Fun with legumes

After last week's partial success with the Spicy Orange Broccoli, Brian did not rest on his vegetable laurels. Over the past week, he has continued to explore our two new vegan cookbooks, preparing not one but two of the recipes I flagged as interesting. Both of these involved beans—but not beans served in their natural form, as in last month's recipe. Instead, they were mashed up and formed into new shapes to masquerade as something else. Neither of these bean disguises was entirely successful, but one worked much better than the other.

Last Sunday, even as I was writing up our first recipe from Everyday Happy Herbivore, Brian was in the kitchen working on the Chickpea Tenders from the same cookbook. This was a lot more complicated than the previous recipe. Before he could even get started on the tenders themselves, he had to whip up three mixes from the same cookbook that were ingredients in the recipe. First, there was a Poultry Seasoning Mix made from five dried herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage, marjoram, and basil) ground together. Next came the No-Chicken Broth Powder, made from nutritional yeast ground up with various herbs and seasonings (onion powder, garlic powder, fresh sage, dried thyme, paprika, celery seed, dried parsley, and turmeric, which I suspect is mainly in there for color). And finally, he had to blend up a small batch of Vegan Mayo from silken tofu with Dijon mustard, white vinegar, lemon juice, and agave nectar (for which he substituted simple syrup).

With all these ingredients ready to go, he began on the laborious process of preparing the tenders. First, he had to drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and mash them thoroughly with a fork. Then he mixed the resulting mash with the seasoning mix, broth powder, vegan mayo, and some Dijon mustard and soy sauce. (The recipe called for low-sodium soy sauce, but as with last week's recipe, he just used regular.) Once he had that combined, he mixed in a third of a cup of vital wheat gluten and a few tablespoons of water and kneaded it all together. He divided the resulting dough into four balls and shaped them into long, flat ovals, which he laid out on a baking sheet. And for the final step, he baked them for a total of 40 minutes, removing the pan to flip them over every 10 minutes. 

After all that work, he ended up with four flat oblongs that, frankly, didn't look much like the chicken tenders they were meant to replicate. They were more like veggie burgers, but not particularly good ones. They were dry and somewhat crumbly, and their flavor, despite all the elaborate seasonings that went into them, was unremarkable. Brian had served them with frozen green beans and roast potatoes, and the cutlets were by far the least appealing part of the meal. I had to slather each bite of mine liberally with the two dipping sauces Brian had prepared—the rest of the vegan mayo and a vegan "honey" mustard from the same cookbook, containing equal parts Dijon mustard and simple syrup—to get the whole thing down. Brian didn't have as much trouble with his, but he certainly wasn't enthusiastic about it, and he sees no reason to attempt this recipe again. It's much less interesting than any number of other things you can do with chick peas, most of which are a whole lot less work.

It occurred to me after trying this dish to check the other vegan cookbook, Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Vegan, to see if Richard Makin had any better ideas about how to make a vegan replica of a chicken tender. He did, but his recipe was even more ludicrously complicated than the chickpea one. His called for wheat gluten and cannellini beans and silken tofu and seasonings (some of which we don't have), all processed together in three our four stages in a high-speed blender (which we also don't have). Then the resulting dough has to be kneaded and rolled out into ropes and tied into knots and simmered in broth for an hour, after which it has to go into the fridge and marinate in the broth for at least another four hours before it's ready to cook. So, yeah, we're not doing that. 

The recipe Brian actually selected from Anything You Can Cook was a much simpler one: Cannellini Gnocchi with Pesto. Brian has made his own gnocchi before, both a simple version using potato flakes and a more elaborate, but tastier version using baked potato, but this recipe had one thing those lacked: protein. With canned cannellini beans in place of the potatoes, it would go from a starchy meal to one that balances carbs and protein, with some fiber to boot. 

Making the gnocchi from beans wasn't that much more complicated than making it from potatoes. The recipe called for them to be mashed and then strained through a sieve to remove lumps and skins, but Brian didn't bother with that step. He just mashed a can of beans and blended them, lumps and all, with a cup and three-quarters of flour and a bit of salt and pepper, kneading it until he had a reasonable ball of dough. He rolled that out into a long snake, cut that into little nuggets, dusted them with flour, and pressed each one with the back of a fork to make ridges—more or less the same process he uses for regular potato gnocchi. Then, as directed in the recipe, he dumped them into a pot of boiling water and cooked them until they floated up to the surface.

Brian did not use the pesto recipe that accompanied the dish in the cookbook, since he already had his own. He just combined about a half-cup's worth of frozen basil-and-olive-oil cubes with a third of a cup of toasted pine nuts, two cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast, and half a teaspoon of salt, and blended it all together to get a smooth paste. Because the basil had been frozen, the pesto came out a sort of olive-drab color instead of the nice bright green you get with fresh basil, but it tasted fine.

The cannellini gnocchi themselves, to my taste buds, were also fine. They didn't have the same light, pillowy texture as Brian's potato gnocchi, but their chewier texture was satisfying enough. Brian, however, found them too stodgy for his taste. He thinks they could still work, but next time he'd make them about half as large, and he'd serve them with a nice, thick tomato sauce that would add more moisture to them than the pesto. So this recipe wasn't a failure, but it's not quite ready for prime time.

Based on these two experiences, I'd say there is some potential in the idea of using beans to mimic other things. I can certainly think of at least one more recipe I'd like to try that uses them for that purpose (the Kidney-Quinoa Burgers in Everyday Happy Herbivore). But, to be honest, I think there's even more potential for interest in recipes that use beans as, well, beans.

Recipe of the Month: Spicy Orange Broccoli

This holiday season, I acquired not one but two new vegan cookbooks. My mom gave me Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan by Richard Makin, which I became interested in after trying his whipped cream recipe. (It didn't quite work, but it came closer than any of the numerous attempts we've made with coconut milk, aquafaba, or a combination of the two.) That one, as the name suggests, focuses on plant-based versions of animal-food favorites like chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, and (since the author is a Brit) sausage rolls. Some of the recipes in that one look pretty complicated, but we can probably get a lot of mileage out of simpler ones like Blender Bean Burgers and Cannellini Gnocchi with Pesto. There's even an instant mac and cheese powder that might work better than the disappointing one we tried from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken. 

The other cookbook, Everyday Happy Herbivore by Linsday S. Nixon, looks even more promising. I bought this one myself during our annual pilgrimage to Half Price Books in Indianapolis. Its focus is fat-free or extremely low-fat vegan dishes—so extreme that it labels some recipes as "cheater" dishes because they contain peanut butter, which seems to me like taking things a bit too far. But regardless, there are lots of interesting ideas in here, from Charleston Grits to Apple Fritter Cups.

Our first pick out of this book was a simple dish called Spicy Orange Greens. This recipe can be made with any type of greens or, alternatively, with broccoli florets, which is the option that we chose. The veggie of choice gets cooked until just wilted with a simple sauce made from water, soy sauce, fresh ginger, red pepper flakes, and orange marmalade, then served over soba noodles. 

We had most of these ingredients on hand, but we didn't have any orange marmalade, and we couldn't find any at Lidl. Rather than spring for a pricey jar at the local Superfresh just to pull out a tablespoon for this dish, Brian decided to try whipping up his own using a recipe from Tastes Better from Scratch. After half an hour of simmering, he had a chunky mass somewhat stickier than commercial marmalade, but close enough to use in the recipe. Along with the homemade marmalade, he made two other minor changes: replacing low-sodium soy sauce with regular (since that's what we'd had) and adding some diced tofu, since the recipe was otherwise lacking in protein.

The resulting dish was very pretty to look at, but it fell a bit short on flavor. With two tablespoons of fresh ginger and a quarter-teaspoon of red pepper flakes, the "spicy" part came through just fine; it was the "orange" that was lacking. Maybe it was the homemade marmalade, or maybe it was the fact that it was spread out over a larger volume of food thanks to the addition of the tofu, but to both of us, the recipe had no discernible orange flavor. I had to stir another spoonful of the marmalade—at least half a tablespoon—into my bowl to get what seemed like a reasonable level of orange. To orange-ify the whole panful of greens and tofu, we'd probably have needed at least three tablespoons—three times what the recipe called for. 

Fortunately, that's not a difficult change to make, and with that slight adjustment, this could be quite a useful recipe. Since most of the ingredients are usually in our pantry or fridge, keeping a jar of marmalade on hand (homemade or store-bought) will allow us to trot it out as a last-minute supper for nights when we're not sure what to make. (Alternatively, Brian thinks we might be able to make a sufficiently orangey sauce by leaving out the marmalade and replacing the water with orange juice. But that's an adjustment we'd have to experiment with to get it right.)

If this dish is any indication, we can probably expect this cookbook to be useful overall, but in need of a little tinkering to get the recipes just right. We'll get another chance to test it out shortly, as Brian is currently cooking up a more complicated one from the same cookbook: the intriguing-looking "Chickpea Tenders," which are designed to take the place of a chicken cutlet. I'll let you know how that one turns out in a future post.

Recipe of the Month: Greens, Beans, and Mashed Potatoes

As the days ticked down toward Christmas and our annual trip to Indiana, I realized I had one task to complete before the trip that had nothing to do with holiday gifts: finding a Recipe of the Month for December. I had a couple of downloaded recipes I'd been meaning to try, but none that were both vegan and vegetable-forward. So I turned to our shelf of cookbooks and started flipping through them, looking for inspiration. On page 69 of Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven, I found what looked like just the thing: a dish called "Green And White Beans Under Garlic Mashed Potatoes." It was a casserole of white beans, fresh green beans, and spinach topped with a layer of mashed potatoes, in the manner of a shepherd's pie. All the ingredients were either in our kitchen already or easy to get hold of. It did have a rather lengthy preparation time (an hour and 45 minutes, with 30 minutes of hands-on work), but since Brian had three extra days off before we had to leave for our trip, he'd have plenty of time to make it.

As usual, Brian modified the written recipe in several ways. First, he had to swap out a few ingredients to make it vegan. That wasn't difficult: he just replaced the butter and milk in the mashed potatoes with oil and soy milk and the gruyere cheese that was supposed to go on top with a spritz of oil and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast and salt. He also replaced the olive oil used to saute the veggies with cheaper canola oil and the fresh green beans, which are quite expensive in December, with frozen. He boosted the 10 ounces of frozen spinach the recipe called for to a full pound and dialed down the half-teaspoon of nutmeg the recipe called for to just a quarter-teaspoon to avoid overpowering the other flavors. And rather than simmering the white beans and boiling the potatoes on the stove, he did them in the pressure cooker, thus saving a good chunk of time and energy.

Even with that change, this recipe was fairly time-consuming. First, he had to cook the soaked white beans and set them aside. Then he cooked the potatoes and mashed them (skins and all) with soy milk, oil, garlic, and salt. The next step was to saute two chopped leeks in oil with salt, thyme, and more garlic, then add flour, pepper, nutmeg, and water to make the sauce. When all that was done, he integrated the cooked white beans into the dish with the green beans and spinach, cooked it briefly, and spread it in a casserole dish with the potatoes and his improvised nutritional-yeast topping layered on top. And finally, he loaded the whole thing into the oven to bake for around 40 minutes.

The finished casserole didn't look much like a vegan dish. Between the golden-brown topping and the white sauce that had bubbled over the sides, it gave a very good impression of something rich and cheesy. Unfortunately, its flavor and texture didn't live up to the hype. The biggest problem was the green beans; after nearly an hour of cooking between the stovetop and the oven, they were mushy and bland, doing nothing to relieve the stodginess of the bean-and-potato mixture. (Fresh ones might have stood up better to the long cooking time, but even they might not have survived it.) And while the leeks, garlic, nutritional yeast, and spices did their best, there just wasn't enough of them to perk up such a vast mass of greens and starch. Unfortunately, Brian had decided to make a full batch of the recipe (six servings), so we had quite a lot of it left over after that first meal. We managed to get through it all before leaving for our trip, but we were pretty sick of it by the end.

Despite these shortcomings, I think this dish has potential. If you left out the green beans altogether and made it with only spinach and leeks, it would basically be a variation on colcannon, a classic Irish greens-and-beans mixture, but with an added pop of protein from the white beans. Another variant of this dish, called Rumbledethumps, was a staple meal of ours for years until we gave up cheese; this beany casserole, with a little more nutritional yeast to boost the flavor, could potentially fill the same role. (But if we decide to try it this way, we'll probably go with just a half recipe.)

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: The Changing of the Garden

Happy solstice, everyone! Or just past the solstice, at any rate. I'm a little late posting this week because we spent all day in the car yesterday, driving out to Indiana to spend Christmas with Brian's family. As per our usual practice, we spent part of that trip selecting seeds for next year's garden—and, in a surprise turn of events, the catalog we chose them from was our former favorite, Fedco Seeds. 

You may recall that we decided to break with Fedco in 2022 because it had become increasingly unreliable, sending us some seeds that were duds and others that weren't what we'd ordered. In 2023 we tried Botanical Interests. It introduced us to some new varieties we really liked, particularly Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, which lived up to its name by being very productive throughout the whole growing season. But Botanical Interests didn't have the Carmen peppers we've come to rely on, so in 2024 we switched to True Leaf Market. It, too, proved less than satisfactory. Several of the seed varieties it sent us were unimpressive; some were clearly not what we'd ordered; and one, the Thai basil, had literally no flavor whatsoever. 

At this point, Brian suggested that maybe, rather than trying yet a third new supplier, we should just go back to Fedco. Yes, it wasn't 100 percent reliable, but neither were the others we'd tried, and it was cheaper and had most of our favorite varieties. So that's how we ended up sitting in the car yesterday, picking out the following crops:

• Arugula. The "slow bolt" arugula we bought from True Leaf this year was pretty patchy, so we're replacing it with a variety called Ice-Bred. Fedco bills it as "one tough cookie": quick to mature, yet slow to bolt, and capable of surviving under the snow all winter to yield a fresh crop in spring.
• Thai basil. After last year's disappointment with True Leaf's "holy basil," we steered clear of the so-called "sacred basil" and went with Flowering Thai Basil. It promises "voluminous," bushy plants with both strong flavor and ample production.
• Cucumbers. We had a particularly bad year for cucumbers. The Boston Pickling cucumbers we got from True Leaf yielded only one medium-sized cuke, and our usually trusty Marketmores never came up at all. (We bought some Straight Eight plants to replace them, but they only produced five itty-bitty cukes.) We're going to give the Boston Pickling variety one more try, but as a hedge, we're also getting some of Fedco's South Wind variety, a slicing cucumber with "strong vigorous productive plants" highly resistant to powdery mildew.
  
• Green beans. We're replenishing our supply of our favorite Provider variety. As per the name, it generally produces well except when the young plants get chomped, so we'll have to make it a priority to protect them somehow. Possibly a job for the Hudson SQ-X Squirrel Excluder.
• Lettuce. Sadly, Fedco does not have the Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce (also known by its French name, Merveille des Quatre Saisons) that we've become so attached to in the past two years. But it does have a variety called Pirat that it says is "Descended from Merveille des Quatre Saisons and is much more bolt resistant." So we'll take a flier at that and see if it's as good as its ancestor. If it is, we'll probably ditch our summer lettuce blend altogether and grow this variety year-round.
• Peppers. We're restocking our trusty Carmen peppers and also trying a new variety, Aconcagua. It supposedly produces huge plants (up to 3 feet) with huge fruits (up to 10 inches) that are "very sweet, crunchy and fruity."
• Scallions. The Flagpole variety we tried from True Leaf was another disappointment, so we're going back to Evergreen Bunching White, which has served us well in the past.
• Snap peas. Next to the Thai basil, the supposed Cascadia snap peas we ordered from True Leaf were the biggest disappointment. The variety it sent us was clearly not Cascadia, nor any other snap pea; it was a snow pea that's meant to be eaten while it's small and tender. Unfortunately, we didn't realize this, so we let the peas grow to full size, at which point they were tough and near-inedible. We're hoping the Cascadia peas we get from Fedco next year will be the real thing.
• Tomatoes. We're restocking our trusty Premio and Sun Gold tomatoes, which always work for us. We have enough of our other two favorites, Pineapple and San Marzano, to get us through this season, but next year we'll need to find another source for the San Marzano, which Fedco doesn't have.

So that's next year's seed order sorted. We've already taken care of our other winter gardening tasks: draining the rain barrel and covering the garden paths with a thick layer of leaves, most of them swiped from off the curb in front of our neighbor's house. (I felt a bit bad about this, but as Brian pointed out, our neighbor didn't want them, and the borough, which was going to pick them up, was probably providing that service only to keep them from piling up in the street.) So our garden is now well settled in for its long winter's nap. All we have to do now is place our seed order and snuggle in ourselves until seed-starting season rolls around.

Ecofrugality is now called "underconsumption core"

Once again, I find myself riding the wave of a trend I didn't know existed. A week or so ago, I read an article in Grist about how many TikTokers are now fighting back against the consumption culture popularized by many influencers with videos about a lifestyle they call "underconsumption core." This aesthetic, according to the article, is "generally about reducing and reusing." In their videos, creators show off their reusable bags, thrift-shop visits, minimalist skincare routines, and possessions they've bought cheap and kept for decades. Doesn't this sound a lot like the sort of thing I've been posting about for the last 15 years?

Of course, when I first started this blog, there was no TikTok and "influencer" wasn't a recognized profession. So I figured, if this new platform is now providing a forum for a lifestyle I've been promoting for years, why not jump on that bandwagon? Why not whip up my own little one-minute video, set to "soothing background music," about my ecofrugal—excuse me, "underconsumption core"—habits and contribute it to the conversation? And, seeing as it's December, why not make it all about the ways we practice underconsumption during the holidays, which are normally the spendiest time of the year?

So I filmed a few little clips with my phone, edited them together in the free ClipChamp program, found a public-domain musical track on Pixabay, and posted it on both TikTok and YouTube. If you have an account on either platform, I'd appreciate your popping by there and giving it a like. If enough people seem to enjoy this first video, perhaps I'll make some more in the same vein. I've got the software more or less figured out now, and it's not like I have any shortage of material to work with.

Happy holidays to all, and to all an ecofrugal new year!

Meet the new toothpaste, not the same as the old toothpaste

Brian and I have a few very specific requirements for toothpaste. I insist on a brand that's cruelty-free (not tested on animals). Brian needs one that's free of sodium lauryl sulfate, which seems to give him canker sores. And we both want a toothpaste with fluoride, which, until recently, was the only chemical available that could actually prevent tooth decay. (Nowadays, there's an alternative called hydroxyapatite, which appears to be equally effective. But it's also more expensive, so most fluoride-free toothpastes don't contain it.)

None of the leading toothpaste brands (Crest, Colgate, Tom's of Maine, Sensodyne) meets all these requirements. So, for the past several years, we've relied on Trader Joe's toothpaste. Not only did it tick all the boxes, it was also much cheaper than the major brands at $3.50 for a 6-ounce tube. But last summer, we learned that Trader Joe's had discontinued its store brand on account of problems with its supplier. Our man on the inside (a friend who works there) told us the store was working with a new supplier and expected to get its product on the shelves by the end of November, but our one remaining tube wasn't going to last us that long.

So, after squeezing every drop out of that tube and exhausting all the sample tubes we'd received from our dentist, we went looking for a new toothpaste that met our stringent requirements. After a bit of online research, I determined that the best alternative was a brand called hello (without an initial capital letter). We picked up a tube of that for $5 at Target and, on the whole, liked it very much. The flavor was pleasantly minty, and being greeted by the cheerful "hello" on the tube made a pleasant start to the day. 

There were only two things we didn't like about it. The first was the price: $1.06 per ounce, nearly twice as much as our old Trader Joe's toothpaste. The other was the tube it came in. Our old toothpaste came in the traditional squeezable tube we'd both grown up with, which we could flatten and roll as we worked our way down the tube to squeeze out the paste more effectively. This new tube was made of a springier plastic and would reinflate itself after being squeezed, making it more or less impossible to squish every last bit of the paste out of the tube.

So, as November drew to an end, we kept an anxious eye on the toiletries shelf at Trader Joe's, hoping the new store-brand toothpaste would show up before our first tube of hello ran out. But November ran into December with no sign of one, and it got harder and harder to squeeze anything out of the hello tube. Finally, we gave in and bought a second tube—which, of course, was the cue for the new Trader Joe's product to show up at last. In fact, not one but two new toothpastes appeared: a "sensitivity" toothpaste with fluoride and a fluoride-free whitening toothpaste with hydroxyapatite. Both were the same price, $4 for 6 ounces—more than the old store brand, but considerably less than hello. Although we already had a full tube in reserve, we decided to spring for a tube of the new TJ's toothpaste anyway and open it first. That way, if we didn't like it, we'd have the other tube to fall back on. We hesitated over which of the new toothpastes to try but eventually settled on the one with fluoride, since it was more familiar.

After one brushing with the new toothpaste, we realized this might have been the wrong choice. It had a sort of weird taste that we could only guess was due to the desensitizing ingredient, potassium nitrate. (We'd tried sample tubes of Sensodyne before, and it also had a hint of that odd flavor, but with stronger mint and sweetener flavors to cover it up.) So now we face a bit of an ecofrugal dilemma. Do we (1) try to use up this whole tube of weird-tasting toothpaste, (2) go back to the pricier hello toothpaste that we know we like, or (3) try the other Trader Joe's toothpaste, which may or may not have the same peculiar taste?

No matter which we choose, there's one downside we'll definitely have to live with: those pesky, self-inflating tubes. The new Trader Joe's toothpaste comes in the same kind of stand-up plastic tube as the hello toothpaste. If we go for option 1, we probably won't be all that bothered about being unable to use up all the toothpaste from this tube, since we don't really like it anyway. But with option 2 or 3, we may have to resort to buying (or making) one of those special tube-squeezing tools or even cutting open the tube to scoop out the last few drips.

What we'd like best, of course, is to have our old toothpaste back, in the same old tube. But since that's not an option, we'll have to figure out which choice is next best. C'est la vie ecofrugale.

Our first big-venue experience (and why we won't repeat it)

This weekend, Brian and I did something a bit out of step with our usual ecofrugal spending habits. As regular readers know, we're both big fans of the show Critical Role (in which "a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons"). So when we learned that the Critical Role cast would be running a live "Critmas" event at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey—their first ever show in our state—we decided to spring for tickets. We'd already been to see a live show in Brooklyn featuring a subset of the cast and had a lot of fun, so we figured this event would probably be worth the cost of admission.

From the moment we first started planning the trip, though, the venue seemed determined to convince us we were wrong. First, there was the cost and hassle of ordering the tickets. They were only available through Live Nation, so I had to set up an account with that site—which turned out to be a subsidiary of Ticketmaster—in order to place the order. The process of setting up the account, linking it to my PayPal account, and placing my order took well over an hour, requiring several attempts before the transaction would go through. And by the time Ticketmaster had finished piling on taxes and fees, our two "Standard Tier" tickets, allegedly priced at $75 each, came to a total of $226.88.

This already high price, as we quickly learned, did not include parking. The Freedom Mortgage Pavilion's website informed us that while parking was "available" at various nearby lots, we would have to find and pay for it ourselves—unless, of course, we wanted to shell out an additional $50 for "premier" parking. We couldn't bring ourselves to swallow that additional expense, especially since it would most likely mean fighting our way through a massive traffic jam at the end of what was already likely to be a very late night. So we spent several more stressful hours poring over maps of the area trying to find other parking options. Our best bet seemed to be the Rutgers Camden campus, especially since Brian has a Rutgers parking permit that would allow him access to lots that might not be open to the general public. A campus map showed several parking lots, but it didn't explain who was allowed to use them. Some were clearly labeled as resident parking, but others were unmarked. We ended up planning out a route that would take us past several different lots so that if one was full, we could move on to the next.

Then there was the matter of food. The venue's website clearly stated that we could not bring in any outside food or drink except for one sealed bottle of water. However, we would be allowed to bring in an empty bottle and fill it up at one of the water fountains. So that would take care of basic hydration, but nourishment was another matter. The show was scheduled to start at 7pm, and it would take us about an hour and a half to drive there, so we wouldn't be able to eat dinner beforehand. We couldn't tell from the website what food options would be available, but we could be pretty sure they would all be expensive and would involve waiting in long lines. So we planned to pack a picnic supper—peanut butter sandwiches, fruit, baby carrots, and a couple of cookies—that we could nosh on before and after the show.

A final source of stress was the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion's bag policy. It was clear from the venue's website that my purse, which is practically a part of my body, would not be able to come to the show with me. The venue allowed only clear plastic bags no larger than 12 inches square and 6 inches deep and "small clutches, wristlets, or fanny packs" no bigger than 6 inches by 9. I had a zipper bag that was just within those limits, so I figured I could squeeze the essentials—my large phone wallet, a pillbox, and maybe a couple of small toiletries like a nail clipper and lip balm—into that. But then, less than a week before the show, I received an email from the venue reminding me about its policies, and the size limit it gave for clutch bags was only 4.5 by 6.5 inches—roughly half the size stated on the venue's own website. Confused by these conflicting rules, I consulted Reddit and found that the venue had adopted these smaller size limits two years ago and somehow never bothered to update its website to reflect them.

With only a few days until the show, I posted a couple of frantic messages on Facebook (one in our local Buy Nothing Group and one in our board-gaming group) asking if anyone could loan me a plastic stadium bag that fit the venue's limits. I ended up getting not one but two offers and, just to be on the safe side, accepted them both. However, that didn't solve the problem of what to do with my phone. I had to bring it with me, because our tickets were on it; they contained a digital code that changed regularly, so I couldn't just print them out ahead of time. But I couldn't bring the wallet that normally holds the phone because it was over the size limit. It was possible they'd allow the wallet if it was inside a clear bag, but it was also possible they wouldn't, and we didn't want to take the chance. And carrying the phone around naked would have put it at risk of damage.

Rather than run out and buy a case for it, Brian decided to try making me one. He borrowed the phone and basically built the case around it, cutting two panels out of corrugated cardboard and wrapping them in fabric cut from an old pair of fleece tights. Then he wrapped the whole thing in thinner, more flexible cardboard cut from a cereal box and secured it with a rubber band. The finished case was right on the edge of the 6.5-inch limit, so there was always a chance some zealous security guard would seize it, but losing it wouldn't cost us anything.

The last thing we had to worry about was getting to the venue. Google Maps offered multiple routes, but the most straightforward one appeared to be the NJ Turnpike. We carefully reviewed the steps to get from the Turnpike to the parking lot, going over each turn in street view so we'd know what to expect, and also how to get from the parking lot to the venue on foot. Google said the journey could take anywhere from 60 to 110 minutes, and the show was scheduled to start at 7:30 pm, with the doors opening to regular ticket holders (as opposed to those who had paid $250 a seat for VIP tickets) at 6pm. We decided to leave at 4:30 pm to give ourselves plenty of leeway in case we got lost, ran into traffic, or had some other sort of mishap.

As it turned out, none of the things we'd worried about came to pass. We made it to Camden in about an hour, and the first parking lot we looked at had plenty of available spaces. We made the chilly one-mile walk through the streets of Camden without difficulty and arrived at the venue right as the doors were opening. The guard took only a cursory look at my borrowed stadium bag before waving us through, raising no objection to Brian's homemade phone case. We made our way through the crowd, found our seats, filled our water bottle, and still had over an hour to spare before showtime. 

We did make one deviation from our careful plan; despite having partaken of sandwiches and carrots in the car, I realized soon after we seated ourselves that I wasn't going to make it through the whole show without something to munch on. Luckily, we didn't have to stand in the long concession lines, as there was a vendor passing through the aisles selling big boxes of popcorn for $10. Normally, I would balk at paying this much for a snack I can make at home for pennies, but under the circumstances, it seemed like the best deal we were likely to get. So I shelled out an extra $10 for a box and nursed it through the entire four-and-a-half hour show.

The Critical Role cast, as always, put on a great show. From where we were seated, far back in the huge auditorium, they were only tiny figures on the stage, but the venue had large screens set up that allowed us to see their facial expressions in close-up. This meant that most of the time, we were looking at the screens, rather than the live actors on the stage, so visually, it wasn't all that different from watching on our own small screen at home. But being part of the crowd, laughing and shouting and cheering when the characters did something awesome, definitely added to the experience.

Still, as we walked back to our car through the cold December night, we found ourselves asking: Did it really add that much? Yes, being in the room where it happens was a lot more fun than watching at home. But everything we had to do in order to be in that room was a lot less fun. In fact, everything other than the show itself—ordering the tickets, planning our route, searching for parking, packing sandwiches in lieu of a proper dinner, driving to and from Camden, walking from the parking lot to the venue and back on a cold December night, and arriving home exhausted at 2 am—was extremely stressful. Neither of us could say with confidence that the experience, taken as a whole, was better than staying at home and watching the show curled up on the couch in our jammies with some hot cocoa. And we certainly couldn't say that it was so much better as to be worth the roughly $241 we spent in total for the tickets, gas, tolls, and vastly overpriced popcorn.

So, while this was a worthwhile experience, it isn't one we're eager to repeat. The joy of watching the show in a room full of fellow Critters (fans of the show) just wasn't enough to balance out all the cost and hassle. I kind of feel like if Critical Role ever returns to New Jersey, rather than pay over $200 to see them live in a huge arena, we should try to find a group of local Critters and have an at-home watch party. We can share a potluck dinner, sit on comfy chairs to enjoy the show together, use the bathrooms during the break without having to wait in a long line, and still get to bed before 1 am.