The gift of less stuff, Midwest edition

Our annual Christmas trip out to visit my in-laws in Indiana was a bit different this year. Instead of going back to Brian's childhood home in Indianapolis, we made our first visit to their new, smaller house in Brownsburg. The new place is a better fit for them in a lot of ways: it's much closer to Brian's brother, there are no stairs, and the HOA takes care of all the exterior maintenance on the house and yard. It is not, however, a better fit for all the stuff they'd accumulated over 40-plus years in their old house. Their guest room closet and over half their garage were stuffed full of boxed-up books, papers, artwork, furniture, lamps, and other items that didn't fit into their new home's smaller floor plan. And that was only a fraction of their discards; the pile at my brother-in-law's house was even bigger, filling up nearly all of the garage and a portion of the family room as well.

Brian wasn't able to go out to Indy and help his folks move last summer, so he felt like the least he could do now was haul away some of this excess material. Our little hatchback was too small to accommodate any of the actual furniture, but we crammed the trunk and back seat with a huge assortment of smaller pieces, including (but by no means limited to):

• Most of his dad's old stereo system: amp, pre-amp, tape deck, and phonograph. (We didn't have room for the massive floor speakers.)
• An old VCR.
• An old-fashioned table lamp.
• Two automatic cat feeders belonging to Brian's brother, which they'd traded in for fancier models. (The old ones used timers; the new ones have chip readers, so each one provides food only for the cat that's carrying the right microchip on its collar. This ensures that the expensive prescription food goes only to the one cat that needs it.)
• 
  A collection of blue-glass Ball jars.
• A folding camp chair.
• A convex mirror.
• A hacksaw and miter box. 
• Several paintbrushes.
• One large sponge.
• A pile of sandpaper. 
• A box of pegboard hooks. 
• An old power strip that doesn't include a surge protector.
• An HDMI splitter, unused in its original box, and a 25-foot HDMI cable.
• About half a dozen powerful magnets pulled out of old hard drives. 

That's a lot of stuff, yet it barely made a dent in the clutter in either house. It's as if the junk just expands to fill the available space: no matter how much you take away, the pile doesn't get any smaller. (I observed much the same phenomenon when I helped my mom clean out the sun porch last Mother's Day; after a whole day emptying out bins and bookshelves, the room didn't look any less full.)

Our job now is to make sure that all the new things we've acquired don't simply sit around taking up space in our house. We only took things that we thought we could use, but we still need to fit them into our home. Fortunately, Brian has this whole week off from work, so we'll have plenty of time to shuffle AV equipment, transfer pantry supplies into our new jars, and rearrange tools in the workshop. (It's been less than a year since we finally got that room looking decent, so I'm particularly anxious to make sure all the new tools get filed neatly away rather than turning it back into a cluttered, chaotic hole.) Watch this space for updates on what we do with all these new-to-us items, and on whether they turn out to solve problems or create new ones. 

Gardeners' Holidays 2025: The Changing of the Garden

Every December, Brian and I make the 12-hour drive out to Indiana to visit his family for Christmas. One way we pass the time on the road is by going through that year's seed catalogue to pick out crops for next year's garden. We interrupted this routine once in 2023, when we were trying out a new seed supplier that didn't offer a printed catalogue. But since we didn't have much luck with them, last year we went back to our old seed supplier, Fedco, and our old routine of browsing the catalogue during the drive.

This year, though, we hit another snag. Fedco, unbeknownst to us, also stopped mailing out printed catalogues. You can still order one for a $3 fee (which you can recoup with a $3 coupon that's included), but we didn't learn about that option until this weekend—too late to order a catalogue and receive it in time for our trip. 

Fortunately, we were pretty satisfied with most of the varieties we'd planted in 2025. True, our Waltham butternut squash was a pretty disappointing performer this year, giving us only six squash totaling 14 pounds. But since it's the same variety that gave us a whopping 42 pounds last year, we're not prepared to write it off yet. The same applies to our our Provider green bean plants, which provided only half a pound of beans in 2025 but nearly 3 pounds in 2024. And while our South Wind and Boston Pickling cucumbers only gave us 15 fruits in total, that's better than the measly 6 we got in 2024. Besides, Brian blames the mediocre harvest partly on a brutal summer heat wave that kept us out of the garden for several days, causing us to miss a few cukes until they were too ripe to use.

However, there are a couple of veggie varieties we're planning to dump in 2026. Our Banana frying pepper, for instance, produced only 4 smallish peppers, so we're going to ditch it next year and either try a new variety or stick to the better-performing Carmens and Aconcaguas. We may also bid a sad farewell to our much-loved Pineapple tomato. Its two vines produced only 12 tomatoes between them, and while those few fruits were both large and tasty, we'd probably be better off devoting the space to the much more prolific Premios and San Marzanos, which gave us 58 and 50 fruits, respectively.

One crop we're not quite sure about is our new Pirat lettuce. Although it was touted as a "much more bolt resistant" version of the Marvel of Four Seasons that performed so well for us in 2023 and 2024, it actually bolted by August, leaving us without lettuce until the fall crop came in. So I was considering supplementing it with a summer lettuce blend to tide us through the hot season. However, when I consulted Fedco's list of lettuce varieties, I found that its so-called Summer Lettuce Blend isn't likely to do any better: it promises only that "most years" it can "stand well into July." Given that the Pirat made it until August, and a brutally hot August at that, we might as well stick with that.

Assuming, that is, that we'll be ordering from Fedco. While they carry most of the varieties we liked from this year, they don't have San Marzano tomatoes, the first plum variety we've ever tried that worked really well for us. We only have five seeds left out of the packet we ordered from Botanical Interests in 2023, so ideally we'd like some more—and if we're going back to Botanical Interests for those, we could just get more Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, as well as some of the Salad Bowl summer blend that worked so well for us in 2023. But on the other hand, we're also down to only seven Carmen pepper seeds, which Botanical Interests doesn't carry. So, no matter where we order, we won't be able to get everything we'd like.

Under the circumstances, we'll most likely stick to Fedco. The five San Marzano seeds we have left are probably enough to give us at least two healthy plants, and even if we only get one, we can make up for it by planting more of the Premios. Or we could try a new variety in hopes of finding one that's as tasty as the Pineapple but more productive. That seems like a safer bet than trying to get four plants out of our 7 remaining Carmen pepper seeds, and/or rolling the dice on a new variety that almost certainly won't perform as well.

So that's our plan for next year: More of the same, with possibly one new tomato in the mix. I've got my eye on Goldie, a huge orange tomato that's described as "very productive," relatively quick to ripen, and offering "rich flavor with an extraordinary velvety texture." If it's as advertised, it may make up for the loss of our beloved Pineapple. And if not, we'll still be fine with our trusty Premios, San Marzanos, and Sun Golds.

Recipe of the Month: Apple Brown Betty

As the days ticked down toward Christmas and our annual trip to Indiana, I realized that I had only a limited amount of time to fit in a Recipe of the Month for December. We wouldn't be cooking anything during our time out there, and by the time we got home the month would be nearly over. So if we wanted to test out a new recipe, it would probably have to be this week.

I went through both my new vegan cookbooks to see if I'd bookmarked any recipes we hadn't tried yet, but the only ones I found were things like bean burgers and spicy grits, which weren't sufficiently veggie-focused. So I started perusing the rest of the cookbooks on my shelf, and I happened on one by Olwen Woodier with the simple name Apple Cookbook. That reminded me that the current rules of my Recipe of the Month challenge allow for both fruit- and veggie-based recipes, so there was nothing to stop me from choosing an apple-themed dessert for this month.

The one I picked was called Apple Brown Betty. I don't want to infringe on Olwen Woodier's copyright by reproducing the recipe exactly, but the basic idea is simple: thinly sliced apples layered in a pan with a crumble made from bread, sugar, apple-pie spices, and melted butter. Woodier's version also called for a bit of lemon juice in the crumble and some apple juice or cider poured over top before baking. The recipe as written wasn't vegan, but it was easy enough to swap out the butter for our homemade plant butter.

With this substitution, we already had most of the necessary ingredients for this dish on hand. The one sticking point was the apple cider. This isn't something we usually have in the fridge, and with the thermometer below freezing and snow coming down, we weren't keen to make a run out to the store for some. But since we were only making a half recipe of the brown Betty, we only needed a couple of tablespoons' worth, so Brian decided to see if he could squeeze that amount out of whole apples. He tried pressing some apple slices in my trusty Aeropress coffee maker, but all it did was squash them slightly. Then he tried grinding up the slices in our little Magic Bullet blender, which reduced them to a pulp but didn't liquefy them. Finally, he ran the pulp through the Aeropress, using the perforated metal filter disk to strain out the sediment, and succeeded in extracting enough juice for the recipe.

The dessert came out of the oven looking very pretty and very wholesome, with its chunks of whole-wheat bread topping over a base of sliced apple. It tasted wholesome, too, with the apple flavor being very much to the fore. However, when I asked Brian how much sugar had gone into it, he said the half-sized recipe used six tablespoons. That means the roughly one-quarter of the dish I ate contained four and a half teaspoons—three-quarters of my recommended daily limit. Oops, maybe not so wholesome.

Brian said we could probably get away with using even less sugar in the topping, as he does with his apple crisp, which usually contains about four tablespoons. But given that the crisp is even easier to make and probably healthier, with its hearty topping of rolled oats, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to making brown Betty instead. So we'll probably save this recipe for occasions when we need to use up a few slices of stale bread and stick to crisp the rest of the time.

Adding and removing leaves

Thanksgiving is over, and that means it's time for our annual garden ritual: the Stealing of the Leaves We've found a good thick layer of leaves is the best possible surface to cover our garden paths and keep the weeds under control, and they're useful for mulching the planting areas too: the flower and herb beds, trees and bushes, asparagus and rhubarb, and even the raised garden beds. However, our three smallish plum trees don't drop nearly enough leaves in the fall to cover all this area, so we've resorted to swiping bags of leaves from the curb outside our neighbor's house. 

Brian argues that this isn't really stealing, since the neighbors clearly don't want them and the borough is probably only picking them up to keep them from accumulating in the street. However, I can't shake the feeling of guilt that we might be depriving the borough of a revenue source by taking them. Its website says only that the leaves get "delivered to a compost facility," not whether it gets paid for them, so I have no way of knowing whether the few bags we've snatched represent an added cost to the town or a net benefit. (I wouldn't mind paying the borough to compensate for what we take, but I don't know how to make the offer.) 

Either way, though, I don't feel guilty enough about it to stop doing it. For one thing, there's no other obvious way to get leaves in the quantities we need. Also, the bagged leaves are extra handy because we can use the brown paper bags as well as the leaves. Today, for instance, Brian dumped out several bags' worth of leaves in our front yard, then ripped up the bags into strips to lay down on our garden paths as an extra weed barrier. He then worked his way around the garden like Gromit laying down model railroad track, dumping leaves on top of the papered area and then laying out more paper in front of the leafed area until all the paths were covered.

As we raked out the scattered leaves, we discovered something odd: a lot of them weren't real. We kept spotting flashes of unnaturally bright color amid the brown, and when we zoomed in, we found they were fake leaves made of some kind of stiff fabric. We eventually ended up with a double handful of fake leaves and even some kind of branch covered in glitter and little baubles. We could only assume that some of our neighbors' yard decorations had fallen down and inadvertently got raked up along with the real leaves. This made me feel a bit better about stealing them, since this faux-liage definitely wasn't biodegradable and would only have created a headache for the composting facility.

Along with adding leaves to the places where we wanted them, we also had to make sure we didn't have any where they weren't wanted: in our gutters and downspouts. This is a considerably more onerous job, since we have to haul out our massive 18-foot extension ladder and run it up the back of the house. Brian ran into a bit of a snag trying to do this: he got the ladder fully extended on the ground only to discover that he couldn't lift it upright in that form. He had to telescope one end of it back down, prop it up against the wall, and then ratchet it up to full length before inching carefully up it while I held it steady from below. Luckily there were no leaves in that area, so all he had to do was take a quick peek before climbing back down. The front of the house, which is only one story, was much easier to check, and there he did spot a small clump of leaves near one end of the gutter that he had to clean out by moving the ladder to the porch steps on the south end of the house. Fortunately, it has multiple configurations, so he was able to set it up with one end on the steps and the other on the ground.

Thanks to our sturdy, adjustable ladder, this job was doable, but it would have been a lot easier if we had some way of viewing the gutters without the ladder so Brian would only have to climb up there if they were actually clogged. I've been toying with the idea of getting him a cheap camera drone for this purpose, like this $43 model on eBay. When I mentioned the idea to him, he admitted that he'd consider it $43 well spent if it saved him having to hoist himself up that ladder every fall. However, when I ran an online search on this idea, I found a Reddit thread arguing that (1) a drone of reasonable quality will cost at least a few hundred dollars, and (2) it's not actually all that easy to fly one close to a building. 

Fortunately, one Redditor in this thread offered what might be a better idea: taping a camera to "a very long aluminum pole/selfie stick" instead. I did a little hunting around on the Home Depot Site, and it looks like it's possible to buy one of those for around $40. It would probably be even better than a drone, since we could not only strap a camera phone onto it to check the gutters but also attach a tool to do the actual cleaning if necessary. That would be both easier and safer than sending Brian up a 16 foot ladder once a year. And it would leave us more time to to focus on moving leaves around at ground level.

Bonus recipe: Vegan pumpkin pie

My family's Thanksgiving dinner is a collaborative effort. My dad cooks the turkey, stuffing, and a veggie (which we supplement with our roasted broccoli). My aunt and uncle bring an assortment of delicacies for lunch (cheese, crackers, veggies, dips, and so forth). My brother-in-law brings a couple of good bottles of wine. And we provide our homemade pickles, cranberry sauce, and the all-important pies: one rhubarb, one pumpkin.

For years, Brian made both pies with butter crusts. But when we started making our own plant butter a couple of years ago, Brian decided to try using that in the crust instead. He had to experiment a bit with the recipe to get a dough that would make a reasonable lattice crust, but eventually he found that a ratio of about 3 parts canola to 8 parts refined coconut oil, without the soy milk, would do the job. It's trickier to work with than a butter crust, as the coconut oil has a lower melting point, but if you get it good and cold ahead of time and then work quickly, it can be done.

With this change, our rhubarb pie became vegan. However, we assumed that it would be impossible to do the same with our pumpkin pie, which has eggs and evaporated milk in the filling. And since no one in my family is vegan or otherwise averse to dairy, there was no strong incentive to try. 

But this year, with a bunch of leftover silken tofu in the fridge that needed to get used up before Thanksgiving weekend, Brian started wondering whether it could be put to use in pie form. And this got him thinking about the kappa carageenan that we use in our plant-based mozzarella. After all, this stuff is commonly used as both a thickener and a gelling agent; could adding it to our pumpkin mixture help it set up nice and firm without eggs?

To test this idea, he made a mini pie the week before Thanksgiving, replacing the evaporated milk and eggs with tofu, soymilk, and a teaspoon of kappa carageenan. This did indeed make the filling firm—quite a bit firmer than he expected. Rather than a soft custard, it came out as a smooth, solid layer with a texture that could best be compared to bologna. It proved that the idea was workable, but it was clear that we'd need to dial the carageenan way back to get the texture we were after. 

So, when preparing the pies for the actual Thanksgiving feast, Brian made two pumpkin pies: a full-sized one using our regular recipe, and a smaller one using only a quarter-teaspoon of the carageenan. He also added a bit of baking soda to help the filling puff up. He didn't want to slice into the pie before the family got to see it, but he tested the bit of filling that was left in the saucepan once it had cooled, and he found that the texture was indeed pretty close to what you'd expect in a pumpkin pie. 

This made him confident enough about the mini vegan pie to serve it up alongside the regular pumpkin and rhubarb pies on Thanksgiving Day. Most of the family ventured at least a small taste, and they all agreed that it tasted just like a pumpkin pie. With the two pumpkin pies side by side, it was quite clear that they weren't identical; the original version had a much softer texture. But it wasn't necessarily better, just different. If you like your filling a little on the firmer side, you might even prefer this version.

So, if you'd like to try this vegan pumpkin pie for your next holiday gathering, or any other time, here's the full recipe. The one Brian made was only one-quarter this size, but he's quadrupled all the quantities to produce a 9-inch pie recipe.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

First, make the vegan pie shell. If you don't normally keep your flour in the fridge, start by putting 1 cup all-purpose flour in the refrigerator to chill. 

Melt 1/4 cup refined coconut oil and mix it with 1.5 Tbsp. canola oil in a medium-to-large bowl. Place oil mixture in fridge for 5-10 minutes, take out to whisk, then return to fridge. Repeat until the mixture has just solidified, then whip with an electric mixer for a minute and return to fridge for 30+ minutes. 

Add 1/2 tsp. salt and the cold flour to the solidified whipped oil mixture and use a pastry blender or fork to quickly combine the ingredients until the oil has disappeared into the flour. Return to the fridge if necessary. 

Add ice water to the mixture, one tablespoon at a time, using a fork to work it in after each addition, until the mixture begins to cohere and can be formed into a ball. Return to the fridge if necessary.

Generously coat a flat surface and a rolling pin with cold flour and carefully roll the dough flat (about 2 mm thick). Fold the rolled dough in half, lift it in the pie pan (5-6” for pilot; 9” for full), then unfold it. Adjust the position of the dough in the shell and use ice water to glue any breaks closed. Cut the dough hanging over the edges to about 1-2”, then roll it up and crimp it. Place the finished pie shell in the fridge until the filling is ready. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. 

To make the filling, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp. kappa carageenan, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger, 1/4 tsp. cloves, 1/4 tsp. allspice, and 1/4 tsp. nutmeg. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

Blend 12 oz. silken tofu until smooth. Add 1 cup soymilk and 1 can pumpkin puree and blend thoroughly. In a saucepan, heat the liquid mixture, stirring, until it starts to bubble. 

Add combined dry ingredients to liquid and stir for five minutes. Mixture should continue to bubble throughout. 

Add 1/2 tsp. baking powder and quickly whisk it completely into the mixture. Immediately pour mixture into the prepared pie shell, then bake for 25+ minutes, until pie shell is thoroughly baked.