Meatless March

"Don't forget to take your violin to school," I'll sometimes say to my small backup dancer, or "Take 15 minutes and practice your violin." She meets these reminders with a smirk, because she does not have a violin. She plays the trumpet. I'm the one who took violin lessons when I was a kid, and my brain is still stuck on that.  Backup dancer last year with her "violin" This is the same slow brain that I had to train to eat less meat and dairy when I learned about the disproportionately bad environmental impacts of animal agriculture. This blog is a record of how hard that change has sometimes been, but I got there! I adapted to the point where I was eating meat only as a treat, and observing Vegan Vednesdays. There have been a couple setbacks. At the start of the pandemic, when I honestly wondered whether humanity was on the verge of decimation, I let my resolve slide a little, but I got back on track. Then there was another setback when one of...

You might think that a podcast is the wrong medium to appreciate something as visual and tactile as clothing, and you would be right. But when I'm doing yard work or walking somewhere and have mental bandwidth to spare, I nonetheless enjoy listening to  "How to be Fabulous" with Charlotte Dallison , which is about vintage clothes. "The approach with this business of mine is to get more people wearing more vintage," Charlotte said in her April 14 episode, talking about sustainability in fashion. "But...I think rather than telling someone who's used to shopping at Zara, for example, that they suddenly have to wear totally secondhand and vintage, it's more just about incorporating a bit more, and a bit more and a bit more....If everyone did that, it would have a far bigger impact than a select few--a smaller set of people--being totally carbon-neutral." That is the same strategy I employ with this blog. While it's a fact that plant-based diets...

Back in the quarantine "heyday", I embraced many of the fads, including hours-long walks, collecting  houseplants , overeating, drinking too much, and haircuts given to and received from family members. Selfie from the September 2020 haircut my backup dancer gave me on our patio I never did get around to watching "Tiger King", though, and even though I baked like the world was coming to an end--because I feared it was--I somehow missed the pandemic sourdough craze. Recently, however, as I've been gaining confidence in baking gluten-free breads (" Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread " by King Arthur Baking Company is the fave), I decided to expand my horizons. I put out a request for a gluten-free sourdough starter on a local gluten-free Facebook group, and a stranger kindly offered me some of hers. If I put a rubber band around the jar at the starter's level after feeding, I can observe how much it grows Not unlike owning a pet--a pandemic trend I also bypa...

Happy Vegan Vednesday to those who celebrate it! I have now twice made " Crispy Sheet-Pan Noodles With Glazed Tofu " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). It's a good vegan recipe, so you're doing the Earth a solid favor, but do yourself a solid, too, by doubling the sauce.  I used gluten-free noodles As a lover of leftovers, I am sad to report that this dish loses some magic in the reheating, so serve it for some friends, and then you won't have leftovers. I love leftovers because they save me from cooking new meals, but also because food waste represents 1) a waste of all the energy and resources that went into producing the food, and 2) needless greenhouse gas emissions. I minimize food waste in the following ways: I plan a week's worth of dinners at a time, putting them on my calendar with a link to the recipe. I don't follow the schedule religiously, but it is a guide for what we can eat on what day. I order the groceries I need to make those meals. L...

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...

I don't need to tell you, Dear Reader, that Meatless March has collided with contagion, but I'm recording it here for posterity. Someday, when we have conquered coronavirus and put a stop to climate change, we can look back on this unique point in history and marvel at this turning point - the moment when we learned that we could and must take action to save ourselves. Or the robots from Planet Blarg will mine this blog for info on how one woman tried and failed to prevent the collapse of civilization, before we all perished. School has been closed for my backup dancer for at least the next 2 weeks. I've cancelled playdates. I don't anticipate going anywhere for at least a week, except for walks (thank goodness the pandemic hit in spring). Today I planned an entire week's worth of (meatless!) meals - believe it or not, I am pretty sure I have never in my whole life planned a whole week of meals at once! - and I placed an order for grocery delivery. The...

This blog has become a record of how I sashay into every Wednesday with full confidence that I can pull off #VeganVednesday, then probably half the time, I end up unwittingly thwarting my own good intentions. This morning, trying to find some solace in these dark days of November, I decided to treat myself to a (vegan!) coffee. Coffee makes my cold heart feel things. I try not to drink it too often, lest the magical effect should wear off. I stood stupidly at the display case at the coffee shop, not even daring to imagine that any of the pastries might not contain butter, but LOOKING at them wasn't cheating on #VeganVednesday. DROOLING wasn't cheating. I turned away. And then not two seconds later, I ordered a latte, and drank half of it before it dawned on me that I had not specified soy milk or oat milk or coconut milk or really any darned kind of milk that did not come from a darned animal. And then I was filled with dismay at my darned self. I veered back to the pl...

The flavors in " Curried Coconut Corn Soup ," from Food52, are really great. It takes some time to make, but it was worth it. I served it with steamed green beans and slices of homemade sandwich bread (recipe from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything"). I had a cup or so of leftover veggie stock in the fridge, so I used that as a starting point for the corn stock for the soup. I ended up using about 2 cups of stock in the soup. I'm done waxing on about stock now. The photos shall do the rest of the waxing. Oh one more note: I mixed my oat milk byproduct slurry into the bread! But to be honest, the bread tasted the same as it always does, slurry or not. Final note: this meal was actually vegan, unlike yesterday's meal which I mistakenly and repeatedly referred to as vegan even after blithely stirring delicious cheese into it.

Quite some time ago, back before I became so alarmed about meat's deleterious environmental impact, I made " Pork Ribs Adobo " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I loved it, but had to acknowledge that the sauce was excessively vinegary. I had at least an extra cup of said sauce and it sat in my freezer for a long time, forgotten. This week, I noticed the sauce in my freezer, labeled simply "adobo sauce - vinegary!" I swear I did not remember that I had cooked meat in the sauce when I decided it could be rejuvenated as a shortcut for " Cauliflower Adobo " (also NYT Cooking). I only realized it when I checked my long-ago cooking notes this morning. We therefore unwittingly ate a meat-infused dish last night, which may explain why it was SO DELICIOUS - the vinegar got milder either in the freezer or during the second simmer, or both. Even if I'd remembered the sauce's origins, I would still have rejuvenated it. We need not be militant...