Recipe of the Month: Egg Roll in a Bowl

As I've mentioned before, April has been a pretty full month for us. Weekdays and weekends alike have been crammed with medical appointments, game nights, last weekend's Repair Cafe, a major garden project, a stream cleanup I didn't even mention here, and a trip up to Massachusetts this weekend that combines a dance performance at NEFFA with a visit to my sister. All of which hasn't left us much time for picking and trying new vegan recipes.

So it wasn't until this week, with the end of April drawing near, that Brian asked me if I had any recipes I'd like to try as a Recipe of the Month. And fortunately, I happened to have one I'd been saving for a rainy day: this Vegan Egg Roll in a Bowl from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken. Brian ran down the ingredient list and found that we had all the required ingredients except the plum sauce. However, we did have some frozen plums in the freezer. And being Brian, he figured, well, how hard could it be to make our own?

He did a little searching online and eventually settled on this plum sauce recipe from Serious Eats. Since we only needed a little for this recipe (and didn't expect to need it for anything else), he made just a quarter-sized batch, using half a pound of our frozen plums and correspondingly scaled amounts of the other ingredients. He used one small garlic clove in place of the half a clove the sized-down recipe called for, and we just happened to have a quarter-piece of star anise in the spice cupboard, so he didn't need to mess with breaking up a whole one. The whole process took about half an hour, including cooling time.

After that, the rest of the recipe was pretty straightforward. Aside from the extra step of tossing the tofu with the plum sauce, it came together much like any other stir-fry. He served it up over plain white rice with the extra plum sauce on the side, leaving out the other garnishes, and it was pretty good. Not extraordinary, but pretty good. The addition of the plum sauce did not magically transform it from a standard tofu-and-veggie bowl into some kind of higher-level concoction, but we both enjoyed it enough to to go back for seconds and happily polish off the leftovers for lunch.

So, will this become a regular addition to our recipe repertoire? Well, maybe. As I said, it's not necessarily better than a standard stir-fry, so Brian will probably stick to his usual method of tossing together whatever veggies we have on hand, rather than deliberately preparing this specific combination of ingredients. But we do have some of the plum sauce left over, safely stashed in the freezer, so should we ever find ourselves needing to use up some cabbage, carrot, onion, and tofu, we can thaw the sauce, follow this recipe, and be confident it will come out well.

Our first Repair Cafe

Highland Park's first Repair Cafe, which was postponed last February due to a massive blizzard, finally took place this weekend. I signed up to work in the sewing section, while Brian worked at the "miscellaneous" table. Never having attended, much less worked at, one of these events before, we had little idea what to expect. Would anyone even show up? And if they did, would any of them need repairs that were within our (particularly my) modest capabilities? 

The answers to both questions turned out to be, "And how."

The night before, Brian and I both spent some time deciding what tools and supplies to take with us. Having no clue what we'd need, we ended up packing everything we could reasonably carry to cover all the basics. Brian stuffed his backpack with roughly 30 pounds' worth of tools, including a hammer, an adjustable wrench, screwdrivers, pliers, a set of nut drivers, wood glue, epoxy, a multimeter, assorted hardware, a staple gun, a hacksaw, and probably several other things he can't currently recall. I took only my main sewing kit, but crammed it to the limit with extras I thought might come in handy: a few fabric scraps, my big darning needles, a small spool of yarn, some hooks and eyes, extra buttons, and my entire collection of embroidery floss, because you never know what color you'll need. (Brian made me stick a padlock on the overstuffed box to ensure it wouldn't pop open en route and spill all that stuff out onto the sidewalk.)

A little before noon, we arrived at the site with all our tools in tow. Sustainable Highland Park, which was organizing the event, was in the process of setting up tables and chairs and had put out some maps to show what was supposed to go on each one. I was mildly surprised to see that there were three entire tables for the sewing crew, the same as for electrical repairs, while "miscellaneous" had only one largish table in the opposite corner. There were also stations for bicycle, jewelry, woodwork, and guitar repair, and one table specifically for knife sharpening. We got set up, introduced ourselves to the other folks at our respective tables, and partook of some pizza provided by Sustainable Highland Park for the volunteers, and at 1pm, the doors opened. Or perhaps I should say, the floodgates. 

I meant to get more pictures of the event itself, but I never got a chance. I was working more or less nonstop for the next three hours, as a steady stream of "customers" presented their items for repair. I'd assumed that the work in the sewing section would be fairly light, but it turned out to be probably the busiest in the whole place. The folks with bigger jobs, like hemming pants or replacing zippers, got sent to the two ladies who'd brought sewing machines, while I and the two other hand-sewers devoted ourselves to a wide array of smaller repairs. I replaced buttons, stitched up torn seams, mended holes in pockets, reattached the band on a baseball cap, darned the worn-out bottom of a vinyl backpack, and patched up stuffed animals belonging to both a small child and a large dog. The supplies we'd all brought quickly turned into a communal pool as we passed buttons, seam rippers, fabric swatches, and thread of various colors along the table. Our section was so busy that one of the volunteers from the jewelry table, who also had some sewing skills, came over to join us, and even with her help, I suspect we didn't quite manage to serve everyone.

Meanwhile, over at his table, Brian was working on an even more mixed assortment of items. Over the course of the afternoon, he tackled multiple lamps, a space heater, a doll with a broken leg, a toaster oven with a broken door, an electric shaver, a robot vacuum, and a white noise machine, among other things. Some of these were fairly easy to fix, like the electric shaver (which showed up in pieces but worked perfectly once he managed to get it put back together) and the robot vacuum (which, after being cleaned and charged up, started cruising around the floor on its own). Others needed to be more fully disassembled to get at their inner workings. Some things got fixed, but a bit inelegantly (like the doll, which he simply reassembled with a dollop of hot glue). There were a few items he couldn't fix because no one at the table had the right tools, such as the lamp with the sagging head that would have required a longer bolt than Brian had in his collection, but he was at least able to advise the owners on how to repair them at home. And there were a few, such as the white noise machine, that completely stumped everyone at the table and ended up in the trash.

All in all, it was a hectic day, but a highly satisfying one. Ever since my paid work essentially dried up last year, I've often found myself wondering at the end of a day whether I've actually accomplished anything useful. Today, I was in no doubt whatsoever. I got to help not just one, but dozens of my neighbors live a little more ecofrugally, saving money and keeping their stuff out of the landfill. And as a group, we got to raise our collective middle finger to the disposable consumer culture that wants to keep us stuck on the buy-and-discard treadmill. It was a deeply fulfilling experience that brought our community together—one I hope will be repeated soon and often.

[EDIT, 4/22/26: Though I didn't get many photos, the organizers did. You can see them on Facebook.] 

Our new asparagus bed

First of all, I apologize for being a bit late with this week's blog entry. But as you'll soon see, there's a good reason for it. 

For several years, our asparagus crop has been steadily shrinking. In fact, checking over my posts, I see that it's been ten years since we last celebrated the May 1 Gardeners' Holiday as the Age of Asparagus, largely because there just hasn't been enough asparagus to celebrate. For the past couple of years, we've harvested barely enough for one meal. And so far this year, we've had no spears at all big enough to pick. Our mature plants have produced only tiny, spindly fronds, and as far as we can tell, none of the ten new asparagus crowns we added to the bed last year have put up any shoots at all.

In light of this, I suggested maybe we it was time to do what we considered doing last year: dig up the entire asparagus bed and start over from scratch. Brian agreed that might be a good idea, but he wondered whether we should consider starting over in a different location. In the first place, our current asparagus patch had never been all that productive, and in the second place, it was likely to get torn up at some spot to put in the condenser for a heat pump system when we finally got around to installing one. So if we had to put in a whole new bed, why not put it in a new location where we'd know it wouldn't be disturbed?

Well, it was a nice idea in theory, but there was one obvious problem: asparagus likes a well-drained, even sandy soil. The current asparagus bed has the only soil on our property with even a little bit of sand in it. If the asparagus plants didn't like that, they'd really hate the heavy clay in the rest of our yard. The only way around this that we could think of would be to build a raised bed and fill it with a more asparagus-friendly soil mixture.

I knew this was possible, because I'd recently seen a GrowVeg video that discussed the advantages of planting asparagus in raised beds. However, it didn't go into much detail about how to construct one. Digging a little deeper, I found this article at Garden Betty, which talked more about how to build the bed and how to plant and tend the asparagus for optimal growth. (One thing it recommended was a phosphorus-rich organic fertilizer, something we'd never used on our current asparagus patch, which might explain its lackluster production.) But it also called attention to one key point: asparagus crowns are only available for sale in stores for a short period in the springtime. So, if we really wanted to do this, we'd have to do it as soon as possible.

Since I already had my monthly Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting to attend in Somerville on Saturday, we decided to combine that trip with a visit to the Belle Mead Co-Op for asparagus crowns and bulk soil. That gave us just a few days to plan out the location and design for the new raised bed. We decided the best spot for it would be the area in front of the shed, which is relatively level and gets sunlight for most of the day. In that location, we'd have room for a 4-foot square bed without blocking off our access to the shed, the main garden, or the cherry bushes. After a little tinkering, Brian determined that he could build a 4-foot square frame roughly 17 inches deep entirely out of reclaimed materials: two large boards we'd recently scavenged off the curb and a bunch of narrower pieces trimmed off from the stack of wood pallets stored in the shed. He started constructing it on Friday and had it finished by Saturday morning, just in time for our trip to the Co-Op. 

We'd already called the Co-Op ahead of time and found that they had several varieties of asparagus in stock, including the highly recommended Jersey Knight and Millennium varieties. We planned to get one 10-pack of each, allowing us to plant eight of each variety in our 4-by-4 bed with a few to spare. When we got there, we found that there were two different bundles of Millennium crowns available: one-year old crowns for $10 or two-year-old ones for $20. We decided to spend the extra $10 in hopes that we'd be able to harvest at least a little asparagus from our new bed next year. 

Next on our shopping list was soil. Garden Betty recommended using a "well-draining soil" and amending it with 2 inches of "well-aged compost." To simplify things, we opted for the Co-Op's blended topsoil, which has compost and sand already mixed in. The Co-Op's website suggested amending this mixture for raised beds with a bagged product called Bumper Crop, so we added a couple of bags of that to our order, along with one bag of an organic fertilizer called Bulb-Tone that Garden Betty recommended. The total came to $129, probably the most we'd spent on any garden project since we bought our fruit trees 13 years ago, but like them, this is a long-term investment.

Loading the half-yard of topsoil we'd purchased was a lot more work than we expected. We've bought bulk compost and mulch from the Co-Op enough times to have the drill pretty well down: Dump out our half-yard into our two big trash barrels, muscle those into the car, then shovel up the rest into bags and load those. But the topsoil was much denser than either mulch or compost, and the filled barrels were far too heavy for us to lift or even drag. We had to shovel about half the dirt out of them before we could get them into the car, and even then it took all our combined strength. And although we filled the bags only about halfway full, they were still too heavy for me to lift more than an inch or two. Brian had to heave them all into the car, and then, with still more difficulty, heave them back out again. To haul them down to the back yard, we dragged out the wheelbarrow and the ramp we hadn't used since our patio project in 2013, but even hefting the bags up into the wheelbarrow was a challenge. By the time we'd finished shifting everything, we didn't have the energy to do more than change clothes, eat supper, and collapse on the couch to watch Critical Role.

On Sunday afternoon, we began preparing the bed for planting. First, we toted the frame Brian had built down to the spot we'd picked for it in the yard (popping one side loose in the process, which he had to reattach). We carefully adjusted it until we were satisfied, then set a brick at each corner to marked out its exact position. After that, we moved the frame out of the way so Brian could go all the way around the edges of the square with our King of Spades, cutting a line to mark the boundaries of the new bed. He then used the same tool to score horizontal and vertical lines across the bed, dividing the sod into squares. We removed these squares one at a time, whacking each one with a trowel to shake the clods of dirt loose from the grass roots so none of it would go to waste before dumping the grass into a bucket bound for the compost bin. 

When all the sod had been turfed up, we shifted the frame back into place. It wasn't quite level, so we scooted it over just a bit and Brian dug the hole a bit deeper along one edge to get it situated securely. Then he made one more adjustment to the frame: stapling a layer of cardboard to the inside so that none of our precious soil would escape through the cracks. On this cardboard layer, he used a Sharpie to mark three lines at the center of each side of the bed, at 8, 5, and 2 inches below the top edge. The first mark showed the level to which we'd need to fill the bed before placing the crowns; the second showed the level to which we should pile additional dirt on top of them; and the third showed how much more dirt we'd need to add later in the season, once the spears had started to sprout. The remaining two inches would be for a layer of mulch on top to protect the plants during the winter. He also marked off one-foot lengths along the top edges of the bed as a guide to help us place the asparagus crowns.

That, once again, proved to be all the work we could handle for one day, so it wasn't until this morning that we started actually filling up the beds (which is also why this blog entry was delayed). Since we weren't sure our half-yard of soil would be quite enough to fill them to the level needed, we started by adding a layer of sticks, as recommended in this other GrowVeg video. Aside from adding bulk, they'll help the soil in the bed drain more easily, and they'll break down over time to release their nutrients into the soil. On top of that, we began adding the actual dirt—first shoveling it out of the big bins until they were light enough to tip out, then dumping in about five bags' worth on top of that until we'd nearly reached the first mark. Then we dumped in one of the two bags of Bumper Crop and, following the instructions on the package, worked it into the soil to a depth of about six inches.

Once we'd reached this point, we were ready to start the actual planting. First, on Garden Betty's advice, we soaked the asparagus crowns in a bucket of water for about 15 minutes to rehydrate them. While they were soaking, we opened up the package of Bulb-Tone, sprinkled three cups of it across the soil surface, and lightly worked it in with our fingers. Then we carefully laid out the asparagus crowns according to Brian's guidelines, one per square foot, with the two-year-old Millennium crowns toward the front of the bed and the younger Jersey Knight crowns in back. 

Finally, we topped up the bed to Brian's second level marker with a mixture of soil and some more of the Bumper Crop and gave the freshly planted asparagus a good watering. Our sources said it would need 1 to 2 inches of water every week for its first couple of years, which Brian worked out to be 10 to 20 gallons—about five full watering cans' worth. However, we found the soil was looking pretty well saturated after three cans full, so we decided to leave it at that and top it off later.

After learning how much water the plants would need, Brian decided to add one more thing to the new asparagus patch: a rain gauge. The standard design for this is simply a plastic bottle with the top cut off and inverted to funnel rainwater into the opening, with lines marked on the outside to show how many inches of rain you've had. Sources like Wikihow suggest adding pebbles to the bottom to keep it from tipping over, but Brian decided to get a little fancier and use some of the colorful marbles we'd both saved from our childhood. He did a little measuring to figure out how much water the marbles would displace and adjusted the marks on the side accordingly. The new rain gauge now sits on a corner of the bed, so we can see at a glance how much water the plants have had and calculate how much they still need.

Although it was a lot of work, I'm extremely pleased with our new asparagus bed. I like the fact that Brian built it himself. I like the fact that he used only salvaged materials. I like the fact that we assembled it together (even if he did most of the literal heavy lifting). And I like the fact that, having planted it once, we can expect to continue harvesting asparagus from it from the next 15 to 20 years. Granted, at around $3 per pound for in-season asparagus, it will need to produce 43 pounds to pay for all the material that went into it, but that's less than three ounces per plant per year. I think we can hope to at least break even, and one thing we can be sure of is that any asparagus we do get will be far fresher than anything we could buy at the store. And if asparagus proves to be one of the commodities that skyrockets in price due to tariffs or global instability, we'll be at least somewhat insulated from the shock.

Being retired is a lot of work

Brian and I have just completed our first full month of retirement. Brian left his job in mid-February, and my last remaining client cut me off at the end of February, so we both spent the entire month of March living a life of leisure. Well, in theory, at least. In practice, we seem to be even busier than when we were both working full-time. 

Since neither of us has to work during the day anymore, we have no restrictions on scheduling meetings and appointments on weekdays, nor do we feel as much need to zealously protect our limited free time on the weekends. Consequently, we've been piling more and more things on our plates. We're in not one but two RPG groups, and we've taken on leadership roles for our Monday night board-game group as well. Brian has been going to the blood bank more often to donate platelets (I'm not allowed to do likewise because of some meds I'm taking). I've been taking part in more events with my Citizens' Climate Lobby chapter. And in between, we've been going back and forth to various doctors to treat all the health problems that popped up right on cue as soon as we became old, retired people. With all that going on, our calendar for the past month has had scarcely a day on it that's completely open. And looking at what's coming up (including the rescheduled Repair Cafe on the 19th, a half-dozen dance events, and a family wedding in June), we shouldn't expect it to ease up much for the next few months at least.

If our post-retirement schedule has been a bit of an adjustment, our post-retirement budget is an even bigger one—particularly where health care is concerned. Thanks to state subsidies, the monthly premium we're paying for all our new health plans is actually less than we paid for Brian's workplace plan: about $350 as compared to $619. But that smaller sum feels more noticeable because the payments come out of our checking account every month, rather than slipping invisibly out of Brian's paycheck before it ever hit our account. 

More noticeably still, our new plans come with significantly higher out-of-pocket costs. Every visit to a specialist, which would have cost only $30 on our old plan, rings up at $75 on our new one, and the bill for an MRI one of those specialists ordered came to about $519 (well below the full price, but still far from trivial). Add in the new out-of-pocket cost for prescription meds, and we've spent over to $850 on health care just in the past month. And there's going to be plenty more where that came from, including a second MRI that we haven't been billed for yet.

Another item on our post-retirement expense sheet: taxes. This one wasn't exactly new, as I'd always paid quarterly estimated taxes on my freelance income (up until last year, when I had so little work that I didn't owe enough to be worth counting). But I didn't have to pay tax on that income until it actually hit my checking account, whereas I'm now paying estimated tax on the dividends, interest, and capital gains from our investments. (All that was taxable income before, too, but between Brian's withholding and my estimated tax payments, we always paid enough in tax throughout the year to take care of it.) This, again, feels a lot more obtrusive, because I'm paying taxes on these earnings before I've even laid hands on them.

But what's even harder is figuring out how much I owe. When I got paid for a freelance job, I knew exactly how much I'd earned, so all I had to do was add the payments I'd received for the quarter and multiply the total by 25 percent, which was more than sufficient to cover the taxes. To find out how much we'd earned on our investments this quarter, I had to ask my finance guy—and instead of sending me back a number, he sent several different documents, each showing "trade activity" or "gain/loss" for a different account. He explained that to figure out our earnings, I'd have to open up each of the "trade activity" documents and manually add up all the figures listed for interest and dividends, then add (or, in some cases, subtract) the "total realized gains" from the "gain/loss" documents to come up with a total. You would think that with all the fancy software Morgan Stanley has, they'd have some way to calculate this for us automatically, but apparently not. I ended up creating a new spreadsheet page to do the math for me.

It's not the money that bothers me so much about any of this; it's the paperwork. When Brian was working, dealing with income and expenses was simple. Health premiums and taxes came out of his paycheck automatically, and our take-home pay got deposited automatically into our bank account. When we needed to see a doctor, we paid the copay, and the insurance took care of everything else without bothering us. I knew, in theory, that after retirement we'd have to do more of this work ourselves. But it does seem like it's all more complicated than it really needs to be.