What we're doing for Earth Day

This year, Earth Day overlaps with the start of Passover—which means, ironically, that we're going to spend it being a little less ecofrugal than usual. Normally we wouldn't drive anywhere on a Monday; Brian would either bike to work or work from home. But tomorrow, we'll have to drive to get to my parents' house for the Seder, and since my family isn't kosher, that meal will include both meat and dairy (a free-range chicken for dinner and ice cream with fruit compote for dessert). And our menu for the following week will also include more meat and dairy than usual, since many of the Passover-friendly recipes we know include either one or the other. 

Fortunately, Brian and I are making up for that by increasing our efforts in the lead-up to Earth Day itself. Over the past week or so, our earth-friendly activities have included:

1. Trying a new vegan restaurant. Last weekend, we went to a show with some friends in the nearby town of Metuchen, and they suggested meeting for dinner beforehand. I did a little investigation online to find a vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Metuchen and discovered one called Red's Leaf Cafe where the menu is 100 percent vegan. The place is quite small, with just a handful of tables, but everything we ordered—the shared oyster mushroom appetizer, Brian's sesame seitan, my orange lion's mane mushrooms over coconut rice—was very tasty. Unfortunately, it was also pretty pricey; the bill for our party of four, including tip, came to $160. So I don't think we'll want to visit there on a regular basis, but if we have guests we want to impress, it could be worth another trip.
2. My monthly Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL) meeting. Most months, this group holds its monthly meeting on Tuesday night, with only a few people meeting in person and the rest joining via Zoom. This month, for a change, it met at a Unitarian church in Somerville on Saturday afternoon. (Brian helped make my trip up there more eco-friendly by driving me there and spending the time while I was at my meeting running errands in town.) My favorite part of the meeting was watching the monthly presentation from CCL's national organization, which featured an interesting speaker: Ernesto Alcantar of Potential Energy, the self-described "marketing team for planet Earth." His presentation focused on eight principles for having productive conversations about climate with people who don't live in our climate-activist bubble. His tips include "talking like a human" (avoiding jargon like "carbon footprint" and even "greenhouse gas"), avoiding partisanship, and focusing on "humans, not concepts."
3. More visible mending. After my success fixing the holes in Brian's socks with Scotch darning, I decided to try a new technique called honeycomb darning for reinforcing some worn areas that didn't have holes yet. This method involves putting in a series of blanket stitches running all around the edge of the worn spot, then looping through those stitches to add another row of stitches farther in, and repeating the process until you get to the middle. This video on YouTube does a good job of explaining the process, including what to do with the dangling "tail threads" at the end. One thing it doesn't show is what to do if, like me, you misjudge how much thread you need and end up running out before you've finished the job. I had to guess how to work in a new piece of thread to pick up where the first one ran out. But I later found a second video on the same subject that does show what to do, and its method is pretty much the same as mine, so apparently I guessed right.
4. Joining a stream cleanup. Several members of our CCL chapter took part in the
   
   Raritan Headwaters 34th Annual Stream Cleanup yesterday. (Since this blog is technically social media, I'll throw in the tags @raritanheadwaters and #RHAstreamcleanup here.) The area we were assigned to was Spruce Run Recreation Area in Clinton, which is actually along a reservoir rather than a stream. Our team of seven didn't go into or near the water itself; instead we donned yellow vests and combed the verge along a half-mile stretch of road near the park entrance. By far the most common type of trash we found was cigarette butts—over 150 of them—followed by plastic bottles and wrappers. (Little mini liquor bottles and cigarette butts were particularly likely to be found together.) The most unusual item we found was a piece of hardware that no one in our group, or in the larger group running the event, could identify. It's a...well, some sort of knob bolted to some sort of hinge, sort of? If you can figure out what it's for, please let me know.
5. Secondhand shopping. The stream cleanup happened to fall on the same day as the town-wide yard sales in Metuchen, so we couldn't spend the entire day strolling around and browsing sales as we normally would. But after coming home and having some lunch, we headed up to Metuchen to get in a couple of hours of yard-saling in the afternoon. Between the huge rummage sale at the First Presbyterian Church and a few other sales we visited in that same neighborhood, we managed to pick up three items of interest—a Fairport Convention CD, a peacock-blue T-shirt for me, and a Ngaio Marsh mystery—for $2.50 total. (Unfortunately, we then spent twice that amount at a local cafe on a cup of coffee for me, since I was practically falling asleep on my feet after our early morning and busy day.) Not a very impressive haul, but I followed up on it just now by ordering us a secondhand garlic press on eBay to replace the one that just fell apart as Brian was cooking dinner. (Since this one has a one-piece "rocker" design, with no moving parts, we know it won't break like its predecessor. And The Spruce Eats says it can mince ginger, too.)

Add all that in to our everyday earth-friendly activities, such as eating meatless meals, hanging our laundry, and Brian's regular bicycle commute, and I'd say we're not doing too badly.

These darned socks

Brian and I don't tend to spend a lot of money on clothing. Even our "investment pieces," like my fall coat and Brian's one good suit, typically come from thrift shops. But one item we don't cheap out on is winter socks. We both splurge on $22-per-pair Smartwool socks, which keep our feet cozy and warm without itching, and then wear them until they literally fall to pieces. I've always done my best to extend their lifespan by stitching up small holes as they formed, but eventually the holes would get too big to close up this way. At that point, our pricey socks would be fit only for the rag bin.

Once or twice, I attempted to salvage the socks by darning them. The only way I knew of to do this was the traditional weaving technique: make long stitches across the hole horizontally, then follow up with vertical stitches that weave in and out of the horizontal ones. Unfortunately, this never worked very well. If I put the horizontal stitches far apart, the weave was too loose, and if I put them close together, it was too hard to weave in between them. And in either case, it always came out lumpy.

That's why I was intrigued to learn about a visible mending technique called Scotch darning. With this method, you put in only one row of stitches at a time, as if you were knitting rather than weaving. Each row of stitches is secured to the row above it and is secured at either end to the good fabric outside the hole. (It's a bit hard to explain in words, but this YouTube video illustrates it quite clearly.) With this method, there's no worry about how to space the long stitches and no fiddling with weaving in and out between them. And if you make your thread too short and it runs out midway through the process, that's okay; you can just  start a new row and keep going, securing it to the one you just finished.

So I decided to give this method a try with one of Brian's Smartwool socks that had reached the limits of my normal darning abilities. I started out using some fine grey yarn that I'd had sitting around for years, but it kept breaking, so I switched to a heavier blue yarn that I'd received as part of a learn-to-knit kit. (All my attempts to make sense of the instructions in the knitting book had so far come to naught, so I figured there wasn't much sense in saving the yarn for a project I'd probably never manage to complete.)

It was a bit difficult to thread a needle—even my biggest "sailcloth" needle—with this thick yarn, but once I managed that, the actual stitching process went fairly smoothly. I quickly got the hang of the pattern: under the top row, under the bottom row, over the thread, pull it tight, and repeat. As one of the comments on the YouTube video observed, it was almost meditative. After I got the entire hole stitched up, I had Brian try on the sock, and while he could feel the difference between the darned area and the rest of the fabric, he said it wasn't uncomfortable. So I carried on, stitching up holes and worn areas in three more socks.

I ran into only two problems as I worked my way through this lot. First, the yarn kept getting twisted up as I tied it into loops, and I had to stop periodically and let it unwind itself. Second, I had trouble gauging how much yarn I needed to cover a hole completely. On my first attempt, I ran out of yarn and had to sister in a new length of yarn halfway down. The next time, I deliberately cut my yarn much longer than I thought I needed—far longer than the length of my arm, so that I had to stop after every stitch and spend a minute pulling the long strand through with both hands. This proved to be far more than I needed, leaving me with over a foot left over once the hole was completely covered. So I cut it off and used the extra yarn to get started on the next hole, only to find that it was once again too short and I had to re-thread the needle halfway through. I worked my way through four socks without ever really figuring out how much was the right amount.

Although this Scotch darning technique was a smooth enough process once I got going, it wasn't a quick one. I didn't time it, but I'm sure I spent at least an hour and probably over two hours getting through all four socks. It might have gone faster if I'd been using a finer yarn that was easier to get through the needle or if I'd known what amount to use, so that I wouldn't have to keep re-threading it in the middle of a hole. But even if I were doing it perfectly, it would still require a fairly significant investment of time. (Even the experienced sewer in the YouTube video takes nine and a half minutes to stitch up one medium-sized hole.) 

Given the time involved, this probably wouldn't be worth doing for cheap everyday socks. But taking an hour to repair a $22 pair of Smartwool socks is like earning a $22 hourly wage, and that beats New Jersey's minimum wage by nearly $7 an hour. Plus, it keeps them out of the landfill. And there's a certain satisfaction in sticking it to The Man by fixing my own darned socks (ha ha) instead of shelling out for a new pair like a good little consumer.

Recipe of the Month: White Bean and Mushroom Stew with Dumplings

Brian and I are currently visiting my in-laws in Indianapolis for the solar eclipse. We'll be away a total of five days, so one of the things we had to do before leaving was to eat up all the leftovers in the fridge. We managed to do this by lunchtime on Friday, which left us with a slight dilemma about what to have for dinner. Whatever we made needed to use up a container of mushrooms we had in the fridge, since we weren't sure they would survive until next Thursday. But all our existing mushroom-based recipes—mushroom-barley soup, pizza, stir-fry—made large batches that would create new leftovers. And we couldn't just use the shrooms in an omelet, because we had only two eggs in the fridge. (For the past several weeks, Lidl has been all out of Certified Humane eggs, and we haven't been desperate enough to pay $8 a dozen for them at the farmers' market.)

To resolve this problem, Brian decided to improvise a mushroom stew. He sauteed the mushrooms first to release their juice, then sauteed some onion and garlic as well. Then he added the mushrooms back in, along with a can of cannellini beans for a protein source. He thickened the liquid from the beans and veggies with a little flour to make a gravy and flavored it with nutritional yeast, salt, and fresh thyme. And then, rather than serve it over pasta or rice, he whipped up some dumplings to go on top.

This thrown-together dish worked surprisingly well. It wasn't much to look at, being a sort of uniform beige color with a lumpy consistency. But the mushrooms and nutritional yeast provided plenty of umami, and the white beans and dumplings made it hearty enough to stick to our ribs. The texture was a bit stodgy, but still, for a totally ad-hoc recipe, it was remarkably satisfying.

That said, I'm not sure this stew will become a regular addition to our dinner repertoire. As I noted before, we already have quite a few other recipes that use mushrooms, most of which we like better than this one. And under normal circumstances, a recipe that makes lots of leftovers is a feature, not a bug. We'll file this dish away in the memory banks in case there's any future occasion when we need a quick, one-night-only dinner with no leftovers, but we probably won't haul it out very often.

Further experiments with visible mending

After my first successful visible mending experiment last month, I decided to get a bit more ambitious. I went to Michael's and invested five bucks in 36 skeins of embroidery floss in assorted bright colors, allowing me to add more techniques—darning, embroidery, and sashiko—to my mending repertoire. 

The first repair I attempted with the new thread was darning another threadbare patch on one of Brian's jeans pockets. I already knew the basic idea—make long stitches going in one direction across the hole, then make perpendicular stitches that weave in and out through the first set—but I also watched a couple of videos about it online and did my best to copy their technique. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the hang of it right away. I ended up placing the vertical stitches too close together, making it difficult to weave through them when going horizontally. As a result, the darned area came out a bit uneven and lumpy. Brian said he liked it anyway, but I'm not as happy with it as I was with my previous patching repair. 

So for my next repair, I decided to move away from darning and try a hybrid technique: a patch on the inside of the garment, secured in place with decorative stitching. The garment in question was my old pair of black jeans that had worn out in the thigh area. I'd already patched it once before, but the area around the patch had now worn out, leaving little sections of skin exposed. I thought at this point there was nothing to do but downgrade them to "grubby" pants for doing dirty jobs around the house and yard. But since I had nothing to lose at this point, I figured I might as well attempt a visible mend on these as well. 

First, I removed the old patches and tidied up the edges of the holes with scissors. Then I went back to that same old striped flannel shirt I'd used for patching Brian's pants and cut out a couple of pieces from the sleeve, large enough to cover the new, larger holes. I sewed those colorful patches to the inside of the pants using my usual whip-stitch technique. Then I turned the jeans right-side-out, selected a dark blue embroidery thread that coordinated with the fabric, and began top-stitching the patch to the intact parts of the jeans. 

I started out attempting to make a neat, decorative running stitch, as shown in this NPR article, but it came out too wonky-looking. My stitches were uneven in length and my lines had a tendency to wobble. So I picked all that out and started over using the seed stitch technique shown in this video, which is supposed to look random and chaotic. This came much more naturally to me. It was actually kind of fun pushing the needle in at a random spot, then taking off in a random direction from there, making stitches of varying length and even doubling back as needed to cover bare patches. It took quite a while, but eventually I ended up with a unique-looking repair that I wouldn't be embarrassed to flash a glimpse of to strangers while walking down the street. 

But while the patch-and-embroider technique worked well for these large holes, it didn't seem like it would be much use for the small holes in Brian's jeans pockets. For one thing, there's no good way to sew a patch to the inside of the jeans pocket without removing it. So for his last damaged pocket, I went back to exterior patching. I still had one more pocket flap on that old trusty flannel shirt that I could have used, but instead I decided to try repurposing an old, colorful fabric mask leftover from the early days of the pandemic. (I didn't think we'd be needing it again, since even if a new wave of COVID should strike, we now have some of the much more effective N95 masks to use instead.)

After cutting off the ear loops, I experimented with different placements for the patch that wouldn't require cutting it. (Having a piece of fabric that was already neatly hemmed on all four sides, I didn't want to mess with it.) I considered placing it vertically up the length of the pocket and tucking the end inside, but I feared the doubled-over fabric might be too bulky and interfere with the use of the pocket. So instead I just stitched it across the entire width of the pocket, overlapping it on both sides. Only after I had it in place did I realize I'd actually sewn it on upside down, with the folds of the mask pointing up instead of down. But since it didn't have to function as a mask, that didn't really seem to matter. I just tacked the flaps down with a set of loose stitches so they wouldn't flop around.

Unfortunately, after all these successes came a not-unexpected setback. The original pair of pants that started me off on this visible-mending kick, which already had patches on both knees as well as the back pocket, developed a visibly threadbare patch on the thigh. I didn't think adding a pocket patch in this area would work very well, and I feared that the patch-and-embroider technique I'd used on my own jeans would be a little too messy for such a visible spot. But I also couldn't bear the idea of seeing these jeans retired when I'd just managed to get them patched so nicely.

Hunting around for a way to mend the threadbare patch, I found myself turning yet again to that old striped flannel shirt. When cutting up the sleeve to make the patches for my jeans, I'd saved the cuff—a nice, long strip of fabric, ready-hemmed on all sides. What if I removed the cuff button on one end, stitched up the buttonhole, and sewed this long piece across the entire width of the jeans leg? It sounded kind of nutty, but Brian okayed the idea, so I gave it a go. 

The result isn't perfect. Even though I carefully positioned the patch and pinned it in place before stitching, it still somehow managed to come out a bit askew. But Brian doesn't mind it. In fact, he seems rather tickled with his new Franken-pants with their motley assortment of patches. And I'm quite pleased that he's willing to be a walking showcase for my  visible mending efforts.

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: First Sowing

Spring is officially here, which means it's about time to get our first crop, the snap peas, into the ground. I figured I could easily handle this on my own while Brian was out for a bike ride, but it turned out to be more difficult than I expected. The problem wasn't planting the seeds; it was finding them.

We keep all our seeds and seed-starting supplies in a big box labeled "seed starting," which is on one of the lower shelves in our overcrowded storage room. When I hauled out this box, the first place I looked for the seeds was in the wooden crate that Brian refers to as our "seed library," which contains all our seed packets from the current year and previous years, sorted by category. There was a section at the front labeled "This year," so I supposed that was where this year's seeds would be. However, a quick search plainly revealed that it was not. I then went through all the other sections and, while I did find some packets of snap peas, none were more recent than 2018. Clearly these weren't the seeds I was looking for.

Then I spotted a little box from Botanical Interests, our 2023 seed supplier, which was labeled "The good stuff (2024)." Ah, presumably the current seeds would be in here. And when I rummaged through, I did indeed find a packet of snap peas from last year's order—but there were only about 15 seeds left in it. That was less than half the number we would need to plant a full row of peas. Surely we would have ordered more if that was all we had left, wouldn't we? When I consulted my garden chart, it said that yes, we had ordered more from True Leaf Market this year. But where were they? And where, for that matter, were all the rest of the seeds from this year's order, which hadn't been in either of the two boxes I'd checked?

I went back to the big box and eventually found, tucked in near the front, a large brown-paper envelope, well camouflaged against the brown cardboard of the box itself. This was the package in which our seeds had been delivered, which Brian had apparently stuck into the box with all the seeds still in it. So I retrieved that, fished out the seeds, and planted them in the right rear garden bed, which we'd already cleared of weeds the week before. (Side note: we discovered in the process that our "Marvel of Four Seasons" lettuce truly lives up to its name. There's a head growing in that same bed that apparently overwintered from last fall's planting and is already large enough to start harvesting.) 

But my work was not done. Given that it had taken me about five times as long to find the seeds as it had to plant them, I was convinced we needed a better organizational scheme for our seed collection. We had saved far too many packets of seeds, some of them clearly far too old to germinate at this point, and they had turned into a haystack in which the seeds we actually needed were hard-to-find needles. So as soon as Brian got home, we brought up all the seeds and started going through them, removing the unusable ones and filing the current ones. We discarded anything that was over 5 years old—including a few packets that were over 15 years old—and anything that had been a spectacular failure, such as the Apple pepper seeds that completely failed to germinate.

By the time we were done, we had a huge pile of empty seed envelopes and two bowls of expired seeds, one for flowers and one for veggies. Keeping them separate was Brian's idea. He plans to scatter the expired flower seeds in some neglected corner of the yard and see if anything came up. We're still figuring out what to do with the vegetable seeds. If we toss them in the compost bin, there's a danger that some of them could defy the odds and sprout, creating unidentifiable rogue plants that take over our side yard. (Brian tried to argue that this could be "an adventure," but I vetoed the idea. Gardening with plants you can put a name to is enough of an adventure as it is.) 

My idea was that maybe we could scatter all the vegetable seeds in a shallow dish, set it out in the yard, and see if the birds and squirrels would eat them. However, many of them were beans, and it turns out that uncooked beans are unsafe for birds to eat. So for now, we've just poured them all into a jar, where we'll keep them until we either think of a use for them or give up and toss them in the trash. In the meantime, they make a rather fetching little decoration. Too bad I don't have an Instagram account to post them on.

After clearing out all the old and useless seeds, we had plenty of room in the seed library to file all the usable ones. In the process, we discovered that there weren't quite as many of them as we thought we had. Even though we'd gone through the entire collection before placing our seed order for this year, we somehow overlooked the fact that we didn't have enough of either our Provider green beans or our Marketmore cucumbers to fill all the squares we'd allocated for them. More startling still, we'd failed to notice that we didn't have any usable scallion seeds at all. I had to place a hasty second seed order with True Market—one packet of Provider beans, one new cucumber variety called Boston Pickling Cucumber, and a new scallion variety called Flagpole—to rectify the situation.

So in the end, I guess it was a bit of a blessing in disguise that our seed library was such a mess. If it hadn't looked like a disaster that needed to be cleaned up immediately, we might not have discovered that we were missing some seeds we needed until the time came to plant them. Then we'd have had to make do with whatever variety was available at the nearest store or, worse still, leave valuable space in our garden empty. But on the other hand, maybe if it hadn't been such a mess back in December, we would have been able to tell which seeds we needed and avoid the whole problem.

In either case, I think we're best off not letting it get to that level again. Moving forward, we plan to go through all the seeds when we place our order in December or January and remove any that we think we're unlikely to use. Maybe, if we're really on the ball, we can even cull the varieties that we don't want before they expire and donate them to our local seed library. That way they'll have a chance to be of use to someone instead of ending up as decorative objects in a jar.

Recipe of the Month: Peanut Tofu with Cabbage Noodles

A few weeks ago, the It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken newsletter recommended a recipe that looked intriguing: Easy Peanut Tofu. Most of the ingredients were things we normally keep on hand, and the method looked pretty simple. At first, though, I didn't think this dish would work as a Recipe of the Month. It's vegan, but it's a protein-centered dish with no vegetables in it, which would defeat these recipes' stated purpose of getting more fruits and veggies into my diet.

Brian, upon examining the recipe, came up with a novel solution to this problem. Rather than serving the tofu up over rice as the recipe suggests, he proposed to serve it with a mixture of rice noodles and thinly sliced cabbage. He knew this combination would work because he regularly uses it in pad Thai—a modification he made to that recipe to up its veggie content when I was on my reduced-carb diet. This accompaniment sounded both healthier and more interesting than plain white rice, and it would eliminate the need for a separate vegetable side.

As usual, Brian made a few alterations to the peanut tofu recipe, but only small ones. He left out the Sriracha and cilantro, which we didn't have. He used plain peanuts instead of salted peanuts, which we also didn't have. And since the tofu we had on hand was firm rather than extra-firm, he baked it longer than the recipe specified—about 25 minutes instead of 12 to 18—to make sure it wouldn't be too moist. While it was baking, he cooked a third of a package of rice noodles (about 5.5 ounces) and sauteed 14 ounces of thinly sliced cabbage, together with a couple of sliced scallions and half a teaspoon of salt, until it was tender. Then he tossed the cabbage and noodles together and served it alongside the sauced tofu.

This turned out to be a splendid combination. The cabbage noodles had more flavor and texture interest than plain white rice, but not so strong a flavor as to clash with the real star of the show, the tofu. It had a sticky outer coating and a chewy texture that contrasted nicely with the soft, slippery noodle mixture, and its flavor was a dazzling blend of peanut, sesame, garlic, ginger, and salty soy sauce, with hints of tangy rice vinegar and sweet maple syrup. And the crunchiness of the chopped peanuts on top added still more texture interest. It's possible the dish would have been better still with the missing cilantro and Sriracha, but don't think it suffered at all from their absence.

In short, this recipe is a definite keeper. It's easy, it's healthy, it's delicious, and all the ingredients are cheap and readily available. On top of that, it's both vegan and gluten-free. It's a recipe anyone who doesn't have a peanut allergy can love.

A cheeseless adaptation attempt

Before Brian and I started cutting back on dairy at home, we used to be very fond of a recipe we called Cheesy Rice Casserole. This was a slightly modified version of the "Hellzapoppin' Cheese Rice" from Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cook Book, slightly lighter on the cheese and butter. It was a staple in our kitchen repertoire because it was both easy and cheap and required only ingredients we routinely kept on hand, making it perfect for those what-should-we-have-for-dinner occasions.

But since we stopped buying cheese at the store, this trusty recipe has fallen by the wayside. Our homemade vegan mozzarella has allowed us to keep making some of our cheesy favorites, but it doesn't have the right flavor to take the place of the cheddar cheese in this dish. And the one time we tried making it with a dairy-free cheddar we found at Lidl, the result was so weird and unsatisfying that I didn't even think it was worth mentioning on the blog.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I got to wondering if we could replace the cheese in this recipe some other way. Since it already had eggs to serve as a binder, it didn't really need the melted cheese to hold it together. Maybe, I thought, we could just throw in some nutritional yeast for flavor and some tofu to up the protein content and see if that was good enough.

Brian was willing to take on this experiment, but he wasn't entirely convinced that the nutritional yeast alone would give the dish enough flavor. So he found a recipe for a vegan cheddar cheese at Minimalist Baker and borrowed the seasoning mix from that: tapioca starch, nutritional yeast, apple cider vinegar, garlic powder, salt, and a smidgen of mustard. He blended all those ingredients with silken tofu and soy milk to replace the cheese and milk from the original recipe, then mixed that with the eggs, rice, spinach, and seasonings. He also threw in a little lemon juice to increase the brightness a bit. He could have used some of our homemade plant butter to replace the melted butter that would normally be poured over the top, but he thought there was no point in wasting it on something that didn't need to be solid, so he simply whisked together some canola oil, soy milk, and salt. 

The modified casserole came out quite a bit lighter in color than the original, but texture-wise, it seemed pretty close to the original. It held together nicely when sliced, coming out of the pan in even squares. The flavor, however, was severely lacking. It didn't taste bad or weird, like the version we made with the fake cheese from Lidl; it just didn't taste like much of anything. We both had to sprinkle it pretty liberally with our homemade "spaghetti salt" (12 parts nutritional yeast ground up with 1 part salt) to get it down. I found that a dash of smoked paprika was also helpful.

Clearly, this modified recipe isn't ready for prime time. However, we think it has potential. All it really needs is more flavor, and we should be able to give it that by bumping up the proportions of all the flavorful ingredients it already contains. The simplest way to do this would be to double the amounts of nutritional yeast, vinegar, garlic powder, mustard, and lemon that go into the dish and maybe throw in a quarter-tablespoon of the smoked paprika as well. Alternatively, we could try adding a dose of all those ingredients to the water the rice is cooked in, along with the amount that goes into the tofu sauce. With the flavor cooked right into the rice, maybe it won't need so much extra seasoning added on top.

For now, I'm going to refrain from sharing this recipe while we tinker with it some more. If and when we come up with a version that I think is as useful as the original, I'll pass it along to all of you then.

[UPDATE, 3/20/23: We tried this again last night, and we think we've got it fixed. Brian basically doubled the proportion of all the flavorings he'd used to replace the cheese: nutritional yeast, vinegar, garlic powder, and salt. He also added a half-teaspoon of smoked paprika. (He accidentally left out the mustard powder he used the first time, but upon tasting it, neither of us minded its absence.)

This revised recipe had a darker golden color than the previous version—partly from the extra ingredients and partly because it browned better. It also had a much fuller, more savory flavor. With plenty of salt, tartness from the vinegar, and umami from the nutritional yeast, it was well-balanced and satisfying. It wasn't the same as the original version made with cheddar cheese, but it wasn't in any way lacking. We both happily ate up one piece and went back for seconds.

This may not be the absolute final version of this recipe, as Brian is always adjusting and tinkering to optimize the dishes he makes. But it's good enough to be worth sharing. So here, without further ado, is what we are now calling...

HELLZAEFFINPOPPIN CHEESE RICE

Cook 1 cup white rice in 1.5 cups water for approximately 6 minutes in the pressure cooker. (Or use 2 cups water and cook it on the stovetop. Or just use 3 cups leftover rice.)

Briefly cook 8 oz. frozen spinach in boiling water to thaw. Drain completely.

Blend together 8 oz. soft or silken tofu, ¼ cup soy milk, ¼ cup tapioca flour, 6 Tbsp. nutritional yeast, 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. garlic powder, and ½ tsp smoked paprika.

Beat together 3 large eggs. Add the tofu mixture, 1/2 chopped onion, 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp. salt, 1 pinch dried thyme, 1 pinch dried marjoram, ½ Tbsp. lemon juice, and the drained spinach. Mix, then add the cooked rice and mix again. Spread mixture into a greased 9" by 13" casserole dish, smoothing the top with a spatula. 

Whisk together 4 tsp. canola oil, 1 tsp. soy milk, and ¼ tsp salt. Pour evenly over top of the rice mixture.

Bake at 375 F for 45 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving.]

 

24 hours of plastic

About a year ago, a New York Times journalist named A.J. Jacobs tried to go for an entire day without touching or using anything made of plastic. Spoiler alert: he did not succeed. 

It certainly wasn't for lack of trying, since he went to extraordinary lengths to identify and avoid plastics. He went all day without not only his smartphone but also his eyeglasses. He ordered all-new plastic-free toiletries and clothing. He made all his purchases with coins (since even paper bills contain some plastic), brought his own chair on the subway, and filtered all his drinking water to remove microplastics. And despite these heroic efforts, he still ended up making contact with plastic 164 times over the course of the day. 

At the time, this experiment struck me as pretty pointless. Sure, it did a good job of showing how ubiquitous plastic is in the modern world, but it seemed to treat that fact as an unmitigated evil. The author lumped all plastics together in a single category, making no effort to distinguish "stupid plastic" (unnecessary, single-use items, such as bags and takeout containers) from useful plastics that make our lives better (like a pair of glasses that enables you to see clearly). Not only was his effort to eliminate them all from his life doomed to failure, it wouldn't have accomplished anything useful if he had succeeded.

But as silly as I found the whole exercise, somehow I couldn't get it out of my head. In the year since the article came out, I've frequently found myself wondering how I'd handle this same challenge. If I absolutely had to go 24 hours without touching plastic, could I do it? How hard would it be? And how much would the planet actually benefit from it?

Although these questions piqued my curiosity, I wasn't prepared to go to the same lengths as Jacobs to answer them. Instead, I decided to tackle the problem from the other direction. Rather than trying to go a day without plastic, I'd keep a record of an entire day with plastic, noting every time I touched or used it over a 24-hour period. At the end of the day, I'd look at the list and try to figure out what it would require to avoid each of my contacts with plastic—assuming it would even be possible—and what it would cost. Then I'd weigh the costs against the environmental benefits to figure out what steps, if any, would be worth taking to address the plastic problem beyond what I'm doing now.

I conducted this experiment last Monday, and according to my calculations, I had a total of 87 encounters with plastic over the course of the day. I'll sort these according to where and when they occurred:

• In the bedroom upon first getting up: My pajamas (fleece pants and a sweatshirt), hat, slippers, and eyeglasses. (They have metal frames, but the stems are plastic-coated, and so are the nose pads.) Also, a blanket on my bed that I've had since childhood and is probably made of acrylic, though I'm not 100 percent sure. (The rest of the bedding is cotton, and I didn't count the synthetic mattress cover or pillow stuffing, since they never touched my skin.)
  
• In the bathroom after getting up: The plastic insert on the soap dish, three bottles containing my daily medications, the bathroom cup, my Snap toothbrush, the toothpaste tube, a tube of lotion that I used on my itchy back, and the old silicone spatula I used to apply it. (Unlike Jacobs, I didn't need to touch plastic to use the toilet, which has a wooden seat and a metal flush handle.)
• In the kitchen, preparing and eating breakfast: The handle of the teakettle, the knobs on the stove, the buttons on the toaster oven and microwave, the soy milk carton, the cap on the vanilla bottle, the plastic container that holds our homemade plant butter, my cell phone (which I got out to do my daily puzzles), my wallet (which contained the phone), my purse (which contained the wallet), and the pen that I used to write all these plastic encounters down. And, after breakfast, my Aeropress coffee maker, the lid of the coffee can, the salt shaker, and the cinnamon bottle. (I add a smidgen of each to my coffee when brewing it.)
• In my office: My computer keyboard and mouse and a thermal-paper receipt that I retrieved from my wallet and filed.
• In the bathroom, during and after my shower: My bathrobe, the tub mat, the shower curtain liner (not the curtain itself, which is 100 percent cotton), the plastic-coated basket that holds my toiletries, the jar of oil in which I store my razor, the silicone scrubber pads that I use on my body and face, the bottle that holds my homemade face wash, the shower squeegee, the window shade, the microfiber towel I use on my hair, my conditioner bottle, four tubes and pots containing medications and moisturizers I apply to my face and body, and my mini microcurrent device. (I can't bring myself to spend thousands of dollars on "tweakments" to fight the signs of aging, but $150 for something to give me just a little lift seemed like a reasonable price to pay.)
• In the bedroom, getting dressed: The bottle of homemade hand sanitizer I use as a deodorant and my underwear, bra, socks, long johns, jeans, and pullover sweater. (The turtleneck I wore underneath the pullover was a cotton/rayon blend, and my winter cardigan is 100 percent wool with wooden buttons.)
• In the kitchen, preparing and eating lunch: The refrigerator (handle and produce drawers), the plastic lid on a Pyrex container of leftovers, a jar of homemade "spaghetti salt" (a Parmesan substitute made from nutritional yeast and salt), a mesh bag containing mandarin oranges, a Ziploc bag containing a homemade cookie, and the telephone because someone called while I was eating. (I also touched the microwave to heat up my leftovers, but I'd already counted that.)
• Going out for a walk: My winter coat, boots, gloves, scarf, and sunglasses.
• In the kitchen, preparing my afternoon snack: The popcorn jar, the bag of nutritional yeast, a measuring cup, the oil sprayer, and our Brita pitcher.
• In the bathroom and kitchen, before dinner: A bottle of magnesium supplements, our pill splitter, and a microwaveable heating pad I used to warm myself up. 
• Board-game night at Pino's, a local bar: Cash to pay for a cocktail and the dice, laminated sheets, and wet-erase markers from our Quixx game. (All the other games I played contained only cardboard or wooden pieces.)
• In the kitchen, before bed: The bread box, which I opened to fix myself some toast for a bedtime snack.
• In the bathroom, before bed: A couple of medicine bottles and tubes I hadn't touched previously, a container of dental floss, and the floss itself. 

Going over this list, I can see several plastic contacts that I could have hacked my way around for purposes of a one-day experiment. For instance, I could have removed all my pills and supplements for the day from their plastic bottles and transferred them to a bowl. Similarly, I could have removed a small dose of every topical product I used from its container and put them in an array of little glass jars. And I could have removed all the food I planned to eat that day from its plastic packaging ahead of time so I wouldn't have to touch any plastic to eat it. But none of these hacks would have done anything to reduce the amount of plastic we actually consume. They'd allow me to avoid touching plastic on that particular day, but they wouldn't get it out of our home or our lives.

To make a real difference to the planet, I'd have to replace these plastic-packaged items with versions that were truly plastic-free. But in most cases, that wouldn't be feasible. All of the medications I get from my online pharmacy come in standardized plastic bottles; there's simply no way to get the meds without the plastic. The supplements that come from the drugstore are likewise sold in plastic bottles, and I've never seen them for sale in any other kind of packaging. And the same problem applies to most of the commercial foodstuffs I used. The Whole Earth Center sells nutritional yeast and cinnamon out of bulk bins, and we do actually buy them there if we ever happen to be in Princeton when the store is open. But to buy them that way all the time would require making a special trip to Princeton, and I suspect the emissions from our car would outweigh the ecological benefits of avoiding a couple of little plastic bags. (To be fair, I could buy coffee from our local roastery. But even in bulk, it would cost me $20 a pound.)

There are some plastic items on my list that I could, at a cost, replace with plastic-free ones. A quick search of the Zero Waste Store turns up several. But in most cases, it's not clear that these plastic-free items are any greener than what I'm using now. For instance:

• A plastic-free, corn-based soap dish insert costs $5.99. But is that really superior to our homemade soap dish insert, made from plastic waste that would otherwise have gone into the trash?
• A bamboo toothbrush with bristles made from castor bean oil costs $3.99. With the "subscribe & save" option, it's only $3.19, which isn't that much more than the replacement heads for our Snap toothbrush. But according to the most comprehensive study I've seen, it's not actually greener.
• A jar of 62 toothpaste tablets costs $10.89. Not only is that far more expensive than our Trader Joe's toothpaste, studies show it's not as green because of the ingredients used and the size of each tablet. (And since when is "fluoride-free" a selling point?)
• Conditioner bars cost $15.99 each for "75+ washes." That sounds good, but it's way more costly than my Suave conditioner, and all the bars contain glycerin, which my hair hates. (I've made several attempts at making my own conditioner, but even the most successful recipe I tried didn't work for very long.)
• A 30-meter roll of bamboo-based dental floss in a little glass jar costs $9.99, with two refills available for $13.99. Even the refills are more than five times the cost of drugstore floss. And while it has a carbon footprint somewhat smaller than plastic floss, it does worse on other environmental measures, like ozone depletion and metal/mineral use.
  

Then there are the non-disposable items on my list, like clothing and kitchen tools. It would certainly be possible to replace most of my clothes with garments made from 100 percent natural fibers. However, I'd probably be unable to find them at thrift stores and would have to buy them new. Moreover, some of them, like socks and undies, probably wouldn't be available in stores and would have to be ordered from a specialty brand like Cottonique.

I could likewise get new glass containers with bamboo lids, instead of plastic ones, for our leftovers and replace the zip-top plastic bags we use (and reuse) for cookies with silicone bags. I could replace my plastic oil sprayer with a metal Misto sprayer (which doesn't work as well), the Aeropress with a plastic-free French press (which uses more ground coffee per cup and is harder to clean), and the Brita pitcher with a glass pitcher and Kishu filters. I could get a glass salt shaker and a wooden-handled teakettle. I could replace the polyester shower curtain liner with a $50 linen one and get myself an organic cotton hair towel (a relative bargain at only $14.99). And I could replace my plastic refillable pen with a metal fountain pen (though I appear to be physically incapable of writing neatly with one).

But here's the rub: the plastic-containing versions of these items are already in our possession. To make them plastic-free, we'd have to purchase new items and discard (or at least give away) the ones we currently have. That does not strike me as an eco-friendly choice. 

And finally, there are the big-ticket items on the list: the computer, the phone, the kitchen appliances, and my eyeglasses. These, I feel confident in saying, simply do not come in plastic-free versions. The only way to avoid plastic with these would be not to use them at all, and that would be utterly impractical.

The upshot appears to be that for me, a plastic-free life wouldn't really be a greener one. Sure, maybe we could make more of an effort to fit in trips to the Whole Earth Center or other stores with bulk bins. And maybe when some of our plastic-containing items wear out, it might be worth looking into plastic-free alternatives to replace them (though we might still end up deciding that the products we use now are the most ecofrugal choice). But for the most part, the plastic in our life is not stupid plastic. We've already harvested all the low-hanging fruit in this area, such as single-use bags, straws, and takeout containers, and the plastics that remain are the ones we've decided are worth the trade-offs.

My first (sort of) foray into visible mending

When Brian's jeans wear out, it's generally the knees that go first. Years ago, I discovered I could deal with that problem by sewing a pocket from an old pair of jeans over the ripped area. At this point, most of Brian's jeans have such a patch over at least one knee.

With this technique, I'm able to keep the jeans in service long enough for them to start wearing out in a different area: the back pockets themselves. Specifically, the left back pocket, where he keeps his wallet. Apparently the friction of the wallet against the fabric, particularly as it's inserted and removed, is sufficient to wear little holes into the material. They're not usually big enough for things to slip through, but they're unsightly.

This week, it occurred to me that maybe these smallish holes would be good candidates for visible mending. While conventional mending aims to keep the patched or darned area as inconspicuous as possible, visible mending takes just the opposite approach, turning it into a decorative feature. There are several methods for doing this, including:

• Patching with one or more contrasting fabrics.
• Darning with one or more contrasting colors of thread or yarn.
• Applying a plain patch and then covering it with decorative top-stitching.
• Embroidering directly over a small hole.

Technically, my pocket patch technique is itself a form of visible mending, since it turns the patch into a feature rather than attempting to disguise it. But for these holes in the pockets, I thought I could attempt something a little more visible. Any repair in such a prominent area was bound to be noticeable anyway, so I thought I might as well make it look intentional. 

The hole I planned to tackle was on the larger side—large enough to poke a finger through, anyway—so I thought it would require a patch rather than a darn. But what to use for a patch? I habitually save worn-out jeans and trousers, but the material from those is pretty plain, not vivid enough to make an interesting contrast. I was also concerned about my ability to make a neat-looking patch. To keep it from fraying, I'd probably have to hem it, and anything hemmed by hand (the only way I can do it) is liable to come out looking a bit lumpy. 

I thought maybe a piece of wide ribbon would work, so I started going through our collection of gift wrappings, and there I happened upon a little Christmas stocking ornament that Brian had received years ago as a gift. It was made of red felt, with a burlap section at the top embroidered with Brian's name. Since we never have a full-size Christmas tree ourselves (they're not really compatible with adventurous cats), we didn't have a place to hang it, so it had just been sitting in amongst our wrapping materials. Could this make a reasonable decorative patch?

I decided there was only one way to find out, so I snipped off the top section, trimmed its edges, and started whip-stitching it onto the damaged pocket. Since the idea was for the repair to be visible, I used a cheery red thread that matched the flannel. The loose ends of the burlap poked out a bit, but I was able to tack them into place with some extra stitches. 

So now, Brian owns a pair of jeans that are (a tad ironically) monogrammed on the butt. It remains to be seen how well this patch will hold up in the wash; since I didn't follow the standard advice to use a type of fabric similar to the original garment, it's possible the material will end up fraying or puckering. But if it does, it shouldn't be too hard to pick out the stitching and replace the patch with something more suitable.

Of course, no sooner had I finished making this repair to the pocket than Brian discovered the other knee of the jeans—the one that wasn't already sporting a pocket patch—was starting to fray, so I had to patch that as well. On top of that, there was another worn area, higher up on the thigh, which I couldn't easily repair. So it's possible the jeans themselves won't last long enough for the patch to wear out. On the other hand, it's also possible that if this repair does work out, I could expand my visible mending techniques to other areas of the jeans as well.

I'd like to attempt a darning-style repair next, possibly on the other pair of Brian's jeans that currently has a damaged pocket. However, it appears that to make this look good, I'd need either embroidery floss or tapestry thread, as regular sewing thread is too thin to show up well. So this experiment may need to wait until I can get myself to a fabric store and pick up some additional supplies to play with.

 

[UPDATE, 3/19/24: As it turns out, my fear that this little burlap patch wouldn't stand up well to washing was too optimistic. It didn't even make it to its first washing before it began to fray around the edges. It was only the burlap that was damaged, not the underlying felt, but when removed the burlap, the plain red felt patch looked kind of silly by itself. So I removed that too and went hunting around for something better to replace it. 

After searching all the rag bins without success, my eye hit on an old flannel shirt of mine that I'd been keeping downstairs in the laundry room. It was already torn in a couple of places, so I'd relegated it to grubby-job duty. But it had plenty of good fabric on it, and after a little examination, I spotted a section that looked like it would make a perfect ready-made patch: the flap on one of the front pockets. I carefully snipped it off, sewed the little buttonhole closed, and then stitched it in place over the entire bottom of the damaged jeans pocket.

I think this new flannel patch looks much nicer than the previous one, and I believe it will hold up better too. And Brian loves it.]

Recipe of the Month: Roasted Leek and Cauliflower Pasta

February's Recipe of the Month came about because of a fortuitous find: sale-priced cauliflower at Lidl. Brian didn't have any particular need for cauliflower, but he couldn't pass it up. As a result, he ended up cruising the Internet searching for vegan recipes that used both cauliflower and leeks, which we also had on hand. And when he came across the Roasted Leek and Cauliflower Pasta recipe at Lazy Cat Kitchen, he decided it looked like a winner.

As per usual, Brian made a few minor modifications to this recipe. He increased the volume of veggies slightly to use up our entire medium-to-large cauliflower and two medium leeks (as opposed to the half a large cauliflower and two "smallish" leeks called for in the original). He also increased the volume of pasta from 7 ounces to 8 in order to use up a half-box of whole wheat penne we had sitting around. He left out the capers, which we didn't have, and cut the amount of black pepper down from a quarter-teaspoon to just a couple of grinds. And since we didn't have either dairy-free cream or cashews to make a homemade cashew cream, he mocked up his own substitute by blending soft tofu with soy milk.

But his most significant change was deciding to frizzle the leeks—that is, sauté them briefly in oil before browning them in the oven, à la Molly Katzen—rather than soaking them in boiling water before roasting them. He put them on a separate baking sheet so he could remove them from the oven when they were done, rather than spreading them alongside the cauliflower and having to remove them once cooked. Besides being less work, this was a technique we were already familiar with and knew would give us good results.

And good indeed were those results. The dish was packed with flavor: tart lemon juice, cheesy nutritional yeast, and fragrant frizzled leeks and garlic. The contrast between the tender veggies, chewy pasta, crunchy toasted walnuts, and silky, creamy sauce added plenty of texture interest. And between the nutritional yeast, the walnuts, and the tofu in the sauce, it provided enough protein to fill us up despite the lack of any meat or meat-alternative component.

Good as it was, I don't know if this dish will become a regular addition to our repertoire. We can't count on finding cauliflower on sale all the time, so we'll probably save this recipe for cauliflower season, which around here is from September through December. Fortunately, leeks are also in season at that time, and this warm and savory meal will be just right for crisp autumn evenings.

The Dress Retro challenge: results

Last April, I announced my plan to take the Dress Retro challenge: purchasing no more than three new garments for myself over the course of 2023. I noted at the time that in the preceding year, I'd bought only four new garments—three if you counted my "sleep shorts" as underwear—without even trying, so I thought I would have no problems limiting myself to three if I worked at it. And I can now officially announce that the number of brand-new garments I bought myself in 2023 was...zero.

That doesn't mean I purchased no clothing at all. I bought a couple of secondhand pieces from thrift shops and ThredUP, but the challenge doesn't place any limits on those. I also bought one new bra, one pair of sandals, and several pairs of boots, most of which I ended up returning because they didn't fit. (I'm currently using a $40 pair from Walmart that doesn't really fit; they're far too long, but at least I can get my feet into them and they don't leak.) But shoes and undies don't count as clothing under the rules, so technically, I passed the challenge with flying colors.

However, zero is only the number of new garments I purchased for myself. After Brian embarked on his wardrobe makeover in September, I splurged on a few new items for him. Although I didn't want to buy everything from fast-fashion sites, I did succumb to the charms of one pair of color-blocked shorts from LightInTheBox because they fit so well with the new style he was aiming for. Unfortunately, summer was almost over by the time they arrived, so he still hasn't worn them. I later ordered him a couple of medieval-style lace-up shirts, neither of which has been worn either. The first one looked cool online but turned out to look, in Brian's words, like "wizard pajamas" in person, and the second was in a linen-like fabric that looks much nicer but is too lightweight for winter. So if you count all the clothing I bought for both of us, not just for me, I only just managed to stay within the three-garment limit. Moreover, I blew the entire budget on items that haven't even been worn yet, including one that will most likely never be worn at all. 

And this, I guess, emphasizes the point that the authors of the challenge were trying to make: fast fashion kind of sucks. With their low prices and vast selections, these websites make it far too easy to buy clothes that you don't really need and may not like at all once you see them in person. And since they're usually shipped from China, it's often too costly to return them—so they either sit around taking up space in your drawers or get discarded and sit around taking up space in a landfill.

So, based on this experience, I think I've learned my lesson about shopping on these sites—for me and Brian both. Hunting through thrift-store racks may be more hit-and-miss, but at least it's possible to tell the hits from the misses. I won't have to pay money up front just to try something on and pay again to return it—or maybe just be stuck with it—if I don't like it.

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: Pruning Day

Every year, one of the first jobs on our garden to-do list is pruning our plum trees. I've been dreading this task somewhat, as over the past couple of years our trees had become badly infected with what I assumed was canker, causing knobbly black growths like giant warts around their branches. All three trees had it to some extent, but the Mount Royal in particular hardly seemed to have a single branch that wasn't affected. 

However, when I tried researching tree canker to figure out the best way to tackle this, I began to realize that the growths on our trees didn't look much like the cankers in the pictures. I started searching for info on other problems affecting plum trees and eventually figured out that what ours actually had was a fungal disease aptly named "black knot." Sources on the Web disagree on how serious a problem this is. The province of Alberta warns, "The fungus continues to grow internally and externally, with the branch eventually becoming girdled and dying," while the University of Minnesota Extension says, "Many Prunus trees tolerate black knot. Tolerant trees have many galls throughout the tree with few negative effects on the health of the tree." Minnetonka Orchards takes a middle ground, saying "The tree may suffer from decreased fruit production, structural damage, and ultimately death if the infection is severe," but adding that "Mature trees are more resilient and may survive without any noticeable ill effects."

Based on the extraordinarily productive season we had for plums last year, my guess was that the disease wasn't affecting our trees too badly. I decided we wouldn't try to remove every single branch that was infected (which would probably be impossible anyway), but we'd take off the worst offenders. And, at the same time, we'd also prune out out any branches that were problematic in other ways: overlapping, inward-pointing, or in danger of impinging on the house, driveway, and sidewalk.

Unfortunately, this measured approach proved hard to stick to. We kept finding more and more branches that seemed to fall into the "worst offender" category, especially on the Mount Royal. We definitely violated the rule against cutting off more than one-quarter of the tree's crown, and eventually we just had to force ourselves to stop before we stripped it completely bare. Even now, in its largely denuded state, it still isn't entirely free of galls, but it looks a lot cleaner than it did before. And since our trees seem to operate on a two-year cycle—incredible productivity one year followed by nothing at all the next—it should have over a year to catch up and produce new, healthy growth before our next plum harvest.

Meanwhile, we had to dispose of the huge pile of pruned-off branches. All the sources I consulted emphasize that it's important to destroy branches infected with black knot as soon as possible, as they can otherwise continue to shed spores and spread the fungus. We planned to burn them in our little backyard fire pit, but the wood was too moist to light. Brian ended up having to supplement the fire with sticks from our stock of seasoned wood to get the plum branches dry enough to burn. Eventually he managed to destroy most of the diseased wood this way, leaving a small pile of healthy wood for later use.

There's still more to be done to prepare for the upcoming gardening season—pruning the rosebush, for one, and laying out the beds for the vegetable garden—but with all the cutting, hauling, and burning of branches, I think we've had enough of a yard-workout for one day.

Recipe of the Month: Aloo gobi

January's Recipe of the Month is a new version of a familiar dish. Aloo gobi is an Indian classic made from potatoes and cauliflower, and we've eaten it many times before, both at restaurants and at home. But none of the recipes Brian had used for it before had particularly impressed him, so this time, he decided to whip up his own. He'd made it enough times to have a good idea what sort of ingredients to use, but he decided more or less on impulse to change his recipe in one key way: rather than boiling or steaming the veggies, he chopped them up and roasted them. He knew from experience that roasting any type of veggie is usually the best way to bring out its flavor, and he wanted to see how much difference it would make in this dish.

As it turned out, the answer was "all the difference." Well, maybe not quite all, because his selection of spices—particularly the omission of ginger, which I tend to find overpowering in all but the smallest doses—also gave it a good flavor, bright and savory and well-balanced. (Some might find the salt a little heavy, but for me that was part of the dish's charm.) But I strongly suspect it was the roasting that really took it over the top from a decent aloo gobi to a fabulous one that we'll make over and over. 

In fact, he's already made it a second time this month—partly because I didn't remember to get a photo of it for the blog the first time, but mostly because we both liked it so much. And I think it's sure to become a regular in our dinner rotation, because it ticks all the boxes: tasty, healthy, vegan, and, if you can find a reasonably cheap cauliflower, inexpensive.

So, without further ado, here is

BRIAN'S ROASTED ALOO GOBI

1 medium head (c. 1 lb florets) cauliflower
c. 1 lb potatoes
1 ½ tsp salt
4 Tbsp canola oil
1 ½ tsp cumin seeds
8 fenugreek seeds
pinch asafoetida
1 small red onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ jalapeno pepper, minced
½ cup crushed tomatoes
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp lemon juice
½ cup water
¼ tsp garam masala

1. Cut cauliflower into small florets. Dice potatoes into small (c. ½ inch) cubes. Add 1 tsp of the salt and 3 Tbsp of the oil and mix to coat. Spread on a pan (with silicone mat if possible) and roast at 450 degrees F for 40-45 minutes, stirring once after c. 20 minutes.
2. In 1 Tbsp oil, saute the cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, asafoetida, onion, garlic, and jalapeno over medium to low heat until onion is tender (c. 5 minutes). Add the crushed tomato, coriander, turmeric, and lemon juice, stir to combine, and saute for an additional 2 minutes.
3. Add the roasted potato and cauliflower to the onion mixture along with the water and the garam masala. Stir until the roasted vegetables are completely coated. Remove from heat.

Serve with parathas, if possible.

Thrift Week 2024, Day 7: My sewing kit

The last item in this Thrift Week series is probably the one that's given me the biggest bang for my buck. But it's also the hardest to calculate the exact impact of, so I'm going to have to guesstimate.

The item in question is my trusty sewing kit. I don't remember exactly when I bought this, but it was somewhere between ten and twenty years ago at a local estate sale. It included a full set of basic sewing supplies: needles of various sizes, straight pins, safety pins, a pincushion, a box of odd buttons, a pair of fabric scissors, and dozens of spools of thread in assorted colors. The entire box cost me a quarter.

In the years since, I have used these supplies more times than I can count. I have replaced buttons on shirts and pants, mended holes in sweaters, sewn patches on jeans, and darned countless socks. I've made Brian a belt pouch and a hat to wear to Renaissance fairs, using only scrap materials. I've made several oversized garments wearable by shortening pant legs and taking in waistbands with either elastic, hooks, or simple stitching. I've even repaired a damaged pair of shoes with a few well-placed stitches. And I did nearly all of it with only the supplies that came with this 25-cent box. (I've bought a few notions like buttons and elastic, and a year or so ago I finally had to spend $4 on one new spool of thread to replace a color that I'd used up. But most of those repairs were covered by my initial 25 cents' worth of materials.)

So how much has this purchase actually saved me? It's impossible to say exactly, because I haven't kept track of every single item I've repaired with this sewing kit and how much it would have cost to replace. But let's take a wild stab and guess that I've repaired at least one garment every month, on average, in the years since I bought this sewing kit. Let's also assume that I've had it for fifteen years, making a total of 180 repairs during that time period. And let's finally suppose that those garments would have cost, on average, $5 each to replace. (Some of them, like socks, would undoubtedly have cost less, but others, like Brian's heavy wool cardigan that I mended just this week, would have cost significantly more.) That works out to $900 in savings, which means that my 25-cent sewing kit has paid for itself 3,600 times over.

Of course, this estimate could be wildly inaccurate. But even if it's off by a factor of ten and this sewing kit has only saved me $90 over the years, that's still a really impressive return on such a tiny investment.