Meatless March

I witnessed a Hitchcockian moment in my yard yesterday when a swarm of grackles passed through.  Fantastic Tippi Hedren costume on Halloween a few years ago But you know what's scarier than "The Birds"? Climate change. Back in 1963 we worried about Tippi Hedren; today we worry about  climate tipping points . One way that individuals can fight climate change is by adopting a primarily plant-based diet, and " Winter Salad Hummus Bowls " (Epicurious) are a superb vegetarian meal choice. You need time to make each element--the eggs, the greens, the  seed topping , and the  hummus --but they don't all need to be ready at the same time, so you can make some or all of them in advance. It's delicious, healthy, and gorgeous. Even the kale is palatable! Vegetarian dishes like this are a simple choice to reduce your carbon footprint, given the disproportionate contribution to climate change of diets heavy in animal products, relative to plant-based diets. If you sk

Remember my undistinguished attempt to make falafel wraps back in July ? Someone helpfully supplied me with an alternative recipe, and this time I succeeded! We pulled out our secret-weapon: the deep fryer. I have conflicting feelings about the deep fryer. On the one hand: unhealthy. On the other hand: scrumptious. Let's cut ourselves some slack and focus on the latter for today. Imagine the anticipation when the temperature rises (which takes surprisingly little time)! While we waited, the Statue of Liberty made an unexpected appearance. For the wraps, I did not use the hummus recipe pictured above; I used my standby from NYT Cooking (subscription required).  Sampling the hummus Then I squashed the falafel a bit and put it in wraps. The backup dancers were super-happy with the results, as was I. And it's vegan! Rejoice! Keep that foodie happiness foremost in your mind to soften the blow of a recent enlightening  The Intercep

A few friends came around tonight, and we munched on some vegetarian appetizers while we talked about literature and life. I sought the recipe for " Hot Cheese Olives " with exactly one goal in mind: a bite-sized appetizer to be served with a toothpick, so that I could use my adorable, tiny, octopus serving tray (purchased locally at Kitchen a la Mode ). Ideally, I'd have taken a photo of this when it was full of fresh-from-the-oven appetizers. But I forgot, which is a good sign that I was having fun. As suggested by one of the people who reviewed this recipe on the NYT Cooking website (subscription required), I rolled the dough into a long log and then cut off disks, flattened them in my hands (again, I offer you an oddly intimate view of my thumbs), and then molded them around the olives. I guess I made the disks slightly too thick, because I only got enough to cover 41 olives, not 50. As always, I screwed something up in this recipe: I added the dry ingr