COVID. The airport ceiling sprang leaks everywhere, and its ground floor flooded. Every so often, the intercom repeated the same prerecorded message that started with "Hello, and welcome to the friendly skies!", which made me want to barrel up and down the concourse, screaming obscenities.

Four hours later, after ten "delay update" text messages from United Airlines, they finally gave up and cancelled my flight, but at that point there was no way out of the airport, because of the water. 

You have reached a serious low point in your life when you find yourself googling, around midnight, "where can I sleep in Newark Airport?". I chose a spot on the floor against a wall, draped myself over my bags, and dozed on and off. Around 2:00am someone handed out cots, which was the best thing ever, but there was nothing to be done about the bright lights and noise, which included very insistent alarms all night long. 

Stranded travelers on cots overnight

Meanwhile, back at my house, my poor husband was singlehandedly battling water that flooded into the basement, for hours. Almost everyone I know in northern New Jersey was doing the same thing. The water was so powerful that it moved sheets of asphalt down a hill near my house. When I got a ride home from the airport in the morning, the flooding was mostly gone on the route we took, but we passed plenty of cars sitting in the middle of the road, where they'd stalled in the water that had been there. At least 27 people died in New Jersey, which got up to 10 inches of rain overnight, shattering rainfall records. I found it unbearable to read about how those people died.

Climate-change-related extreme weather events are coming for us all - even people like me who have so much privilege that we can afford plane tickets and time away to travel, and nice homes with finished basements. If you're a person with means, you could think of any actions you take to fight climate change as "self-care" - they might save you from spending a grim night on an airport floor, or getting a particularly bad case of poison ivy.

But the consequences of climate change disproportionately affect people without the level of privilege I enjoy. The BBC reported this week that the number of weather-related disasters globally has increased five-fold over the past 50 years, and "more than 90% of the deaths related to weather disasters have occurred in developing countries." Even in high-income countries, consider the people who don't have the economic means to flee a storm, or replace possessions that are destroyed, or reduce their vulnerability to severe weather events.

Reducing the animal products in your diet is a step you can take toward climate justice. Livestock farming is responsible for an estimated one-third of human-influenced emissions of methane. Methane is one of the two "greenhouse gases" primarily responsible for climate change (the other is carbon dioxide...so also try to drive less, and yes, my flight to England is also a CO2 culprit. For me, there's no easy solution to that dilemma, which is why I focus on other steps I can take).

Allow me to make the path away from meat easier for you by recommending a really delicious and simple "Caramelized Zucchini Pasta" (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I'll absolutely be making this dish again.

A regular (not cast iron) skillet worked just fine

Shirtless Ken is my newest backup dancer

After my miserable night in the airport, I got rebooked on a flight two days later, and even though my trip was shortened by two days, I was thrilled to be reunited with my mom after eighteen months. Hug your people and your planet tightly! They are irreplaceable.