Meatless March

Happy Vegan Vednesday! This is the day of the week we swallow our love for meat and dairy, rather than swallowing meat and dairy, because we have the power to fight global warming with our food choices . Earth will get hotter, and we will all increasingly suffer, if we don't care enough to use that power. In one of my favorite movies, "Four Weddings and a Funeral", Matthew says the following of Gareth at his funeral: "You remember his fabulous hospitality...his strange experimental cooking. The recipe for 'Duck a la Banana' fortunately goes with him to his grave." I recalled that scene when I came across a vegan recipe for " Cauliflower and Banana Peel Curry " (NYT Cooking; subscription required), and thus there was no question that I must make it, however awful it might be. I soaked the banana peels for over an hour, only because I covered them with boiling water and wandered off to do other things. But the long soak time was beneficial, I thi...

More and more frequently, parts of the world are on fire or underwater or otherwise plagued by climate-change-intensifed bad weather. It is literally devastating. But even if you're just watching it on TV and counting your lucky stars that you're not in an evacuation zone, climate change may still have immediate hazards in store for you. Today's example? "Climate change is making poison ivy stronger and itchier," according to Grist.  Read my description of suffering from poison ivy in 2015, and try to tell me that's no big deal: "I went from looking like a smallpox victim to getting an infection, then antibiotics and steroids, then a 'systemic reaction' of random rashes all over my body, so antihistamines and MORE steroids, and a very successful stint on a MLB team, then another exposure to poison ivy, because I'm just that stupid, then more steroids, and now I just have scars all over my arms and legs." We're enabling all kinds of ho...

Things are bleak. My backup dancer and I continue baking against this bleakness. Yesterday we baked banana bread. It is freaking awesome, as I wrote in my bible, Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," after the first time I made this recipe. We had two bananas so we went with 2/3 of all the ingredients, and I also threw in some chocolate mini-chips. For the egg, we used one whole egg and one yolk. I saved that one little egg white for another purpose, because I now live in fear of running out of food, however irrational that is at the moment. I am, as always, compelled to note how lucky I am: to be able to pay for groceries; to have a weekly grocery delivery that hasn't failed so far; to be able to afford and able to pick up prepared food or have it delivered. I don't take those circumstances for granted at all, and we make donations to others who are less fortunate. Since it was 2/3 of a recipe, it wasn't very tall in the pan, but I assure yo...