Meatless March

I take a vitamin every morning, but last Friday, after Russia invaded Ukraine, I looked at my vitamin and paused. I thought about pandemics and environmental collapse and war, and I wondered what sort of future the vitamin is preparing me to face. With respect to COVID, at least, things are looking better than they have in two years. In early January, omicron was everywhere. Now it is so scarce that school mask mandates are going away, my family has more test kits than we need, and I ate inside a restaurant a week ago! INSIDE! But in contrast to the pandemic, the outlook is currently bad with respect to global warming. Have you heard about the  new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC)? You know, the panel whose many reports are always  filling us with despair ? Well this new report will... fill you with more despair. Honestly, I could not possibly be more a part of the choir when the IPCC preaches, but I am not sure what else there is for...

Remember the start of the pandemic (as if we could forget), when we were forced to let our hair just do its thing without the intervention of professionals? At first it was sort of morbidly interesting to watch roots grow out, and hack away at one's own or one's spouse's locks. But when that first COVID wave receded, most of us returned to the hair experts for overdue corrections. Not me. At first I was just extremely COVID-cautious and figured a haircut wasn't strictly necessary, and later I thought I should decide on a style before I made an appointment, but I couldn't decide. Then it got so long that I figured I might as well just keep growing it and eventually donate it . And I was surprised to find that I liked my hair long, until this winter set in it just got dry and staticky and tangly and it started to drive me crazy. By last week, the moment had arrived. Sometimes you just need a change, and that's as true of cuisine as it is of coiffure. Tonight I mad...

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...

Days are getting longer. And I got some adorable shoes on sale after stalking them online for weeks. And thanks to negative COVID tests, my backup dancers and I actually celebrated the new year with friends.  I'm trying to buoy you with some positives before hitting you with some gloom. Looking back on my posts from last January, I was reminded that this blog a chronicle of the zeitgeist, and that last January, the zeitgeist was seriously not good (see, for example, my Jan. 10, 2021 post ). THIS January, I'm afraid that the zeitgeist is also seriously not good. Thanks to omicron, school is again remote this week, and a parent can't help recalling the last time school went remote "for a week or two" and then kids didn't walk back into a school building for 14 months. Walking into stores seems ill-advised again. Going to the dentist seems ill-advised again. Enjoying oneself seems ill-advised again. So all that is very deja vu, and we are all SO. TIRED. OF. THIS....

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...

Happy Vegan Vednesday! This is the day of the week we swallow our love for meat and dairy, rather than swallowing meat and dairy, because we have the power to fight global warming with our food choices . Earth will get hotter, and we will all increasingly suffer, if we don't care enough to use that power. In one of my favorite movies, "Four Weddings and a Funeral", Matthew says the following of Gareth at his funeral: "You remember his fabulous hospitality...his strange experimental cooking. The recipe for 'Duck a la Banana' fortunately goes with him to his grave." I recalled that scene when I came across a vegan recipe for " Cauliflower and Banana Peel Curry " (NYT Cooking; subscription required), and thus there was no question that I must make it, however awful it might be. I soaked the banana peels for over an hour, only because I covered them with boiling water and wandered off to do other things. But the long soak time was beneficial, I thi...

"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...

A great deal has happened since I last posted, over a month ago. There was Halloween, for example: And I almost can't express my relief and elation that my small backup dancer finally became eligible for her first COVID vaccine dose, which she took like a champ: And I had to have a tooth extracted, which fortunately does not come with a photo. And I got a new job at CivicStory , and the focus of the job is promoting what individual citizens can do to promote environmental sustainability. Perhaps this sounds familiar, because--bless your cotton socks--you've been reading my exhortations on this topic in 188 blog posts since February 2019. Now, I am honored and thrilled to be able to inspire support for the environment on a larger scale (and for a paycheck!). Fear not, I'll still be here to share encouragement about eating less meat and dairy for environmental reasons. Apparently it's needed more than ever, because 46 percent of respondents in a recent poll , when asked t...

Happy Vegan Vednesday! I gave " Biscuit-Topped Chickpea Pot Pie " (Nora Cooks) a whirl, and I probably won't be whirling that one again. It wasn't bad; we just found it uncompelling.  But don't be discouraged: there are lots of appealing dishes without meat and dairy, and choosing them is a way to fight climate change. Climate change is caused by "greenhouse gases" that trap heat around the earth. Food systems account for an estimated 34% of all greenhouse gas emissions , according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization earlier this year, and FAO had previously estimated that 14.5% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock sector . Methane machine A diet focused more on plants than animal products means fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Me observing Vegan Vednesday is, admittedly, a drop in the bucket. But me talking YOU into observing Vegan Vednesday is two drops in the bucket, so let's go from there. Search ...

Last week, Apple repaired my computer, after its left shift key stopped working. Apple did this repair for free. I want to contrast Apple with Breville, which offered to repair my stupid busted $240 food processor for $149, and they would then warranty it for six measly months. No thank you, I told them, I will put my $149 towards a new food processor, and it won't be a Breville. I find it environmentally irresponsible that Breville designed a food processor that didn't survive more than 2.5 years of light use, and then they offered a substantial financial disincentive to repair rather than replace it. I happily pay to repair things all the time, but $149 is excessive. So don't buy a Breville food processor, but I shared this cautionary tale because I also want you to consider that I was without my computer for the better part of a week. While I waited for it to return, I came up with A LOT TO SAY here, all of it pithy, I assure you, on topics ranging from Mocktoberfest to...

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...