Meatless March

A friend posted on social media about making " Crispy Rice Paper Dumplings " (El Mundo Eats) and they looked tasty, so I gave them a whirl. I pre-cooked fresh button mushrooms rather than using dried shiitakes, and I threw in a small amount of lemongrass that was languishing in my produce drawer. Most importantly, I skipped the meat, since I am largely vegetarian for environmental reasons. The Guardian's "Down to Earth" newsletter this week offered reminders about why it's a smart move to forego meat (and other food products from livestock). For example, "in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, even the best beef is seven times worse than the worst tofu," wrote Damian Carrington. By "best" and "worst" he was referring to the degree of sustainability in the way the food is produced and transported. So, bypass the meat. My dumplings were plenty flavorful without it.  They were, in fact, as good as they looked in my friend's post...

Happy Vegan Vednesday to those who celebrate it! I have now twice made " Crispy Sheet-Pan Noodles With Glazed Tofu " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). It's a good vegan recipe, so you're doing the Earth a solid favor, but do yourself a solid, too, by doubling the sauce.  I used gluten-free noodles As a lover of leftovers, I am sad to report that this dish loses some magic in the reheating, so serve it for some friends, and then you won't have leftovers. I love leftovers because they save me from cooking new meals, but also because food waste represents 1) a waste of all the energy and resources that went into producing the food, and 2) needless greenhouse gas emissions. I minimize food waste in the following ways: I plan a week's worth of dinners at a time, putting them on my calendar with a link to the recipe. I don't follow the schedule religiously, but it is a guide for what we can eat on what day. I order the groceries I need to make those meals. L...

When I was supposed to be practicing mindfulness in my yoga class recently, I was actually thinking of how I took online yoga classes from my fourth-grade bestie, Becky, during the darkest days of the pandemic . Thinking about Becky led me to think about our fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hey: a short, no-nonsense woman with an intense Southern drawl. Then I remembered how one of Mrs. Hey's favorite expressions, delivered with severity, was "don't be cute," meaning "behave" or "be serious" or "you're not amusing, so shut up."  Mrs. Hey Remembering tiny but terrifying Mrs. Hey admonishing me not to be cute, I struggled not to laugh in the silence of yoga class, and then I thought about "Smoky Lentil Stew with Leeks and Potatoes" (NYT Cooking; subscription required). So much for mindfulness. But why, you ask, did I connect Mrs. Hey and this recipe? One of the recipe's flaws--and I take the position that there are several--is i...

"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...

I witnessed a Hitchcockian moment in my yard yesterday when a swarm of grackles passed through.  Fantastic Tippi Hedren costume on Halloween a few years ago But you know what's scarier than "The Birds"? Climate change. Back in 1963 we worried about Tippi Hedren; today we worry about  climate tipping points . One way that individuals can fight climate change is by adopting a primarily plant-based diet, and " Winter Salad Hummus Bowls " (Epicurious) are a superb vegetarian meal choice. You need time to make each element--the eggs, the greens, the  seed topping , and the  hummus --but they don't all need to be ready at the same time, so you can make some or all of them in advance. It's delicious, healthy, and gorgeous. Even the kale is palatable! Vegetarian dishes like this are a simple choice to reduce your carbon footprint, given the disproportionate contribution to climate change of diets heavy in animal products, relative to plant-based diets. If you sk...

I once read about a funny, bot-generated list of the opening lines of blog posts, in which the blog authors had offered sincere excuses for why it had been so long since they last blogged. So I'm just going to move on without apology, acknowledging that the Earth's various environmental crises haven't somehow resolved themselves in the past six months. Therefore, you might still need motivation to eat less meat, because raising animals for food is environmentally problematic , and you want to be part of the solution. Oink Going forward, I will be offering you my thoughts on foods and recipes that are not only vegetarian and sometimes vegan, but also gluten-free. "Freedom" is an inspirational word, but achieving freedom from gluten is difficult and, frankly, often sad. Take cinnamon rolls, for example. Remember how I used to make cinnamon rolls that I described as GOOOOOOOOOOOOD ? I tried to make a non-yeast version with gluten-free (GF) flour to enjoy on Christma...

Will it ever rain again? We've been having a frightful dry spell. But I have been diligently watering my beleaguered garden herbs with the water our dehumidifier sucks out of the basement air, so I was ready to make use of my rosemary and parsley for " Linguine With Crisp Chickpeas and Rosemary " (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I have been generously sharing my parsley with some black swallowtail caterpillars. Rather than use traditional linguine, I made the recipe with a 9-ounce package of "Taste Republic" fresh cauliflower (!) linguine, and thus the dish was gluten-free. I bought the cauliflower linguine in the spirit of adventure, but it turned out to be delicious! While I only used nine ounces of pasta, I kept the recipe's other proportions largely the same, with the exception of using a little less oil and butter than called for. I highly recommend turning the heat to low before you add the butter. I didn't, and hot oil spattered all over the ...

Since I recovered from COVID last month , I have been pleased to think of myself as temporarily immune to reinfection, to some degree. Boy, does it feel good! But why stop there? Like I always say, if something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. It didn't take long before I concluded that I am not merely immune, but in fact immortal. Accordingly, I've been doing things that I haven't done in two and a half years. I went to a movie! I was so excited that I accidentally arrived half an hour early, which is why the theater was empty.  I rode NJ Transit into the city! I saw "Wicked" on Broadway! Stay tuned for more of my newly immortal adventures, but one thing that hasn't changed is minimizing my animal-based food consumption, for environmental reasons.  Tonight I made " Green Curry Glazed Tofu " (NYT Cooking; subscription required), which is vegan and gluten-free. "Why not cube the tofu instead of slicing it?" I wondered, and since ...

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...

It's Earth Day tomorrow! Let it be an occasion to (re-)commit to reducing your environmental footprint with your food choices, and urging others to do the same.  That message is even more powerful coming from the kids who will someday inherit the ecological legacy of our choices today. Be inspired by the student council officers at my backup dancer's elementary school, who starred in this new video that I helped put together for Earth Day: I recently read a New Yorker article about the youth-led environmental Sunrise Movement, and one piece of the article nagged at me. The author described a Sunrise Movement member's hesitance about ordering a meat dish, only to be reassured by other members that "The biggest driver of emissions is the political power of the fossil-fuel industry, not individual behavior," leading the author to conclude, "if you want the beef, get the beef." I don't question that the fossil fuel industry has plenty of political power...

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...