Portobello Mushroom Smash Burgers

Last week was a terrifically literary one for me. I attended book launch events for two author friends. 

Pat, Andy, me

First up was Andy Martino at Words Bookstore. His new book, The Yankee Way, is a history of the Yankees baseball team during the era of general manager Brian Cashman. 

My backup dancers are longtime Yankees fans

Next was Marcia LeBeau at the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC). Marcia's A Curious Hunger is her first book of poems, which are moving and funny and thought-provoking. 

Forgive the fuzzy focus of this shot of Marcia reading her poems

Me and my friend Ellen. Photo courtesy of Marcia LeBeau and @rowandean_photography

I'm very proud to count published authors among my friends, and I love hearing writers read and talk about their work. Every week should be so wordy!

I had my own curious hunger for "Mushroom Smash Burgers" (NYT Cooking), which I cooked in the spirit of eating less meat to help save our planet from catastrophic global warming. 

The recipe was simple enough, but things went awry when we tried to pick them up to eat them. What do mushrooms, pickles, mayo, and vegan cheddar have in common? They are all mighty slippery, and they came shooting out of our buns as we tried to bite into the burgers. We had to resort to knives and forks. I will say I enjoyed the taste very much, but I won't be making this recipe again.

Before everything fell apart, ha ha

Sometimes it feels like cutting my greenhouse gas emissions is a goal as slippery as a mushroom burger, but there are good vegetarian alternatives to beef! I still stand by Impossible Burgers as the best vegetarian substitute for meat burgers, and they are now easier to find than when I wrote about them in a previous blog post about baking vegan buns. So don't lose heart, environmental vegetarians.