Recipe of the Month: Vegan Butternut Squash Pasta

It's the last day of September, so I have just enough time to get in my Recipe of the Month. This one has a bit of a story attached to it: I occasionally watch a webseries on YouTube called "Good Mythical Morning," which is a little bit like "Mythbusters" without all the elaborate construction work. In one of these videos, the two hosts conduct a blind taste test in which they try vegan and non-vegan versions of the same food and try to guess which was which. One of the foods they had the easiest time identifying correctly was macaroni and cheese (compared against two vegan versions, one made with cashews and one with coconut milk). This got me wondering: is it really that hard to make a vegan mac and cheese that's convincing? I mean, the mac and cheese I grew up with came in a box, and the "cheese" was an orange powder in a little envelope that was only distantly related to dairy. How tough would it be to simulate that?

I started searching around, and I came across an intriguing-looking recipe on my favorite vegan food blog, It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, which used butternut squash in the sauce. It looked interesting and not too complicated, but it called for one ingredient we didn't have: white miso paste. It didn't seem worth buying a whole container of that just to use one tablespoon in this recipe, and I assumed leaving it out would remove an essential element of the dish's "cheesiness." So, on the whole, it didn't seem worth the effort.

However, there was a note on the recipe saying it had been "adapted from my butternut squash pasta recipe." Clicking through to that one, I found that it did not require white miso paste or anything else we didn't have on hand. There was only one catch: the butternut squash we had was cooked and frozen, rather than whole. But since the squash eventually ends up as a puree anyway, Brian figured that wouldn't matter too much. He just sauteed the onion and garlic as the recipe required, added the cooked squash to the pan with the other ingredients, and let it all simmer together before pureeing it and mixing it with the pasta. And for the finishing touch, he fried some fresh sage leaves in veggie butter until they were crisp and sprinkled them on top.

The finished product looked and smelled good, but the taste was somewhat underwhelming. There was nothing objectionable about the flavor; there just wasn't much to it. Even the sage didn't contribute much. Frying the sage leaves made them smell very aromatic, but it seemed to rob them of most of their actual flavor. As an experiment, Brian picked a few more fresh sage leaves and sprinkled them into the dish raw, and he found they made a much bigger impact that way.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this dish was a disappointment. I certainly had no trouble eating it up or polishing off the leftovers the next day. But it wasn't good enough to earn a place in our regular collection of butternut squash recipes—particularly with a squash harvest as pitifully small as the one we expect to get this year. If we were simply rolling in butternut, the way we were the year we let the squash vine grow wild in our side yard, maybe it would be worth making this simply for the sake of variety. But with only a handful of squash to get us through the winter, I think we'll want to save them for our favorite dishes, like pizza, lasagna, and soufflé. If we really crave a butternut squash pasta, we'll pull out this old recipe for Brown Butter Butternut Squash Rigatoni and have a go at making that vegan. (This technique from A Virtual Vegan for convincing plant butter to brown might do the trick.)

Gardeners' Holidays 2023: Harvest Home

The Gardeners' Holiday in mid-September is based on a traditional holiday in the English folk calendar: Harvest Home, also known as Ingathering, marking the end of the grain harvest. (This is when John Barleycorn traditionally gets murdered, only to rise again the following year.) Our garden doesn't contain any grain, but this holiday nonetheless marks the height of our harvest season, when our tomatoes, peppers, and second crop of raspberries are all at their peak.

This year's September harvest, though, is a bit of a mixed bag. We're getting plenty of tomatoes off our trusty Sun Gold and Premio plants, as well our new San Marzano plum tomato, which definitely looks like a keeper. (Some of the fruits it's produced are not just tasty but also entertaining: little conjoined twins that Brian has dubbed "tomeeples.") The Pineapple tomatoes have produced only a handful of fruits, but they're nice, big, juicy ones. But the Carmen and Banana peppers have provided only a handful of fruits so far, and while the new Biquinho chilis have yielded dozens of little pepperlings, each one is so tiny that the total volume is barely a couple of handfuls. Our Provider green beans have utterly failed to live up to their name, giving only a few ounces worth, and the later-producing Climbing French beans have so far produced only a few ounces as well. And while our raspberry canes are giving us a little something to pick every day, it's not much compared with the spring crop (and certainly not compared with the massive harvest of plums we had this summer).

But there is one crop that's proving surprisingly productive for this time of year: the arugula. And what's all the more surprising about it is that we didn't actually plant a fall crop of arugula. We put some in last spring, but we harvested only a few cups' worth before it all bolted, and we figured that was the end of it. But apparently those plants have somehow reseeded themselves—and not just in the beds where we originally planted them, but all over the paths surrounding the beds. In fact, the plants in the paths look even bigger and healthier than the ones in the beds, and all of them look better than the ones we planted in the spring. (We've observed this sort of thing with arugula before. It seems to perform best when it sows itself at random, rather than being carefully planted and tended in a well-prepared garden bed.)

We've already enjoyed some of this unexpected harvest in the warm chickpea salad that we learned from Mark Bittman, which makes a reasonable light supper when accompanied by some hearty bread. And there's plenty where that came from to use in other arugulacentric dishes, like arugula-mushroom pasta and pasta with arugula and dried cranberries. There might even be enough for experimenting with some new recipes once we've been through all those old favorites.

So, while we might not have that wide a variety of crops to harvest for our Harvest Home celebration, we still have enough fresh veggies to have fun with. And since this is only the beginning, not the end, of our fall harvest, we can hope there's more where that came from.

Vegan "pepperoni" pizza

So, this probably won't be my official Vegan Recipe of the Month for September, but I thought it was worth sharing. Last weekend, Brian made a pizza using our homemade vegan mozzarella, as he's done this many times since we found the recipe. But this one had a new twist: it was a vegan "pepperoni" pizza. After his success making a facsimile of Polish sausage from Soy Curls, he started wondering if he could also turn them into a close approximation of pepperoni. He searched online for "vegan Soy Curl pepperoni" and found a recipe for exactly that on a site called Courtney's Homestead, and since he happened to have all the ingredients on hand, he decided to give it a try. 

The recipe was pretty straightforward. After hydrating the Soy Curls, he tossed them with oil and a mixture of ground spices—fennel, garlic, smoked paprika, and crushed red pepper—and roasted them on a baking sheet. The recipe called for a whopping two teaspoons of crushed red pepper, but Brian halved this to keep the spice down to a manageable level. He also made only a half batch, using one cup of Soy Curls instead of two, and found that to be a sufficient amount for a whole pizza. However, since he wasn't sure how I would like it, he hedged his bets by putting it on only two-thirds of the pie.

As you can see, this vegan substitute doesn't look that much like real pepperoni. It looks a little bit more like sausage, and to me, it also tasted much more like it. Granted, it had been a long time since I'd had any kind of meat on a pizza, so my memory might not have been accurate, but the main flavor I could taste was fennel, which I associate more with Italian sausage. If garlic and paprika had been the dominant flavors, I might have found it a bit more convincing as pepperoni, but it would still have lacked the "characteristic tangy flavor" that, according to The Spruce Eats, comes from Lactobacillus bacteria. (It also wasn't greasy enough to be a really convincing copy of either sausage or pepperoni, but I didn't consider that a bad thing.)

Although I wouldn't call this a very close facsimile of pepperoni, it was still an enjoyable addition to the pizza. It provided a little added flavor and texture variety, as well as a welcome dose of protein (which our vegan mozzarella doesn't really provide). So, on the whole, I'd say this vegan pizza topping is worth trying, but maybe don't call it "vegan pepperoni." People who are expecting pepperoni will most likely find this disappointing, but if it's labeled as something like "Soy Curl sausage," they'll probably eat it up quite happily.

An ecofrugal fashion makeover

So, remember how I said last month that Brian had gotten all his back-to-school shopping done for under $50? Well, it turns out he'd like to change his major. 

After forty-plus years of the same basic jeans-and-tees look, he found himself wanting to break out of that box a little. Not to change his look completely, but just to jazz it up with some more unconventional pieces. A little bit arty, a little bit bohemian, a little bit more in touch with his feminine side. Kind of like the stuff at Free People, but for guys (and ideally, a little less expensive). However, since he hadn't bought anything but jeans and tees for so long, he didn't really have any idea how to do this. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for, let alone where to find it. So he basically asked me to be his personal stylist—to help him define his style and upgrade his wardrobe. 

I was happy to help with this, but being me, I also wanted to do it as ecofrugally as possible. Searching for inspiration on fast-fashion sites like LightInTheBox or Coofandy was okay, but I didn't want to buy a bunch of new stuff there. Unlike me, Brian hasn't taken the Dress Retro challenge limiting him to three never-used garments this year, but I still wanted his new-to-him clothes to be sustainable picks: secondhand if possible, and eco-friendly as a second choice. And, of course, I wanted any no-longer-loved pieces removed from his wardrobe to go to a good home, if at all possible.

We started the process by going through his entire closet and getting rid of everything he didn't like. Out went all the clothes he'd been given as gifts and never really worn, all the once-loved pieces too battered to wear, and most of the stuff bought for a heavier Brian that fit like a tent on his current frame. (We kept a few outsized pieces he particularly liked and transferred them to our office closet, just in case he ever needs a larger size again.) By the time we were done, we had filled up three bags with clothes in decent condition to donate to the thrift shop and one with completely played-out clothing to go to the textile recycling bin.

As we worked, we also looked at the pieces he was opting to keep and discussed what he liked about them. For instance, although he kept some shirts and sweaters in dark, solid colors, his favorites were generally the ones with bright colors or interesting patterns. When it came to T-shirts, he was all about the designs and slogans; even a freebie from the blood bank with some message like "I gave blood and all I got was this awesome shirt" was more appealing to him than a plain one. And for most garments, he liked a body-skimming fit: neither baggy nor skin-tight.

Armed with this information, we set out on stage two of our ecofrugal wardrobe makeover: hitting the thrift shops. Since there's a dearth of good ones in our area, we set aside a Sunday afternoon for a trip to  Princeton, where I knew of two stores with a good selection of high-quality items. (Their prices are also on the high side—possibly higher than we might pay online—but I was willing to pay extra for sustainability.)

Our first stop was the textile recycling bin at Westminster Choir College, which we managed to find after driving around the campus a bit. After dumping off the worn-out garments there, we took the three bags of clothes in good condition and hauled them up the steps to the Nearly New Shop, where we handed them over at the front desk before heading off to browse the menswear racks. Brian tried on two short-sleeved shirts and opted to buy one, a white-and-teal check with snaps, rather than buttons, down the front (which he said would come in handy if he ever needed to impersonate the Incredible Hulk). 

He also tried on a very heavy wool cardigan, standing right in front of the mirror first because he didn't want to have it on in the summer heat any longer than necessary. He'd owned cardigans before and worn them regularly, but always in plain, neutral shades; this one had a sort of Alpine pattern to it that he didn't think would be to his taste. But once he had it on and I asked him, "So, would you wear a sweater like this?" his response was, "You know, I think maybe I would." He was a little hesitant because he thought it would probably be too warm to wear at the office, but my position was that if it sparked joy, he should have it. Besides, as I pointed out, he can always treat it as outerwear, since it's certainly warm enough to take the place of a light jacket on chilly fall days.

Flushed with this success, we headed down the street to Greene Street Consignment. Brian tried on a couple more shirts here, but he didn't love any of them—and one that he did particularly like the look of, a color-blocked Henley, proved far too small for him. But he did hit on one unexpected find: a pair of slip-on canvas shoes, labeled as "sidewalk surfers," in a bright Guatemalan print. They were unlike anything he'd ever worn before, but with a price tag under $20, he figured they were worth taking a chance on. We then celebrated our successful shopping expedition with a quick trip to the library bookstore, followed by a snack and a game of cribbage at Starbucks, before heading home.

Cost-wise, our haul from this trip isn't as impressive as our previous one from Goodwill. We spent a total of $76.95 for just three items: one shirt, one sweater, and one pair of shoes. But more than half of that was for the cardigan, and when you consider the sheer weight of that thing, it's not so expensive on a per-pound basis. More importantly, adding these three new pieces to his wardrobe will help him feel a little more like himself—and without adding to the environmental burdens caused by fast fashion. And if that's not money well spent, what is?

Ingenuity > spending

A big part of living ecofrugally is finding ways to solve problems without spending, substituting a combination of work and imagination for money. Appropriately enough, this Labor Day weekend has given us three opportunities to fix problems using our own labor—a bit of physical and, even more important, a good dollop of mental.

Problem #1: The mismatched rain barrel hose

Our new rain barrel didn't come with a hose to drain off excess water. To fill this need, we picked up a cheap garden hose for $7 at Ocean State Job Lot. Brian screwed it on to the overflow valve at the top of the barrel, then stuck it through the garden fence behind the barrel to direct the flow away from the house. 

This was perfectly functional, but it didn't look great. Every time I opened the kitchen door to dump something in the compost bin, it really bugged me to see our nice, new terracotta-colored barrel marred by that incongruous piece of shiny green plastic sticking off the side. (I didn't get a photo of it, but here's a little picture I mocked up with Microsoft Paint to give you the general idea.)

The simple, spendy solution to this problem would have been to go to the home center and buy a new hose in a more unobtrusive black for $15 or so. But in less time than it would have taken us to drive there, I was able to fix the problem with less than a dollar's worth of black duct tape. I just started at the valve end and wrapped it diagonally around the hose until I got to the bottom.

Seen close up, this doesn't look perfect. But we don't spend that much time looking at it close up anyway. It was the view from a distance that bothered me, and that problem is now fixed with minimal cost and effort.

Problem #2: The off-color sandals

No, I don't mean that they were any way suggestive (unless you're into feet, I guess). It was their actual color that was off.

As I've noted many times on this blog, I have a lot of trouble finding shoes that fit my needs. I spent a good portion of this summer looking for a pair of off-white wedge sandals, and several pairs I ordered online either got returned because they didn't fit or, in one case, never arrived at all. So when my latest purchase, a cheap Chinese pair with adjustable hook-and-loop straps, actually felt comfortable the minute I put them on my feet, I knew I was going to keep them, no matter what.

But these shoes had one glaring flaw that hadn't been obvious in the listing. Since my feet are wide, I had to loosen the straps, leaving a portion of the hook-and-loop tape (the generic name for Velcro) visible. And while the uppers were a light beige color, the tape was white. Not off-white, but bright, optical white. The contrast between it and the shoes was very pronounced and very distracting.

A quick Google search led me to this blogger, who said she had successfully painted Velcro using an art tool called a Paintstik. I didn't have any of those, and a quick search suggested that they didn't really come in the off-white color I was looking for anyway, so I started hunting for other alternatives. First I tried tea, which I knew could be used as a fabric dye. (In All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown, one of the girls has to use it on her sister's dress after she spills iced tea on it.) Pressing a damp tea bag repeatedly over one of the hook-and-loop bits turned it a little darker, but it was a big hassle and not all that effective. I thought of trying shoe polish, but the brown shoe polish we had was significantly darker than the shoes, and too-dark tape would look just as bad as too-light.

Searching for a closer color match, I hit on the tube of concealer in my purse. And this turned out to be not only effective, but also extremely easy to apply. I just scrubbed it onto the hook-and-loop tape with an old toothbrush, and it sank right in with just a few seconds of work. The color isn't a perfect match for the sandals, but it's close enough now that you only notice the mismatch if you're staring straight at it. And when is anyone ever going to do that?

Problem #3: Making room for under-sink storage

Lately, we've taken to washing our cleaning rags separately so they don't transfer dirt or oil to the rest of our laundry. At first we put a little mini-hamper for them next to our main clothes hamper, but that system turned out not to be ideal. With the two baskets right next to each other, sometimes we'd absentmindedly toss a rag into the main bin, and occasionally small items like undies and socks accidentally ended up in the rag bin. 

So we decided it would make more sense to keep the rag bin in a separate location. The kitchen seemed like the logical spot, since we could toss rags in immediately after using them. Unfortunately, the only place we could reasonably put the bin was under the sink, and we already had two trash cans there—one for actual trash, and the other holding miscellaneous items like foil, parchment paper, sponges, and zip-top bags. In order to make room for the rag bin, we'd have to find another way to store all that other stuff.

We found some room for the smaller items in a drawer that was only partially filled with dishtowels. For the longer items, we figured the best option would be a cabinet-door organizer like this one. However, we couldn't find anything along those lines at either Target or Home Depot. So, rather than order one online and wait for it to arrive, Brian just measured the cabinet door, made a quick sketch, and disappeared into his workshop. 

When he emerged, he was holding a simple box made of unfinished scrap wood with some little tabs on the back that could be screwed to the cabinet door. We can always finish it later if we want it to look nicer, but for now, it does a perfectly good job of holding the foil, zip-top bags, and parchment paper. In fact, we have much easier access to them now than we did when they were shoved into a trash can with a bunch of other stuff on top. And we now have a spot for dirty rags under the sink, right next to the dispenser that holds our clean rags.

So there you have it: three problems solved with less than a dollar's worth of materials and less than an hour of labor. In every case, the solution is at least as good as something we could have purchased, and in the case of the sandals, it's clearly better. Given how little luck I'd had finding sandals all summer long, this is a problem I probably couldn't have solved at all by throwing money at it.