Meatless March

I can't blame people for assuming that I like to cook. No doubt it's true of most food bloggers. But me? I like to eat, not cook. Cooking is just a means to an end. I needed some inspiration for my wearying daily march into the kitchen to make dinner, so last week I went to hear a speaker, Vanessa Young of Thirsty Radish , talk about plant-based eating. She was very engaging, and urged us to let our cooking engage all our five senses. Coupled with tantalizing photos of fresh, summery produce, these words gave me some needed energy to remember that there is joy to be found in cooking, if you look for it. Vanessa spoke at a meeting of the  Maplewood Garden Club Since then, I've been reminding myself to appreciate the taste, smell, sight, feel, and sound of food as I prepare it. That does help to make cooking less tedious, but to truly enjoy the exercise, I find that there's another required ingredient: a co-chef to make silly conversation and share the labor. My young bac...

It's the season for tree trimming, cookie making, and holiday parties. My backup dancer helped decorate the tree at her grandparents' house Our  gingerbread cookie recipe is even better when you use 1:1 gluten-free flour, because it keeps the cookies soft Did you think I wasn't going to wear my fab jumpsuit again after Halloween ? It was the perfect choice for the famous annual Turtleneck Party thrown by my friends Lucas and Ginge, but I'm starting to think it's the perfect choice for any occasion, so don't be surprised to see me wearing it to the post office. It is also the season when I check the outside temperature and, upon learning it is 23 degrees, am tempted to embrace global warming. But then I remember global warming's sobering long-term consequences. Some of them aren't far away in either space or time, like current  threats to the drinking water supply in the Philadelphia area , which is only some 80 miles from where I live. That is why I tak...

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 globa...

I frequently choose masochistic methods when I cook , hoping for superior flavor, but I cut myself some slack when I made " Tofu Mushroom 'Quiche' " (NYT Cooking), in that I used a premade gluten-free, vegan, frozen pie shell. I was afraid it would taste like cardboard, but it was actually perfectly good. I used silken tofu, and 1/4 of a cup of nutritional yeast flakes rather than Marmite. I recommend pre-baking the shell 15-20 minutes before filling it (rather than 10), and I thought my quiche was done after 36 minutes, but it needed longer to set; next time I'll check it on the inside to make sure it's not still liquidy. While it wasn't perfectly set, my quiche tasted very good and was enjoyed by 2/2 backup dancers. It was savory and comforting. I am thinking that for next time, it could be even better with the addition of some dry veggies, like spinach or broccoli steamed and then squeezed (squeezing is one of the masochistic methods, but okay).  The qu...

Easy? Tasty? Built-in vegetable? " Linguine with Mushrooms and Kale " (A Garden For The House) may not knock anyone's socks off, but it handily checks all those boxes. And, of course, it is vegetarian, which is helpful for battling climate change. Make it without butter, and with a vegan cheese (admittedly I did not), and it'll be even more helpful in that respect . I sometimes feel like I'm whispering these suggestions into the wind. Though I thank those of you who listen, I get excited when someone with genuine influence starts publicly making the same points - and in the case of one famous restauranteur, putting his career on the line for it . I also love that Epicurious stopped publishing new beef recipes a year ago, and no one noticed . Look for me to review Epicurious recipes in future posts, in gratitude!

Yesterday was Vegan Vednesday, and I tried a new recipe: " Vegan Bolognese With Mushrooms and Walnuts " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). We all decided the result was "fine," and given that it was a lot of work to produce something "fine," I cannot recommend this. I made two ingredient substitutes, but even had I followed the ingredient list precisely, I predict the results would still have been "fine." The first substitution was nutritional yeast flakes for Marmite. The second was white wine for red. I can sense some of you oenophiles freaking out about the wine. OF COURSE reds and whites aren't interchangeable, you're thinking, as tannin-scented steam comes out of your ears. But is that really true? IS IT??  I offer you this humorous 19-year-old piece from The New Yorker that I loved and have never forgotten. It is by Calvin Trillin, one of my favorite New Yorker writers. The article revolves around a blind taste test that is the ...

I'm drinking coffee this morning, and caffeine is clearly behind the amazingly good idea I just had to start learning French. That way, I can pronounce dishes like " Mushroom Bourguignon " (Smitten Kitchen), and when it is someday safe to go back to restaurants, I can stop avoiding the French restaurants whose names I can't pronounce. Yes, I really do this. Imagine if I had been able to speak French when I encountered this intriguing ad in a Paris subway station in my college years! I thought this recipe turned out well, but I actually made it with beef broth rather than vegetable broth. I found the can of beef broth when I recently cleaned out my cupboards, looking for foods close to their expiration dates. I probably purchased it at least a couple years ago, before I went mostly vegetarian for the sake of fighting climate change . Food waste is also a climate change contributor , so the broth went into the dish. It almost certainly made it taste better than if I...

 Happy new year! Have you made a "green" New Year's resolution for 2021? You could resolve to: Make a "Leftovers Day" once a week, to reduce food waste.  Learn to repair a broken item (toy, clock, clothes, iron, jewelry, etc) - Repair Cafe has some tips, just search by your item!  Walk, bike, or scoot* rather than take a car to a nearby place you visit frequently (park, library, store). Hang a clothesline, inside or out, or set up a clothes rack, and air-dry at least one load of laundry each week. Never drink another single-use bottle of water. Find new owners for 10 things you don't want or need anymore. And of course, you could resolve to eat less meat and dairy , because animal-based foods contribute more to climate change than plant-based foods. "Meatless Mondays" and "Vegan Vednesdays" make excellent starting points. We tried " Portobello Philly Cheesesteaks " (The Nut-Free Vegan) last week, and they were decent. The reci...

My sister made " Wild Rice Stuffing Balls " (Wholehearted Eats) for Thanksgiving, and recommended the recipe. Stuffing fairly screams "Thanksgiving," but if you're looking for a special alternative to a meat entree for Hanukkah or Christmas or New Year's or Arbor Day or whatever the kids are celebrating nowadays, this could be it. Around these parts, we're prepping for Christmas.  We make gingerbread cookies every year. The Stuffing Balls are quite a lot of work, so don't be a fool like me, and make them on a random Monday. By the time I got all those darned ingredients mixed together, I was wholly unenthusiastic about shaping them into rather slimy balls. There should actually be a name for that point at the end of the cooking process when I've lost whatever positive spirit I started out with, and I become convinced that the final result won't even taste good.  But fear not, they really did turn out well! I served them with a vegan gravy th...

I love costumes and so I love Halloween , normally. This year, there was no way I going to waste weeks crafting costumes only to forsake festivities for the sake of safety. I was sad, of course, but what's new there? We all have been sad about basically everything since March. Such a sad eight months it has been. But we couldn't dash the annual sugar dreams of our eight-year-old backup dancer. We tossed out an idea: what if she trick-or-treated inside our house? We have plenty of rooms with doors! She was game, so that's what we did. We also had ghost pancakes for breakfast. Not done with scary yet? You're in luck, because now it's Election Day. You maybe want some comfort food, but you also want something to make you feel less guilty about all the Halloween candy you'll binge-eat while binge-watching the election returns. Here is your solution: " Creamy Mushroom Linguine " (Discover Delicious).* "Not helpful, Jaylbyrd," you're chiding me...

In our never-ending quest for Something Different to do during these dreary days, my family headed to Big Brook last week to find fossils. It was our first trip there, and the place sounded too good to be true: could any rather sad woman, months overdue for a haircut and sporting a face mask, just wade in to the stream and pluck out fossilized prehistoric creatures? The unlikely answer, my friends, was YES. Anyone else experimenting with unusual hair choices during quarantine? Note the pink streak. While New Jersey had plenty of dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters , the fossils you find at Big Brook originated elsewhere, and were ferried into what is now the stream bed and banks by long-ago glaciers. In the space of around an hour, we found a lot of remains of small prehistoric squid-like animals, and one triangular lump that we think is a prehistoric shark tooth, and a lot of triangular lumps that turned out to be just rocks. Triangular lumps are everywhere when you are looking f...

Still spending almost all our time at home with each other, my family planned a Not-Christmas celebration for last Saturday to break up the monotony of most of our days since March. We have taken to giving our real holidays themes over the past couple of years, and so we came up with one for Not-Christmas too: the theme was British Christmas. We applied this theme to decorations, outfits, activities, and the food. A neighbor kindly lent us an artificial Christmas tree and a couple of wooden reindeer, and my backup dancer and I created some bunting. We staged it all in the basement, both because it's cool and we'd be in winter garb, but also because we don't spend much time down there, so if we used our imagination and squinted a bit, it felt like going somewhere different. The day began, of course, with opening presents in our pajamas. This we did with Christmas carols playing and a roaring fire playing on the TV. It was very festive, and there was much delight with gifts l...