Meatless March

As a child, I yearned for the romantic prom dresses I saw in teen magazine ads. I pictured my future self as someone along the lines of the woman in Roxy Music's 1982 music video, "Avalon."  And sure enough, I have spent most of my adulthood twirling in a metallic, poufed pink dress through an elegant mansion that is stalked by falcons, and giving icy looks to men wearing eyeliner and white tuxedo jackets. Ha ha. But the dream persists! About a year ago, it dawned on me that even though I was too young to go to prom in the 80s, I COULD STILL GET AN 80s PROM DRESS. Like a falcon scouring the grounds of an English manor house for prey, I began hunting on eBay for my long-ago fantasy dresses. There are THOUSANDS of them! The ones that are in great shape and most quintessentially 80s, with tulle and exaggerated sleeves and lamé and a Jessica McClintock label, can easily run you well over $100, but I thrill to find the bargains. This pink Zum Zum dress, which I wore at a party...

It was a weekend of records around here. There were, for example, my backup dancer's personal best swim meet times in the 50-yard breaststroke and the 100-yard individual medley. And then there was the collection of vinyl records we found abandoned along the side of the road on Sunday. Someone discarded Sonny & Cher, George Gershwin, and more. They were warping in the hot sun. No one got you, babe. Finally, there was dinner on Saturday night, which had to represent a new personal record for how long it takes to get a dang pasta dish on the table. I made " Zucchini Pasta With Crispy Capers and Pistachios " (NYT Cooking). The recipe stated that the cooking time was 50 minutes; it took me more like two hours, even though I took a couple shortcuts. By the end of those two hours, I was thoroughly hangry, my kitchen looked like I'd staged a food fight, I had grease splatters on my shirt, and I had lit a paper towel on fire by placing it too close to a burner. Whoops. My...

I went through a seaweed phase a few years ago and while I no longer add it to everything, I do still enjoy it as an Earth-friendly, tasty ingredient. So it was disappointing when " Creamy Asparagus Pasta " (NYT Cooking; subscription required) did not have a distinctly seaweed flavor, despite the claim in the recipe description that "umami-rich seaweed stars twice". The dish (which I made with gluten-free elbow pasta) tasted fine, but I don't really need to be consuming all that fattening cream from greenhouse-gas-producing cows, especially when I could add seaweed to a similar yet vegan recipe, as I suggested back in 2020 . And that vegan recipe requires no subscription, so check that out. Off you pop, as my fellow Brits might say. In cleaning up my email inbox recently, an exercise in futility that I do from time to time, I came across a 2022 edition of The Guardian's "Down To Earth" newsletter with some great and still-relevant stats about why ...

"I am not looking to ban gas stoves," stated Consumer Product Safety Commission chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric last week. Ah, stoves. Who knew something so mundane could inspire such breathless political hysteria that the CPSC chair was compelled to comment? It is a depressing sign of the times. By now you have probably already learned that not only does cooking on a gas stove cause air indoor air pollution, but gas stoves can be a source of methane emissions even when they're turned off , so they're contributing to climate change. "Huh, that's a problem," you're probably thinking, and you're right. But that's not what most people are upset about! The hand-wringers are those who think the government is going to take their gas stoves away. Imagine if those people got as upset about the climate crisis as they did about the idea of cooking on an electric range, or if they protested genuine threats to democracy and obstacles to equality instead of i...

On April 26, I posted about the constant uncertainty about whether one has COVID, and the desire not to get sick before far-flung family was to visit . Eight days later, my young backup dancer had a sore throat. She tested negative the next morning (of course), but she tested positive the morning after that (of course). My other backup dancer and I fell like dominoes, and complicated family plans long in the making were thrown into disarray. Ugh. We adjusted as needed, and everything turned out okay, if not quite according to the original plan. Two weeks later, I still feel ever so slightly winded all the time. I remind myself that is not surprising, given that I had a disease that has killed a million Americans. I have every reason to think my backup dancers and I are all going to be fine, thanks to vaccines and boosters. We are lucky.  Now that I am looking ahead to a couple months without having to worry about getting COVID, it's a great time to double down on worrying about the...

If you had told my two-years-ago self that COVID would still be a thing prompting angst today, I'd probably have wilted and become catatonic, so thanks for not telling me.  Remember April 2020, when even the trees wore masks? Rest assured I'm shortly going to tell you about a vegetarian recipe--presumably that's why you're here--but I thought it would be interesting to record the peculiarities of my 2022 COVID angst, perhaps for the amusement of my two-years-from-now self.  For me, the 2022 angst comes from two concerns: The optimal window for getting COVID : I haven't had COVID, as far as I know. But it is everywhere right now. I know several people who currently have it or are recovering, and cases are ticking upward in our school district. Careful though I still am (I was literally the only person wearing a mask at a dance party last weekend, for example), I am sure I won't dodge it forever, and I am counting on my vaccination and booster to help me make a s...

I have repeatedly searched for this recipe in my own blog, in disbelief that I haven't written about it previously: "Linguine with Frenched Green Beans and Parsley 'Pesto'" (Food & Wine Best of the Best Vol. 10) is a foolproof, elegant recipe that gives you veggies and carbs in one delicious dish, and I have made it many times. It's tons easier to make if you have this handy gadget for "frenching" the beans: I served it with lobster tails, because in keeping with my philosophy on "meat as a treat," I had actually envisioned eating this meal as a Christmas Eve special treat. But then I realized I had ordered my lobster tails too early and would need to cook them before Christmas.  Today, one of the two middle schools in my backup dancer's school district announced that it is going virtual for the remaining three days before the holiday break, because there have been so many COVID cases. Deja vu all over again, right? It is a bitter i...

"That looks good," my taller backup dancer commented, spying a sauce simmering on the stove. "I'm not surprised you think so," I replied, "because the last time I made this I wrote on the recipe that you loved it." That was over a year ago, and it was high time for me to cook that recipe (below) again. I have started putting recipes on my calendar to repeat annually, so that I'm not always thinking blankly to a week ahead as I try to make a grocery list, wondering what I can cook with seasonal ingredients that my backup dancers won't disdain. It is a very good dish. Try it as you're reducing your meat consumption to because you love Earth and want to keep it lovable. You could show your planet even more love by skipping the cheese. Animal-based foods account for 57% of global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, versus 29% for food from plants . Marinated Artichoke Sauce with Onions and Tomatoes Pasta Sauces, by Christine McFadden 10-12oz...

Home-grown vegetables are precious gifts . When a friend supplied me with kale this week, I was pleased to be able to substitute it for the spinach in a recipe for " Creamy Spinach and Artichoke Pasta " (The Colorful Kitchen) on Vegan Vednesday. I used this whole can of artichokes (drained), and about 10 ounces of dried pasta. This isn't a "wow" dish, but it is simple to make, and it is good. Yes, grated cheese would make it better, because cheese is delicious. But  The Guardian  reminds us that  animal agriculture accounts for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions . Once a week, at least, we can choose to set aside animal products for the sake of the planet, and it's not a hardship when you have solid recipes like this one at your fingertips.  Speaking of the planet, a lot of my environmental reading lately has focused on consumerism. I was raised on materialism; maybe you were, too. We're all targets of marketing. I grew up wanting to own stuff...

My mom lives in England, a country that persisted until a month ago in requiring even fully vaccinated people to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival. When they finally lifted that requirement in August, I booked a flight for the first time since the Before Times, and this photo shows me me on Wednesday at 6:58pm, double-masked and full of excitement for the plane to take off from Newark Airport.  Well, the plane didn't take off. We had seen Tropical Depression Ida on the radar, heading slowly toward us after it hit Louisiana as a hurricane, days prior. Lightning started, we sat there on the plane for a while, then we were deplaned. The airport was mobbed with stranded passengers. In my mind, they all had COVID. The airport ceiling sprang leaks everywhere, and its ground floor flooded. Every so often, the intercom repeated the same prerecorded message that started with "Hello, and welcome to the friendly skies!", which made me want to barrel up and down the concourse, scre...

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...