Recipe of the Month: Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic

Choosing a Recipe of the Month for November was a challenge. Brian and I have tried a lot of new recipes this month, but many of them weren't veggie-centric, and most weren't vegan. My new lower-carb regime has required me to shift in just the opposite direction, eating a lot more animal products in order to get the required ratio of protein and fat to carbohydrates. Brian has experimented with reduced-carb versions of lots of foods, from pumpkin bread (a big success, not just with me but with pretty much everyone who has tried it) to pancakes (much less successful; they weren't as filling as real pancakes and not nearly as filling as my standard breakfast of high-fiber toast and cocoa). But making these treats low-carb generally means using almond flour, which doesn't rise without a lot of eggs to help it along. I was beginning to wonder whether I might have to abandon the idea of making my Recipe of the Month vegan, as I've done for the past three years, and go back to posting any kind of recipe that features vegetables or fruits (most likely vegetables, since even fruit is too high in carbs for me to eat much of anymore).

Well, it may still come to that, but I can put off the decision for one more month, at least. And that's thanks to a new veggie side dish we added to this year's Thanksgiving menu: Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic.

I knew Thanksgiving was going to be a challenge for me this year. My folks always get a free-range turkey so I can partake of it, but my favorite part of the meal has always been the side dishes, and most of those are pretty high in carbs. My dad's stuffing is mostly brown rice with apples, mushrooms, onions, pecans, and herbs. We also have white and sweet potatoes and whole-berry cranberry sauce. Usually, the only vegetable on the table is herbed carrots, which not only aren't really my favorite, but are also pretty high in carbs as non-starchy vegetables go. So filling half my plate with those wasn't really going to work for me.

When I voiced this concern to Brian, he said he would be happy to add another vegetable dish to the feast if I could come up with one I liked. And when I brought up the idea with the rest of the family, I heard a lot of support for the idea of adding a green veggie to the meal. So I did a quick search on "low-carb Thanksgiving sides" and found a very simple-looking roasted broccoli recipe at Taste of Home. When I proposed this to the family, my aunt requested that we leave out the pepper, which she can't eat. So instead, Brian decided to do the broccoli with lemon and garlic, which is how my uncle said he usually makes it.

We bought about a pound and a half of broccoli, cut it into florets, and brought it to my parents' house. We also brought a jar of marinade made from 2 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and about a quarter-teaspoon of salt. As soon as the bird came out of the oven, Brian quickly tossed the broccoli with the marinade and spread it out on a large baking sheet topped with one of our silicone baking mats. He popped that in the oven, turned it up to 450F, and let it cook for about 20 minutes, stirring it once. By the time we'd finished taking our annual family photo, it was tender and flavorful. He transferred it to a bowl, sprinkled it with a little more salt and about 1 teaspoon of lemon zest, and added it—with some difficulty—to the array of dishes already crowding the table.

This simple recipe was a hit with most of the family. My dad didn't care for it, saying he prefers his broccoli only lightly cooked. But all the other adults at the table ate it with gusto, leaving none left over at the end of the meal. Fortunately, I was able to get enough to fill a quarter of my plate, which was the point of the exercise. 

So will we make this dish again? Maybe, maybe not. This is really a side dish, and we don't tend to follow the main-dish-plus-sides style of eating. We're much more likely to use broccoli as a component of a dish like sesame tofu or lemon-garlic Soy Curls. But it might make a suitable companion to a protein-forward main dish like vegan Swedish meatballs. (Although these meatless balls are rather carb-heavy, I could still have them as long as we stick to carb-light side dishes, like mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes.) Or better yet, it could accompany something else that needs to be baked, such as the low-carb version of our favorite butternut squash lasagna (made with sliced hearts of palm in place of noodles), and take advantage of the already-hot oven.

Shelter from the cold

Somehow, in less than a month, we've gone from summer to winter. Two or three weeks ago, it was so warm out that I was too hot in just a single layer of clothing; this week, I've been piling on four layers, including my winter coat and long johns, and still feeling like the wind is blowing right through me. It's the kind of weather that you can best enjoy by observing it from indoors, snuggled up on the couch with a blanket and a hot drink.

But there are other creatures in our yard that don't have a cozy indoor space to retreat to. Such as, for instance, the family of stray cats, a mother and two kittens, that Brian and I have been feeding throughout the year. (Yes, I know you're not supposed to feed strays because they kill birds, but the way I figure it, they won't kill as many birds if they have something else to eat.) As far back as last summer, Brian and I were discussing whether we wanted to try to provide "our" outdoor cats with some sort of shelter during the winter. But when Brian looked into what kind of shelter would be appropriate, it started to seem kind of complicated. Ideally, it would have at least two sets of walls, inner and outer, with a space between them for insulation. It would need two separate entrances, since cats don't like to be trapped in a place with only one exit. And the entrances would either need to be covered with some sort of door or else turn a corner to keep the wind from blowing in. It wouldn't be simple to construct, and unless we could find a corner of the yard where it would stay tucked away all year, we'd have to store it once spring came.

I was thinking about this one day while I was out on the patio, moving around the outdoor furniture and wondering how long we should wait before storing it away in the shed for winter. I wasn't looking forward to this task, since it's a bit of a hassle to cram it in there, and once it's in you have basically no access to anything else behind it. And it occurred to me that maybe if we just covered the table and chairs up with tarps, not only could they stay out all winter, but they could also serve as a sort of tent shelter for the outdoor cats. It wouldn't be as warm as a properly insulated shelter, but it would be a lot better than nothing.

Originally, I thought we wouldn't even need to buy anything for this project, since we already had a couple of old plastic drop cloths stashed away in the shed. But when Brian pulled them out, he found that the outdoor conditions had taken their toll on the plastic, which tore like tissue paper at the slightest pressure. Fortunately, the sale flier for the nearby Ocean State Job Lot was advertising outdoor tarps at fairly low prices. They were sold out of the 8x10 size, and Brian thought 5x7 would be too small, so we ended up buying one "basic" tarp in size 10x12 and one "tear-resistant" 12x16 one for a total of $32.

Assembling the shelter was a bit of a puzzle. First, we pushed the table up against the side of the house to take advantage of its thermal mass. (The wall warms up in the sun during the day and radiates that heat away at night, so it's a little warmer right next to it than it is out in the open.) Next, we took all the cushions off the chairs and stacked them under the table to provide a layer of padding and insulation from the cold ground. 

Then we covered the entire table with the smaller of the two tarps. It was bigger than we actually needed, so we doubled part of it over and still had enough to reach down to the ground on all sides. We tucked it under the feet of the table and added a couple of bricks to help weigh it down. On my end, I simply tucked up a fold of the fabric to make a tent-flap kind of entrance, but Brian decided to create a more defined entrance on the other side by tucking up part of the fabric and holding it in place with a clamp. 

After that came the trickiest part: piling all the chairs on top. Brian thought maybe we should just settle for two chairs and leave the other two loose, but I thought it we were going to cover the furniture we should try to cover all of it. So after some maneuvering, we found a way to interlock the chairs so that they'd all fit with only the legs of two of them hanging off the edge. We attached them together with some small bungee cords to keep the pile stable.

Then we took the larger and sturdier tarp and put it over this entire pile. Once again, we had way more fabric than we needed and ended up partly doubling it over before securing it under the table legs and adding a row of bricks to hold it down. And even then, there was still a lot of loose fabric overhanging at one end. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to tuck all this excess material out of the way before I had the idea to incorporate the metal trash can we'd already put out on the patio, lying on its side, to keep the cats' food dish from getting wet when it rained. So we sort of wrapped all the extra tarp material around this to make a sort of vestibule. This had the added advantage that next time the cats came looking for their food, they'd be sure to find and investigate the entrance to the tent. And indeed, the next day, I spotted one of the kittens emerging from it, so now we know that the cats have found the shelter and feel comfortable using it.

This, along with a restock of the bird feeder, took care of the animals in our yard. But we still had the plants to consider. Our parsley, which never minds the cold, is still looking green and healthy, so we haven't touched that, but we harvested what was left of the arugula, along with all the winter squash from the volunteer vine in the side yard. We got half a dozen of varying sizes, but some weren't fully ripe yet, and a couple of them had split open in the cold. So we're not counting this squash as part of our official harvest until we figure out how much of it will turn out to be edible.

Brian also went out and dug up the horseradish roots that he planted last spring. These were a bit of a disappointment; although at least one of the plants had been large and flourishing, the actual roots were only about twice the size they'd been when we planted them. After spending $12 and putting in all the effort required to plant and harvest them, we only ended up with a few ounces of horseradish — and we're not even sure how much of that will be usable. So while growing these was an interesting experiment, it's not one we're planning to repeat.

Lastly, we decided to make some effort to winter-proof our outdoor rosemary plant. Where we live, in USDA Zone 7, growing rosemary year-round is a dicey proposition; according to most gardening sites, you can't reasonably expect it to survive the winter unless you dig it up, put it in a pot, and bring it indoors. But ours was too big for that, and we'd occasionally had rosemary plants make it through the winter before, so we decided we'd at least take a crack at keeping it alive. 

Rather than trimming it back to three inches and burying it in compost, as most gardening sites recommend for growers in Zone 8 and higher, we decided to try a tip from Gardeners' Path: covering it with plastic. We didn't have any "floating row covers," but Brian happened to have a large plastic bag stashed away that he thought would be big enough to enclose it. He poked some holes around the edge of this and threaded through a piece of thick string to make a drawstring top, and then we sort of wrestled the plant into it and pulled the string snug to hold the bag in place. Then we piled leaves around the base for insulation, and we'll hope that keeps the plant warm enough to keep it alive until spring.

And with that, we are fully prepared for winter, indoors and out. When the wind kicks up and it's just too unpleasant to venture outside, we can snuggle up with our blankets and hot drinks without guilt, knowing that we've done our best to keep all the other critters on our property comfortable too.

Eggplant is the new black

For quite a few years, Brian and I have both been big fans of eggplant. It's not the most flavorful of veggies, but it makes a good carrier for other flavors, and it has a tender, melt-in-the-mouth texture. Brian had a handful of trusty eggplant recipes that he made over and over again, like grilled vegetable sandwiches, mujadara with eggplant, baingan bharta (Indian-spiced eggplant), pasta melanzane (pasta with eggplant, tomato, and mozzarella), and eggplant with string beans in garlic sauce. Every so often he'd try something new, like quinoa-eggplant salad, tofu with eggplant, or Thai eggplant with Soy Curls, but most of these recipes weren't interesting enough to make it into his regular repertoire.

Unfortunately, all his tried-and-true favorites had one thing in common: carbohydrates. Either they were themselves high in carbs, or they had to be served over a starchy bed of rice. So when I had my new reduced-carb diet thrust upon me, most of these old favorites became unusable. If Brian wanted to keep cooking with his favorite vegetable, he'd need to find some ways to work it into dishes that were lower in carbs and higher in protein and non-starchy vegetables.

So, in the past two weeks, Brian has developed a new use for eggplant: Put it in basically everything.

What he figured out is that eggplant's mild flavor and soft texture allows it to melt rather unobtrusively into the background of all kinds of other dishes. So if he wants to add more veggies to any existing recipe, throwing in some eggplant is an easy way to do it. In the past week alone, he's successfully added eggplant to both pad Thai and chili, boosting their non-starchy vegetable content without compromising their flavor. I could tell the eggplant was there — every now and again I'd come across a tender little morsel of something and go, "What's this? Oh, eggplant. Hm, interesting." But it had no significant effect on the meal as a whole. It was just...there.

So it looks like eggplant is going to become a staple food on our shopping list from now on. Rather than something we buy when we have a specific recipe in mind we want to make, it will be something that we always have on hand to throw into any dish that needs a little vegetable boost. It'll be an extra in the background of the crowd scene, rather than the star of the show.

Of course, I would like it if I could still find a way to enjoy some of our old favorites that use eggplant in a starring role, as well. But unfortunately, adapting those recipes isn't as simple as just increasing the proportion of eggplant to other ingredients. Because while eggplant can certainly be delicious, it isn't very solid. There's only so much of it you can cram into a sandwich or a bowl of pasta before it kind of loses its structural integrity. So in order to adapt our old eggplant dishes, we'll need to find lower-carb substitutes for the bread, pasta, and rice that used to provide the bulk of the meal. Cauliflower rice, maybe?

Ecofrugality versus carb counting

This week, my life got a lot more complicated. Especially where food is concerned.

As I've mentioned here before, I've been making an effort lately to control my carb intake. My doctor advised me to avoid sugar and other low-fiber carbs and to balance out carbohydrates with protein and healthy fats, and I've been diligently following this advice. But after several months of this, my blood sugar was higher than it had been when I started. So she told me to see a nutritionist, and the nutritionist told me that I was going to have to start actually counting carbs. From now on—and, apparently, for the rest of my life—I have to make sure I don't consume more than 30 grams of carbohydrates at a meal or 15 grams for a snack. And on top of that, I'm supposed to balance out carb-rich foods at every meal with an equal volume of protein-rich food and, for lunch and dinner, double the volume of non-starchy vegetables. (I'm allowed occasional cheat meals, but not more than once a week.)

Add all of this to my preference for humane and low-carbon foods, and planning every meal has now become a puzzle with lots of pieces. And it's got me wondering: is it even possible to eat ecofrugally on a carbohydrate budget?

Back when I did the SNAP Challenge, one of the conclusions I reached was that a low-budget diet was heavy on grains and light on meat. And conveniently for me, a low-carbon diet was exactly the same, since plant-based foods have a much lower carbon footprint per pound than animal foods. But now, this type of diet is exactly what I'm not supposed to eat. The dietician gave me a list of carb-heavy foods I need to limit my intake of, and it includes most of the foods that used to form the bulk of my diet. Brown rice, whole-wheat pasta, quinoa, all kinds of beans, potatoes, popcorn, all kinds of fruit, even winter squash—all these foods I used to think were good for me are now "bad" foods that need to be rationed.

Meanwhile, a separate list shows the protein-rich foods I need to get more of. And they're nearly all animal products: eggs, chicken, turkey, pork, fish, shellfish, beef, lamb, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. I can count beans and lentils toward my protein requirements for a given meal, but since they also count toward my carb quota, I can't eat more than a cup of them. She also listed plant-based protein powder as an option, but holy cow, have you seen how much that stuff costs? The brand she recommended, Nuzest, is $26 for 20 servings, and as far as I can tell, that's one of the most affordable options. I found some recipes for homemade protein powders, but they were all too high in carbs; for balancing out my carb intake, they'd be no better than beans or lentils, and considerably more expensive. Pretty much the only ecofrugal options on the list were eggs, tofu, and possibly some varieties of fish.

So it looks like I'm going to have to dial back my attempts to make my diet more plant-based. Replacing dairy milk with soy milk or almond milk is okay (in fact, the unsweetened varieties of both have fewer carbs than milk), but I'm certainly going to have to add back in at least some animal products. For instance, according to the recipe calculator at My Fitness Pal, our favorite vegan mozzarella has 10 grams of carbs and only 3 grams of protein per serving, so we'll have to go back to real mozzarella if we want it to serve as a protein source. And eggs, fish, and free-range chicken are all likely to play a much larger role in our diet moving forward.

These choices aren't that bad in terms of their carbon and water footprints, but they're all really expensive right now. The free-range chicken legs at Trader Joe's have skyrocketed from $2 to $6 per pound, and even the whole free-range chicken at Lidl is $4.50 per pound—nearly $25 for a 5.5-pound bird. Free-range eggs, which we used to find at Lidl for around $2.40 per dozen, have not been available there for weeks, and the best price we could find anywhere else was $3.50 per dozen. Fresh fish and seafood ranges from $5 to $15 per pound. 

Fortunately, I do have one big advantage: a husband who is willing to cook and bake for me. The changes Brian has already made to his bread and cookie recipes have made these foods considerably lighter in carbs than the standard versions. According to my "carbohydrate portions" handout, most breads have about 15 grams of carbs per slice, but when I entered his homemade fiber-rich bread (similar to this recipe, but with some adjustments in the proportions) into the calculator at My Fitness Pal, it came out to just 7 grams for a small slice. That means I can eat up to three slices for breakfast and still have 9 grams of carbs left over for a cup of (sweetened) soy milk in my cocoa. Likewise, his low-sugar chocolate chip cookies have just 6 grams of carbs each, so I can still enjoy one or even two of them for a snack (provided I supplement them with some extra protein.) But to work these miracles, he's had to invest in a lot of pricey ingredients like almond flour and flaxseed and a variety of low-carb sweeteners like stevia and xylitol, all of which jacks up our food bill still more.

But Brian is rising to the challenge.  In the the five days since I was given these new orders, he has plunged headlong into the low-carb fray. He adapted his cabbage and Soy Curl sausage recipe to achieve the proper balance of cabbage to soy to carbs (apples and roasted potatoes). He invented a new "hash" of eggs and green veggies, which we ate with his homemade bread. He dismantled a whole chicken, turning the thighs and drumsticks into our favorite Chicken and Rhubarb Sauce (accompanied by polenta and a large green salad) and the bones into stock. When the green leaf lettuce we bought for the salad proved to be rather tough and bitter, he perked up the leftover leaves by topping them with a new variation on vegan caprese. And even as I write this, he's constructing a chicken pot pie with an almond flour crust, using all the little extra bits of meat he strained out of the stock.

In short, eating ecofrugal on a carb budget is likely to be the biggest challenge I've taken up yet. It's already proving much harder to adjust to than the SNAP Challenge, the Live the Wage Challenge, or the Rationing Challenge—and unlike any of those, it's not something I can just wash my hands of at the end of a week. But on the plus side, that means if at first I don't succeed, I can try, try again. Rather than declaring it a failure, I can keep at it as long as necessary to make it a success.