The vanity project

It's become kind of a tradition for me to ask Brian to tackle a new DIY project every year as my birthday present. This has proved to be the best way for him to give me something I'll appreciate, since (a) he hates gift shopping but rather enjoys tinkering, and (b) he doesn't generally make time for big projects unless prompted. Last year's project was painting the office; in 2016, it was installing new closet doors; in 2015, it was a knife drawer insert for the kitchen. And this year, I've officially requested a new sink, faucet, and resurfaced vanity top for the bathroom.

This bathroom vanity was one of the first things on my to-fix list back when we first bought this house. When we first saw it, the vanity was covered with laminate in a sort of faux-marble pattern, which wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been a dingy green shade that clashed with the lighter green fixtures and tile. Rather than replace this right away, I opted as a stopgap measure to paint over it with plain old latex paint. I used a rag-rolling technique to create a two-toned, marbleized pattern and finished it off with three coats of water-based sealant.

That worked fine, and it held up surprisingly well—so well that this "stopgap" solution ended up staying in place for the next 15 years. Of course, it was still just a painted surface, so often it suffered a little damage from water or abrasion. But for quite a few years I simply patched it up by getting out the leftover paint and dabbing it on the bare spots. It wasn't perfect, but it was still presentable.

But eventually, those minor blemishes started turning into bigger scars that were harder to conceal. So I started to put off the job of patching them, which of course meant that surface gradually started looking worse and worse. In the meantime, the sink itself was starting to show signs of wear: some cracks around the base of the faucet, some rust stains around the drain that couldn't be scrubbed off. And the faucet, which had never been great-looking, was growing more and more difficult to shut off completely. Finally I decided that this was beyond a patch job, and the whole kit and caboodle—faucet, sink, and vanity—would need to be replaced.

The question then was, how? The sink and faucet didn't pose a huge problem; we'd already tackled the job of installing new ones in the downstairs bathroom, and we were pretty sure this wouldn't be any harder. But installing a new vanity in this space would be a lot trickier than putting one up on the bare wall downstairs. The niche where the sink sits now is not a neat, rectangular space; the existing vanity top has a little divot cut out of one corner to accommodate a bump in the wall and a smaller divot cut out of another corner to fit around the door frame. So we couldn't simply buy a new vanity top the same size as the old one and squeeze it into the same space; it would have to be cut in the same places to fit exactly, which would be a very fiddly job.

Now, some years ago, I'd looked into the possibility of re-laminating our kitchen countertops (which aren't as ugly as the old bathroom vanity, but are still no treat to look at). Brian's dad talked us out of attempting this, arguing that it was an easy job to mess up and a lot more hassle than installing new countertops from scratch. But for this particular location, I thought, with its tricky shape, surely adding a new layer of laminate to the existing top would be easier—and considerably cheaper—than pulling it out and trying to cut a new one to fit in the same space. And Brian, when I put the case to him, was inclined to agree that re-laminating the existing vanity top would be more within the scope of his DIY skills than installing a whole new one.

So, about a week ago, I placed an order for four items from Home Depot:

• A 4-by-8 sheet of Formica in "Butterum Granite." This came rolled up inside a huge box; we've unrolled it and laid it out underneath a rug downstairs to try and flatten it out before we need to use it.
• A container of contact cement to attach it.
  
• A basic white drop-in bathroom sink (since I knew there was little to no chance of matching the exact green of the existing sink).
• An inexpensive single-handle faucet with a 1.2-gpm flow rate.

We haven't even received all of these yet, but already the project has hit a snag. When Brian looked at the safety information on the contact cement—which wasn't included in the description online—he discovered that in order to use it safely in our bathroom, we would not only have to open the window wide for ventilation but also turn off the heat in the house. According to the instructions, it's unsafe to use if there's an open flame anywhere in the house, including the pilot lights on the furnace and water heater. So if we used this stuff for the project, we would have to wait until spring to begin it. And even then, it would be a smelly, unpleasant, and even with the gas shut off, possibly hazardous process.

Thus, we're planning to return the unopened can of contact cement to the store and replace it with the low-VOC nonflammable version. (Sadly, this isn't available at any Home Depot or Lowe's within 100 miles of us, but we can order it from Ace Hardware.) The nontoxic version is more expensive, and it takes a much longer time to use; you have to wait about an hour before you can even stick the surfaces together, and up to seven days for a full bond. So, if we use this stuff, our upstairs sink will be out of commission for much longer than it would with the nasty version. But balanced against the risk of blowing up the house, we think that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Sadly, having this delivered from Ace Hardware will take about a week, which means there's no chance of being able to tackle the project next weekend. And the rest of our weekends in February are so fully booked up that we probably won't get to it until the beginning of March. But that's still better than waiting until it's warm enough to go without heat, hot water, or the stove until we're 100 percent certain the cement is fully dried. And after putting off this job for 15 years already, another month won't matter all that much.

Thrift Week 2023 (in one day): Stuff Green People Hate

If you've been reading my blog for several years, you may have noticed that I did not run my usual Thrift Week series this past week, as I have done every January since 2010. And you might reasonably have suspected that after 13 years, I had simply run out of good ideas for a whole week's worth of related posts. But actually, that wasn't the problem; I still had several possibilities in the pipeline that could have worked. The fact is that last Tuesday, when my birthday (which is also Ben Franklin's birthday and thus the official start of Thrift Week) rolled around, I happened to be busy with other stuff, and I just forgot.

Having remembered about this just now, on what would normally be the last day of Thrift Week, it seems a bit silly to start a weeklong series at this point. So, for this year only, I'm going to compromise by condensing a whole Thrift Week into a single post. Instead of seven short-to-medium posts on a single ecofrugal topic, you'll get one long post covering all seven ideas in list form. And the topic I've chosen for this Thrift Week blitz is: The Seven Least Ecofrugal Things You Can Buy. (It's sort of the anti-ecofrugal counterpart to my Stuff Green People Like series.)

When I first jotted down this idea, I planned to lead off the series with a Keurig coffee maker. This seemed like the perfect example of an anti-ecofrugal product, since it's both expensive and wasteful. The machines themselves start at $80, while a drip or French press coffeemaker can cost less than $20. Then there's the cost of the K-cups: $19.99 for 22 K-cups of Starbucks Breakfast Blend coffee, or 91 cents per cup. Compare that with the cost of the same coffee in whole bean form at Walmart: $13.24 for 18 ounces, which works out to 25 cents per cup assuming 47 cups per pound. On top of that, the K-cups are neither recyclable nor compostable, while the leftover grounds and filter from a press or drip machine (or my trusty Aeropress) can go straight into the compost bin. And they don't even make good coffee.

But this week's Washington Post presented an article on the topic that contradicted this view. As I noted last week, you probably can't read the article if you're not a subscriber, but the headline sums it up: "Single-use coffee pods have surprising environmental benefits over other brewing methods." It points to an environmental analysis published in The Conversation (which you can read with no paywall) that compared the carbon footprints of different brewing methods and found that the biggest factors are the coffee itself and the energy used to heat the water. The least wasteful method, assuming you use the recommended amounts of both, is instant coffee (though taste-wise it has even less to recommend it than the pods). But the much-maligned pod machine actually comes in second, since it limits the amount of coffee and water used per cup. The most wasteful method is the standard drip machine, which both uses the most ground coffee per cup and uses extra electricity to keep the pot warm. (The analysis didn't cover the Aeropress, but it did list the amount of coffee used in each method: 25 grams per cup for drip, 17 grams for a French press, 14 for a pod machine like the Keurig, and 12 for instant. I just now measured the amount I use in my Aeropress and it was 15 grams, so I'm doing about as well as a Keurig without all the plastic waste.)

This just goes to show that figuring out a product's ecological footprint can sometimes be a tricky business. So for my Least Ecofrugal list, I'm going to stick strictly to things that are so clearly wasteful (of money and everything else) that there's no realistic chance some smart bunch of scientists is going to come along and prove otherwise. And by that strict standard, my seven choices are:

1. A high-end sports car. I was originally going to say an SUV, since these vehicles are not only gas-guzzlers but are also more expensive to own than most other vehicles. But I have to concede that the data shows they are indeed safer for drivers (though they make the road less safe for everyone else). Sports cars don't offer even that benefit. 

In a 2019 Insider article on the nine most expensive vehicles to own, five of the nine were sports models. And on a 2021 list of the least fuel-efficient cars you can buy, sports cars also dominate. Some models are more efficient than others, but unless you're going for an all-electric (and really expensive) Tesla, they're never going to compete with a fuel-efficient sedan.

2. A boat. Everything that's wasteful about cars goes double for boats. I'm not talking about a little canoe here, obviously, but a big boat that costs money to fuel, maintain, dock, and insure. A longstanding joke among the yacht set is that owning a yacht is like standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar bills.

How many hundreds are we talking here? Well, according to Deep Sailing, the cost of boat ownership can be anywhere from $450 for a speedboat to $250,000 for a big yacht—per month. However, Watercraft 101 puts the cost much lower, saying that a boat that costs $20,000 to buy up-front will probably cost less than $3,000 per year to own. And Born Again Boating splits the difference, saying that a 23-foot boat will cost around $30,000 in its first year and $15,000 per year after that. The cost seems to depend a lot on what kind of boat it is and how it's financed. 

But here's the thing: unless you fish or run a ferry for a living, you don't actually need to own a boat at all. Unlike a car, a boat is used mainly for recreation, not transportation. So both the cost of ownership and the environmental cost of the boat's emissions are entirely unnecessary.

3. Cigarettes. This one's a no-brainer. At an average cost of $8 per pack, a pack-a-day smoker would spend over $2,900 per year on cigarettes alone. But that cost is just the tip of the iceberg. Smokers also pay significantly more for health care, health insurance, and home insurance, and they're less productive at work, reducing their ability to earn. According to a WalletHub study, the lifetime cost of being a smoker can be anywhere from $2.2 to $4.1 million. And from an environmental standpoint, tobacco not only pollutes the air that nonsmokers have to breathe, it's also responsible for habitat loss; soil degradation; pesticide pollution; deforestation; significant costs in water, energy, and transportation; and, of course, discarded cigarette butts all over the place.

4. Diamonds. You know who came up with the "rule" that a diamond engagement ring should cost two months' salary for the groom? Big surprise: it was the DeBeers diamond cartel, which has kept the price of diamonds artificially high for decades by deliberately restricting supply. One hundred years ago, most engagement rings didn't have diamonds in them at all. Then DeBeers launched a successful campaign to convince husbands-to-be that the only proper ring was a diamond, and moreover, a diamond costing a month's salary. This was such a success that DeBeers later bumped the figure up to two months' salary in the U.S. and three months' salary in Japan.

By 2021, according to The Knot, the average cost of an engagement ring in the U.S. had reached $6,000. (Granted, this figure may be skewed upward based on the magazine's readership.) And what do you get for that $6,000? Not an investment that produces any sort of return. Not an asset that you can sell for a profit, since the recipient is obviously expected to keep the ring as long as the marriage lasts. And definitely not a happier marriage, since a 2014 Emory University study found that the couples who spent most on their rings (between $2,000 and $4,000 in 2014 dollars) had a 30 percent higher risk of divorce than those who chose more affordable rings ($500 to $2,000). 

A big diamond ring is a pretty ornament and a status symbol, but it provides no tangible benefits whatsoever. And given all the environmental and human rights abuses associated with diamond mining, you're probably doing both the earth and your wallet a favor by choosing an old-fashioned ring with a different type of stone—or a modern one with a lab-created diamond. Or, if you're willing to break with this not-so-old tradition, doing what we did and skipping the engagement ring entirely.

5. An expensive wedding. You know what else that Emory study found increased the risk of divorce? Expensive weddings. Couples who spent between $10,000 and $20,000 on their weddings were 29 percent likelier to end up divorced than those who spent between $5,000 and $10,000; couples who spent over $20,000 increased their divorce rates by a whopping 46 percent. By contrast, couples who spent less than $5,000 (like us) actually reduced their risk. Couples who spent even less than we did—$1,000 or less—cut their divorce rate nearly in half. (Having a big wedding, with lots of guests, did not pose the same dangers: the couples with the most wedding guests actually had a lower risk of divorce than those with the fewest. Apparently, the real mistake is spending a lot of money on each guest.)

A frugal wedding like ours also eliminates many of the environmental costs associated with traditional weddings: elaborate invitations, single-use decorations, pesticide-laden cut flowers, gas-guzzling limos, and even one-use-only wedding attire. We didn't have any of that stuff, and we're still together after 18 years, so it clearly didn't hurt us any.

6. Marble countertops. I've complained before about the ubiquity and price of granite countertops, but marble is even worse. It's even more expensive than granite, at $15 to $190 per square foot, and even harder to care for. Since it's porous, you have to not only seal it but also use special, non-abrasive cleaners to avoid scratching it. It's also vulnerable to chipping and etching from acid. And it has all the same environmental problems from quarrying and transporting the heavy stone that granite does.

7. The latest smartphone. After many years of not owning a smartphone at all, I've finally come to accept that the benefits of these little gadgets outweigh their drawbacks. But there's a big difference between owning a smartphone and buying a new top-of-the-line phone every year. 

The financial costs are obvious. The latest, greatest iPhone has a starting price of $1,100; the latest Samsung Galaxy model costs $1,200. You could get around half of that price back by trading in last year's model, but you're still paying over $500 per year for new phones (not even counting the cost of the service). By contrast, my first smartphone, a bottom-of-the-line Motorola, cost $130, and I'd still be using it now if it hadn't developed a problem that I was unable to fix. 

But worse still is the environmental toll. Producing all those new phones requires a lot of rare materials like lithium, cobalt, and gold. Mining these materials is environmentally destructive, and disposing of them is hazardous. And while old smartphones can be reused and recycled, many users simply discard them when they upgrade.

It's clearly better for the environment to buy a decent phone, hang onto it as long as possible, and make sure it gets recycled when it finally becomes unusable. And it will clearly save you a bundle, too.

***

So there you have it: my selections for the seven least ecofrugal consumer purchases. If you think any of my choices are unreasonable, or if you think there's something even worse that I left off the list, let me know in the comments.

That's it until next Thrift Week, when I promise to be a little more on the ball about starting on the 17th. (This time, I'll get Google to remind me about it ahead of time.)

Now we're (still) cooking with gas

This past Tuesday was my birthday, and one of my gifts was a subscription to the Washington Post. I'd asked for this specifically because my mom, who is a Post subscriber, keeps sending me links to articles she finds interesting, and I can never read them because the Post only allows non-subscribers to view one free article per month. And one of the first articles I was able to read with that new subscription was an op-ed from writer Tove Danovich entitled "I bought an induction stove. Then the power went out." 

You probably won't be able to read the piece if you're not a subscriber yourself, so I'll just sum it up briefly: Like many people, Danovich recently jumped on the bandwagon and swapped out her gas stove for an induction stove powered by electricity. And like most people who do this, she went on and on to her friends about how wonderful it was: so fast, so responsive, so easy to clean! Why would anyone ever choose gas? Then, as foreshadowed in the headline, she got an answer to that question when a storm knocked out her electricity—a problem she says she'd never once experienced before in her Portland, Oregon home. With no way to cook a meal or even brew a pot of coffee, she was driven out into the storm "in search of caffeine." 

Despite the headline, this story itself occupies only the first few paragraphs of the article. Danovich spends the rest of it explaining why, even after this incident, she's still absolutely convinced that ditching her old gas stove was the right thing to do. Gas stoves, she points out, emit pollutants that are dangerous to both our health and to the planet—though she's a little unclear on exactly why. (She seems to think the reason they've been linked to childhood asthma is that they "constantly leak methane," even when they're not running; in fact, the primary compound responsible is nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which is produced only when the gas is burned.) She maintains that the reason most people continue to cling to their gas stoves is that they're snobs who don't want to give up their "high-end status symbols." For her, the fact that they don't work during a power outage is at most a minor inconvenience, not something that would ever deter any reasonable person from making the switch.

Unfortunately, I cannot dismiss this problem so easily. In fact, it's the main reason I haven't seriously considered replacing my own (not at all high-end) gas stove. 

I know that global warming is the single biggest threat currently facing humanity—perhaps even the biggest threat we've ever faced. I know that keeping the overall temperature rise below 1.5°C (2.7°F) is our best chance to avoid the deadliest impacts of climate change. And I know that we have no chance of meeting this goal unless we completely eliminate fossil fuel use—including my trusty gas stove—by 2050.

But I also know that no matter what we do, we can't avoid all the impacts of global warming. Many of them are already here, and even if we manage to meet the 1.5°C target, they won't go away. One of the effects we've already begun to see is more frequent and more powerful storms—the kind of storms that tend to result in power outages. Already, here in our New Jersey home, we experience power outages regularly—in extreme cases, several in a week. The one triggered by Superstorm Sandy lasted 24 hours at our house, and we got off easy; some of our neighbors were without power for days. 

One of the reason we made it through these disasters relatively unscathed was that our stove continued to work (except for the electric igniters, but we could easily light the burners with a match), so we didn't have to go hungry. Our battery-powered emergency gadgets can provide us with light, communication, even entertainment, but we don't have a backup for the stove. And with global warming increasing the odds that there will be more superstorms in our future, going without a backup seems more unwise than ever. (In fact, while so many of my fellow environmentalists are exulting about going all-electric and capping off the gas lines to their homes, getting fossil fuels out of their lives forever, I've actually gone the other way, adding a natural gas fireplace to our home specifically as an emergency heat source.)

This is why it frustrates me so much that environmentalists have chosen gas stoves, out of all the gas-burning appliances in a home, to fixate on. Even though cooking is responsible for only a tiny percentage of household natural gas use, they seem to think that they should attack stove use first because a stove is easier to replace than an entire heating system, and therefore it's an easier sell. But for me, the stove is much harder to replace than the heating system or anything else that runs on gas—and that's entirely due to the fear of power outages. My gas heating system, which is a much bigger offender than the stove, would be much costlier to replace, but much easier to get along without. It's useless in a power outage anyway because it relies on an electric heat pump to circulate the water, so I wouldn't be risking anything by replacing it with a more efficient electric heat pump. Replacing my gas dryer with an electric one would likewise pose no risk, since I can't do laundry anyway if the washer isn't working. The gas water heater would be a little harder to part with, since it allows me to enjoy a hot shower during a power outage, but that's a luxury I can manage without for a couple of days if I have to. But without my gas stove, no electricity means no hot water, no hot coffee, and no hot food. And if the power outage is due to a severe storm, I can't even leave the house to get these things.

There is one possible way out of this dilemma: find a backup system for cooking, similar to the gas fireplace that serves as a backup for heating. I've looked into this before, but most of the sources I found suggested either hauling out the charcoal grill or cooking with a solar oven—both options that won't work in the middle of a severe storm. However, after reading Danovich's piece, I decided it was worth digging into the topic a little bit more. And this time, I managed to track down an article on the self-sufficiency site Common Sense Home that offered a couple of ideas that were at least technically feasible. The first option, a flameless heater designed for use with MREs (meals ready to eat), wouldn't be ideal for us because we probably couldn't find any MREs that would fit our dietary needs. But the second, a camp stove that could be used with canned fuel (such as Sterno), seemed to have some merit. A quick search revealed that I could buy a folding stove for around $10 and a dozen cans of Sterno (good for 6 hours each) for around $40. Together, these would enable us to enjoy hot meals with neither gas nor electricity for a week or more.

Of course, even with this backup, we still wouldn't be able to go fully all-electric at home, since the gas fireplace would still have to stay. But since it's only there for an emergency backup, it wouldn't be used very often. Of course, if America actually does get its act sufficiently together to eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, we'd eventually lose our gas service and have to find an alternative, but I'm sure we'd have plenty of time to figure that out.

But even if swapping out our gas stove is a viable option, I remain unconvinced that it's crucial to do it immediately. Yes, there is definitely a link between NO2 from gas stoves and asthma. But we don't have asthma, and we don't have children at risk of developing it. And we do have a decent range hood, which (according to the experts at both Good Housekeeping and Wirecutter) can remove most of the dangerous fumes associated with cooking. 

I do want and intend to go all-electric at home eventually. But given that our gas boiler and water heater are responsible for the lion's share of our fossil fuel use—and that there's a much better technology available to replace them—I think those, not the much-maligned gas stove, should be our primary targets.

A bootless effort (or, the shoe conundrum revisited)

For many years now, readers on this site have been listening to me complain about the troubles I have with shoe shopping. The joy many women apparently take in the hunt for that perfect pair is utterly foreign to me. I have so much difficulty finding shoes that fit both my short, wide feet and my other requirements (practical, reasonably durable, leather-free, and not completely outrageous in price) that when I find a pair that's acceptable, I tend to wear them until I can literally feel the sidewalk through them, so much do I dread the process of trying to replace them.

That's the situation I find myself in right now with regard to winter boots. Currently, I have not one but two pairs of boots, both of which leak. In the case of one of the two pairs, I can't complain about that too much; they're boys hiking boots that I picked up for a mere five bucks at our town yard sale in 2021, so even if they started to leak around the edges after just a few months of use, I can still say I got my money's worth out of them. But the other pair were Sperry boots that I paid around $100 for at Famous Footwear, and within a few months, the hollow heels had worn completely through, letting in water every time I wore them in even slightly wet weather. (I complained to the company, which offered to replace them, but they didn't have any replacement pairs available in a size and style that fit my requirements.)

I've already attempted several times to repair both these pairs of boots. I've tried filling in the leaky areas with Shoe Goo and, when that didn't work, with hot glue, but both of them quickly wore off. So I'm back on the hunt again, and growing increasingly frustrated as my quarry continues to elude me. I keep finding pairs online that almost meet all my criteria, but are missing one or more key factors. For example:

• The Nautica Anthea boot, available on Amazon, is leather-free, looks warm, and is a nice-looking style. But it doesn't come in a wide width, and anyway, I never buy anything at all from Amazon if I can help it.
• Another fleece-lined motorcycle boot, available on Poshmark, is likewise unavailable in wide. I might take a risk on it anyway, but the site offers no guarantee that I can return it if it doesn't fit.
• The Kensington Treklite Child from Native Shoes is vegan and, since it's a kids' size, would probably be wide enough for me. And at $65, it's more affordable than most adult options. But according to the "Questions" section on the website, it's not warm enough or waterproof enough to wear in snow. Also, it's a pull-on style, which I often have trouble squeezing my feet into.
• The Insulated Biker Boots from Will's Vegan Store come in a European size 37, which usually fits me, and are ethically made and certified carbon neutral. They also cost more than I've ever paid for any footwear before, but I would have paid the price willingly if I had any confidence that I'd be able to make them last several seasons. But when I wrote to the store to ask if these shoes could be resoled, their answer was basically, "Maybe." Although the soles appear to be stitched on, they're actually "mounted" (glued), which means it may or may not be possible for a cobbler to replace them. The only way to know is to take a specific pair to a specific cobbler and ask. And I'm not willing to risk $136 on them without knowing up front whether they're repairable or not.

I've considered searching for a secondhand pair of leather boots, since I'm willing to wear leather if the profits from the sale are going to a reseller and not to the manufacturer. But the sites that sell these, such as eBay, typically don't allow returns. And when you've got feet as peculiar as mine, buying a pair of shoes without a guarantee you can return them if they don't fit is a losing proposition.

So why am I sharing this sad story with all of you? Well, I guess it's to illustrate the point that making ecofrugal choices isn't always easy. If I didn't care about the financial or economic costs of my decisions, I could surely have managed to find an acceptable pair of boots by now—maybe several pairs. They might be made from leather, or so flimsy that they'd wear out within a few months, but hey, no biggie: I'd just throw them out and blithely buy another. But because I do care, I'm holding out for something that's worth its cost to me and to the planet—which is why I'm putting up with wet feet in the meantime.

On this blog, I tend to focus mostly on my ecofrugal successes, like growing raspberries and shopping on Craigslist and building stuff with scrap materials. Those stories are fun and useful, but they may paint an unrealistically rosy picture of the ecofrugal life, giving the impression that it has no real drawbacks. So by throwing in this story of a minor and (hopefully) temporary failure, I hope to give you a more balanced picture. I want it to be clear that yes, ecofrugality does have its downsides—but in my opinion, they're definitely outweighed by the benefits.

Recipe of the Month: Sprout Pad Thai

We're starting 2023 off on the right foot with a new Recipe of the Month that's really focused on the vegetables. Like many of the other recipes we've tried lately, this one uses low-carb veggies in place of starchier foods—in this case, pad Thai noodles. But we had to make some adjustments to the recipe to make it a truly low-carb dish.

Last Thanksgiving, my brother-in-law asked if I would be interested in trying a recipe he had found for sprout pad Thai, made with a combination of Brussels sprouts and bean sprouts in place of the noodles. I enthusiastically assented, but he ended up not making it because he didn't have all the ingredients he needed. Instead he prepared plain roasted Brussels sprouts, which I also love. But I was still curious about the sprout pad Thai recipe, so at my request, he emailed it to me to try at home.

However, he warned that as written, it contained a "ridiculous amount of sugar": half a cup of brown sugar for a full batch, or a quarter-cup for the half-sized batch (about 3 servings) we planned to make. This isn't quite as absurd as it sounds, since the first step in the recipe is to melt the sugar with water and cook it down to form a caramel, which serves as the base for the sauce. But with four teaspoons of sugar in a fairly small serving, it clearly wasn't going to work for us.

To fix this, Brian started by cutting the sugar in half. Then he spread this reduced-sugar sauce over a much larger volume of vegetables by serving the entire mixture over additional cooked bean sprouts. And finally, to balance out the remaining carbs with more protein, he added half a pound of tofu, prepared according to his usual method for stir-fries (diced, tossed with soy sauce, and fried until crisp). With these emendations, he figured I could eat one-third of the half-sized batch without going over my carb limits for the meal.

He also had to make a couple of additional changes. The recipe as written mentioned garlic in the instructions, but it didn't include it in the ingredient list. Brian decided this meant that he could just add as much garlic as he wanted, so he went with two cloves for the half-batch (the equivalent of four for a full batch). And he omitted the cilantro the recipe called for, since we didn't have any and I don't care much for it anyway.

The revised recipe (for a full batch) looks like this:

Sprout Pad Thai

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. In a small saucepan, combine 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar and 1/4 cup water and stir over medium-low heat until the sauce until the sauce turns deep amber and has the consistency of caramel (about 15 minutes). Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then stir in 1/2 tsp. ground white pepper, 4 cloves minced garlic, 6 Tbsp. fish sauce, and 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice. Return mixture to low heat and warm through, stirring until a smooth sauce forms (about 4 minutes). Remove from heat and set aside.
3. Toss 2 lb. Brussels sprouts with 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil. Arrange on a sheet pan cut side down and sprinkle lightly with salt. Roast, stirring every 10 minutes or so, until tender, golden brown, and charred in spots (25 to 30 minutes).
4. While sprouts are roasting, cut 1 lb. tofu into small cubes. Sprinkle lightly with soy sauce and fry in vegetable oil until crisp. Set aside. In the same pan, saute 4 cups mung bean sprouts until slightly wilted. Finely chop 1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts and thinly slice 3 scallions.
   
5. When sprouts are done, transfer to a large bowl and toss with the sauce. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add in the scallions, peanuts, 1 tsp. chili powder, and 1 cup of the cooked bean sprouts and toss again.
   
6. Serve mixture over the remaining cooked bean sprouts, with the cubed tofu, lime wedges, and cilantro leaves (optional) on the side.

This recipe spanned the full range of flavors: sweet brown sugar, tart lime juice, a little heat from the chili powder, a bit of salt and a ton of umami from the fish sauce, and just a trace of bitterness from the sprouts. All in all, it packed a considerably bigger taste punch than the carb-laden pad Thai we used to make with starchy rice noodles. The texture of the cooked bean sprouts was not the same as the noodles, of course, but with all those different flavors throwing a party in my mouth, I didn't really miss them. 

The only downside of this veggie-packed recipe is that, with not much in it but veggies, it doesn't have a lot of staying power. A big bowlful of bean sprouts, mixed vegetables, and tofu made for a satisfying meal, but a couple of hours later I was hungry again. But on the other hand, I usually end up having a little snack after dinner anyway, so if you look at the total amount of food I ate at dinner and afterwards, I probably ended up taking in fewer calories in total with this sprout-based pad Thai than I would have if I'd dined on the traditional, starchy version. And I certainly consumed a larger dose of healthy veggies.

In short, as long as we can continue to find cheap Brussels sprouts on sale at Lidl and/or Trader Joe's, I think this recipe's a keeper. It will come in particularly handy during the winter months, when there isn't as good a variety of fresh produce available.