Meatless March

A red spot appeared on the tip of my nose last month, right around the time that "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" had its annual airing on TV. After I saved Christmas by guiding Santa's sleigh through the fog, I went to the dermatologist. The spot turned out to be actinic keratosis and not a big deal; I've had these patches before. Sometimes they go away on their own, and once I had one removed. I have chosen not to airbrush away my red spot so that it may serve as a reminder to us all to wear sunscreen religiously. Unrelatedly, I wear a hat all the time these days because it has been COLD!! But this particular blemish sticks out in my mind because it literally sticks out from my face. I had to run some errands after the biopsy, and I dreaded walking into stores with a ridiculous bandage on the tip of my nose, but something interesting happened when I did. People studiously avoided looking at my ridiculous bandage. They looked anywhere else to avoid making me feel awk...

For years, I have had a hankering to attend the Philadelphia Flower Show, which occurs on the cusp of spring and therefore promises to tide a winter-weary gardener through those final weeks of cold.  Tuesday. Bad. I suffer. This year, I learned of a group that had chartered a bus to attend the show, but they needed more people to buy seats to cover the costs. My moment had finally arrived. It was good fun, and exactly the colorful afternoon escape from winter that I'd hoped for. For dinner, we crossed the street to the Reading Terminal Market, and I was delighted to find a vegan deli .  Notice my photo-bomber backup dancer on the right I had a "turkey" sandwich, and while I will grant you that it did not taste too much like turkey, it did taste very good and I was happy. And I was tickled that the "meats" and "cheeses" at the deli actually looked like the real thing, sliced and stacked in a display case on the counter, but without the contribution to g...

Happy Vegan Vednesday! There were two opinions in my household about " Butternut Squash and Green Curry Soup " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). According to one opinion, the soup was "good," but the people who held that opinion were clearly bananas, because the soup was excellent. I'm not the only one who thinks so - the recipe has a five-star rating and 145 comments on NYT Cooking. Note that you will need to skip the fish sauce to make it vegetarian/vegan. What were the some of secrets of its success for me? Homemade veggie stock - I always have some ready to go in the freezer, and thaw it quickly in a pan right before I need it, if I've forgotten to stick it in the fridge the day before. Dried ancho (poblano) chiles, which aren't very spicy at all. You will need fewer than the recipe states, because they are big - and the more finely you can slice/dice them, the better. "Thai Kitchen" green curry paste, which also isn't very spicy, ...

My backup dancers and I adore biscuits. I usually make them with butter and plain Greek yogurt . But in the name of taking whatever actions I can to fight climate change, I'm looking for ways to reduce my dairy consumption (meat, too, of course) - hence "Vegan Vednesdays."  I procured some vegan butter, and dove into " Vegan Quick Biscuits " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). How much do we love biscuits? So much that I used a cookie cutter and shaped them like hearts, and it wasn't even Valentine's Day! Raw dough Baked I used oat milk for the liquid. I wish I could say that they turned out as good as my usual biscuits, but their texture wasn't as good - it was less flakey. Still, it was not a bad texture. Really not bad at all. And they tasted delicious. (I skipped the maple butter topping, but that sounds amazing, doesn't it?) I served them with NYT Cooking's " Tomato and White Bean Soup With Lots of Garlic ." That was too inte...

I was thinking today about all the realms in which I used to have some level of expertise.  For example, I started taking violin lessons in 4th grade, and learned to read music, a skill that I have lost. I studied German in high school and college, and while I could still get by in a basic conversation, that's about the extent of it now. I have had jobs that gave me expertise on subjects ranging from the defense industry to federal energy policy to Pakistan, but I have not stayed up to date on any of those things. My college honors thesis was on French nuclear weapon testing. Possibly the only thing left in my brain on that topic is an ongoing fear that nuclear war is still a possibility, and that is why I still read with interest each year about the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ action on their Doomsday Clock. This year, the Bulletin warned that we are ever closer to a global catastrophe of one sort or another - the closest we have been since 1947. Damn. Climate change is a ...

The song of the first leaf blower rang out clear and true at 7:51am this past Saturday in my neighborhood.  From The New Yorker Here in the suburbs, leaf blowers are...how shall I put this delicately?... they are over-used. On any given day between March and November, at any daylight hour, I can usually hear one or more of them whining (I can hear one right now). The worst offenders are the gas-powered models, which are unholy loud, stinky, and polluting, but even electric leaf blowers blow around a lot of debris that makes a person sneezy, and disturb the ecosystem on which pollinators depend . I'm selfish enough to enjoy my home's grass lawn and plenty of non-native plants, which aren't doing the Earth any favors, but I have instructed our paid lawn mowing service* not to use leaf blowers on our property. It's funny, by the way, that when I asked, the guy initially argued with me! He protested that they needed to clear off the lawn to mow it, and I said "surely y...

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...

Making " Crock Pot Vegetable Minestrone Soup " (The Spruce Eats), a week or so ago, appealed to me for several reasons: It was vegan It showcased some produce from one of the last farmers markets of the season (I'm trying not to cry) A soup is always a welcome cold-weather entree I wasn't going to be home in late afternoon, but I could throw it early into the crockpot and it would be waiting for me at dinnertime It allowed me to use up some egg noodles that had been languishing in the back of my cupboard (I substituted them for the macaroni) So it checked a lot of boxes, and it turned out well. We enjoyed it with toast on the side. AND YET... To tell you the truth, for as long as I can remember, I have always found minestrone boring, and nothing has changed. NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Minestrone is still boring. I am afraid that minestrone will always be boring. We deserve better from food, don't we? I just read an opinion piece arguing that Ameri...

Ah, Vegan Vednesday, you have been my Vaterloo. Meatless March was a cinch, but I have had a devil of a time observing veganism once a week. The first week , I pulled an innocent-looking mystery sauce out of the freezer that turned out to contain meat juices. The second week, I confidently ordered pad thai with vegetables, forgetting that it would also include egg. The third week , a travel ordeal left me weak-willed when a tray of dairy-heavy delights appeared in front of me. And last week, I ordered chicken for my backup dancer, and even though I was perfectly satisfied with my own vegan dinner, I ate some the chicken because she wasn't going to finish it, and it looked (and indeed was) so good. This brings us to today, and I am mighty proud of myself for reaching 9:12pm without having consumed a single animal product. Vegan victory at long last! I started the day with Anita's coconut yogurt with my own muesli mix, and here I have to express my horror that the yogurt cos...