Meatless March

I feel too exhausted by the depressing assumption that omicron is coming for all of us to say anything more about omicron, so let's just skip to the food, okay? Okay. I have a good one for you today: " Crunchy Cabbage Skillet Dinner " (Delicious Living). The link is to an instructional video rather than a recipe, but one viewer was kind enough to transcribe the instructions in their comment on the video, so I give it to you here, with my all-important change in blue: Crunchy Cabbage Skillet Dinner Ingredients for 4 generous servings: Olive oil -- about 2 tablespoons 5 tablespoons butter 1 lb lean ground beef Jaylbyrd urges you to use FAKE MEAT! 1/2 to 1 teaspoon kosher salt Grinds of black pepper 1 teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder Half head of cabbage, thinly sliced or shredded 2-3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 cup full-fat sour cream Add 2 tablespoons of oil to a large skillet and 2 tablespoons of butter, heat until butter is melted. Add the ground bee...

It's Friday as I write this, but regardless of what day of the week you read this post, Vegan Vednesday is right around the corner, never more than six days away. In addition to my mostly-vegetarianism, I observe veganism once a week in an effort to shrink my environmental footprint. The greenhouse gases generated by animal agriculture are culprits in climate change, as documented by  indicators tracked by the EPA : bigger, earlier wildfires; more frequent heat waves; warmer seas; more common flooding; hotter air; and even an earlier ragweed pollen season (gesundheit). If I don't plan ahead for Vegan Vednesday, I'll sometimes find myself absent-mindedly chewing a piece of cheese, say, and then I'll be disgusted with myself: HOW HARD can it possibly be to just NOT EAT ANIMAL PRODUCTS once a week, Jaylbyrd? So I try to plan ahead to avoid the self-loathing . Cheese is an obvious violation of #VeganVednesday, but sometimes foods have unexpected dairy in them. I wanted to b...

I suppose I should begin with a series of confessions: I just returned from a vacation that featured no shortage of meat; I didn't even TRY to achieve Vegan Vednesday while on the road; I served tonight's vegetarian "Sheet-Pan Ratatouille With Goat Cheese and Olives" (NYT Cooking; subscription required) with non-vegetarian salmon; and I modified the recipe so much that you maybe can't take my assessment as a true reflection of the recipe anyway. And yet I blog on, undaunted. I have tried to like eggplant, over the years, and I have failed (this is disappointing to me because eggplant can be very beautiful). So I left that out of my ratatouille, and I also did not adhere at all to the measurements of any of the ingredients, because it seemed like it would make a lot more than I needed. So, for example, I used about a pound of zucchini, one bell pepper, four cloves of garlic, etc. Regarding the olives: "torn into pieces"? What are we, an...

Last night I attended a very nice reception for University of Minnesota alumni, and I had to say "no thank you" a thousand times to trays of mini-crabcakes and tiny smoked salmon toasts and gourmet pigs-in-a-blanket. Finally, a tray of vegetarian quesadilla slices appeared. I practically grabbed the tray out of the server's hands and wolfed them down. Despite the lack of sustenance at the event, I did meet some lovely people. Earlier in the day, I got to try my first Impossible Burger for lunch, and it was everything we have been promised. I would be perfectly happy never eating a beef burger again if these were available everywhere, and that is really saying something, for me. Impossible Burger Tonight for dinner I made " Dr. Weil's Sweet Potato-Poblano Soup " from Martha Stewart's website. Who is Dr. Weil? Martha does not condescend to tell us. I did change the recipe, which is vegan, in some key ways. The reviews for this soup all noted th...