Tracking our household food waste

Every so often, I see a statistic about food waste that makes my jaw absolutely drop. It's shocking enough to hear that the world as a whole wastes about one-third of all the food it produces, to the tune of $388 billion and 2 million tons of CO2 equivalent each year. But that number is so big and abstract, it's hard to visualize how it applies to you personally. If you want a real head-spinner, check out this 2025 EPA report, which says the average family of four in the U.S. throws away around 1,025 pounds of food every year, at a cost of more than $2,900. Nearly three grand, going straight in the trash.

When I saw this number, I found it kind of hard to believe. How is it even possible to throw that much food away? Do most Americans dump all their leftovers straight in the bin instead of saving them for lunch? Are they leaving entire watermelons to rot in the fridge uneaten? 

But then I started second-guessing myself. According to a 2025 Slate article (currently available only to subscribers), 75 percent of Americans think their personal food waste is less than average, and clearly they can't all be right. Was I seriously underestimating our own household's food waste? Were we actually chucking away ten pounds of food every week without realizing it?

There was only one way to be sure. In April 2025, I started keeping track of all the food we wasted in our household, from the bad spots we removed from our strawberries to the teaspoon of coffee grounds I spilled while emptying out the old container. For an entire year, I made an entry every time any food in our house went into the bin, listing the type and amount of food, the reason we had to toss it, and where it ended up. Here is that list in full:

4/24/25: salad dressing, about 2 Tbsp, bottle popped open while being shaken. Wiped up on rag and rinsed down drain.
5/7/25: popcorn kernels, about ½ cup, knocked over container. Compost.
5/14/25: dried Biquinho peppers, about 1 tsp, grew mold. Compost.
5/27/25: coffee creamer, ¼ cup, went sour. Down the drain.
Coffee, 1 cup, ruined by sour creamer. Down the drain.
5/30/25: Strawberries, about 5 oz, bad spots removed immediately after purchase. Compost.
6/1/25: 1 batch vegan whipped cream that didn’t whip (about ½ cup coconut oil, ½ cup soy milk). Compost.
6/7/25: ½ cup coffee w/coconut milk, got too slimy to drink. Down the drain.
6/11/25: Strawberries, 3.6 oz, bad spots removed. Compost.
6/13/25: Strawberries, 2.3 oz., bad spots removed. Compost.
6/15/25: 1 tsp cocoa and 1 tsp sugar, added too much water during prep. Down the drain.
7/29/25: True Lime, 1 packet, congealed. Trash.
8/16/25: 1 cup coffee with creamer, added too much inulin. [N.b.: this is a fiber supplement I've been adding a teaspoon of to my daily coffee to help regulate my digestion.] Down the drain.
10/20/25: 1 tsp coffee grounds, spilled. Most swept up into compost, some down the drain.
11/7/25: 1 tsp sugar, spilled. Into compost.
11/9/25: ½ tsp coconut creamer, spilled. Wiped up, rinsed down drain.
11/15/25: nearly full box of corn starch, infested with bugs. Into compost.
11/23/25: about ½ cup powdered sugar, also infested. Into compost.
About 2 cups mashed potato flakes (ancient), also infested. Into compost.
About 2 cups corn grits, also infested. Into compost.
½ jar mayonnaise, 18 months past “best by” date (bought during low carb period that mercifully ended). Compost. [N.b.: this might still have been safe to use, but we decided not to take the risk.]
1/9/26: ½ cucumber, spontaneously disintegrated. Compost.
⅓ apple, cut off bad spots. Compost.
1/15/26: ⅔ apple, went mushy. Compost.
2/26/26: 12 ancient peppermint tea bags, no flavor left. Compost.
1 package brownie mix, burst open. Bagged and binned.
3/14/26: ½ c coffee creamer, went sour, down drain.
1 c coffee, ruined by sour creamer, down drain.
3/29/26: ½ plum tomato, went slimy. Into compost.
4/6/26: 2 green potatoes, into compost.
4/8/26, 1 spoiled potato, into compost.
4/10/26, 7 dates, went bad in storage. Into compost.
4/14/26: 4 homemade veggie cakes, dropped on floor, into compost.

I didn't actually weigh all the food we discarded, but based on a very rough estimate, it appears to be between 12 and 13 pounds. For the whole year. For both of us. It's still a lot more food waste than I'd like; if I'd been really on the ball, I wouldn't have let that coffee creamer go off (not once but twice) or knocked over the popcorn container or added too much water to my morning cocoa. But it's clearly much, much less than the EPA's estimate of 256 pounds per person per year.

The value of all that discarded food is a bit harder to calculate because some of the items were so old. I can determine how much we'd pay for a box of tea bags or a jar of mayonnaise today, but I have no idea how much we paid for those items when we actually bought them years ago. The best I could do was figure out roughly how much all those items would cost to replace at today's prices. That number, as closely as I can calculate, is around $20.40. Again, that's much more than I'd like, but it's a far cry from $1,456 for the two of us.

Now, it's possible the EPA's numbers are way off. The report is based on a USDA data set that the USDA itself admits may not reflect "actual loss rates." However, I've also seen a 2023 survey of actual Americans showing that the average household wastes 6.2 cups of food per week, while our household wasted roughly 22 cups in an entire year. So it seems more likely that our two-person household is an outlier, producing only (at most) 5 percent as much food waste by weight and 1 percent as much by cost as the average.

So, on the one hand, this experiment shows yet again that our ecofrugal lifestyle isn't normal, at least not by American standards. But on the other hand, it shows that reducing household food waste is a very attainable goal. Brian and I don't do anything particularly odd or extreme to avoid wasting food; we just do the straightforward, common-sense things most sources recommend. We eat up leftovers; we store food properly (produce in the produce drawer, heat-sensitive stuff toward the rear, pantry staples in closed jars); we try not to buy or prepare more food than we can reasonably eat. And if anything looks like it's getting close to the end of its shelf life, we make a point of using it right away. The only thing we do that most Americans couldn't is composting, and that's more like recycling food waste than reducing it.

In short, reducing household waste looks like a pretty simple way to cut carbon emissions. It doesn't require any up-front investment; in fact, it actually saves you money by directing more of your grocery dollars into your stomach instead of the trash bin. All that's needed, apparently, is a bit more education about how costly food waste is and how easy it is to avoid. So...consider yourselves educated.

Our first barrel-grown garlic crop

In my September Gardeners' Holiday post, there was one fall crop I didn't mention: our garlic. That's because I didn't actually know at that point how much our harvest would be. As you may recall, last fall we decided to try planting garlic in our old rain barrel, which we'd already filled with soil in an unsuccessful attempt to grow potatoes. All that garlic got harvested in late summer and hung up to cure. It was immediately apparent that we'd gotten more garlic from the barrel than we did last year from the ground, which yielded only six puny heads—barely enough to seed this year's crop. But we didn't know yet how much of that garlic we'd get to eat and how much we'd need to set aside for planting.

This week, my garden calendar reminded me that it was time to plant the garlic, so we took down the dried stalks, trimmed them, and started counting them up. In total, the 20 cloves we'd planted had produced 14 heads, ranging from in size dinky to substantial. The smaller heads had only about four cloves apiece, while the larger ones looked like they'd yield six or seven. We set aside five heads, totaling 24 cloves, for planting, leaving us with nine heads—perhaps 45 cloves—as our harvest. That's obviously not enough to make a serious dent in our garlic consumption for the year, but it's not bad for a crop that required practically no effort to grow.

Before I could break apart those five little heads and plant them, though, I had to prepare the "ground." In the month or so since we'd harvested the previous garlic crop, the soil in the rain barrel had somehow been taken over by mint plants. I have no idea how they got in there, since we certainly never planted them, and the barrel is in the back yard, nowhere near the fully contained herb bed in the front yard that's the only place on our property where mint runs free. But those persistent little plants managed it somehow, so we had to yank them all out before we could plant anything else. Fortunately, the soil in there is quite soft and crumbly, so the plants came out easily.

Once those were gone, it was apparent that the level of the dirt in the barrel was rather low—a good foot or so below the rim. This, too, was puzzling, since we'd filled the barrel pretty well up to the top when planting the potatoes and hadn't removed any. Apparently the soil, loose as it felt, had become compacted over time. To replenish it, Brian helped me haul out a big bucket of topsoil that we'd dug up while planting things around the yard. I shoveled that all into the barrel, then topped it off with the last few handfuls of the compost we'd bought for our flower planters.

After that, all that remained was to break apart the heads and put the cloves in the soil. I had to consult a book to remind me how to do this, since I did the planting during my Yom Kippur Internet fast. I had to do a bit of hunting, since not many of our gardening books mention garlic, but eventually I found one that said the cloves should go in one inch deep in rows two to four inches apart. Since the container is round, I made my "rows" a series of concentric circles, going from 13 cloves in the largest down to just three in the smallest. Then I poked them all in with my thumb to what I estimated was a depth of about an inch and covered them.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do the final step of the process: covering the barrel to protect the garlic from frost. We'd already run through all the free mulch we acquired last summer, and we don't yet enough fall leaves on the ground to use those. But the first frost is at least a couple of weeks away, so we should have time to either acquire some mulch or rake up some leaves before it hits. Then we can just sit back and wait for next year's garlic harvest, while we enjoy this year's for...well, maybe a month or two.

What's holding back plant-based protein?

I recently discovered The Tyee, an independent Canadian news site with a leftward bent. Flipping through to see what sorts of stories it covered, I happened on one about a "revolutionary" new plant-based protein made from mycelium, the root-like fibers that connect networks of fungi underground. The company profiled in the piece, Maia Farms, claims it can cultivate and harvest its mycelium protein in just seven days, as compared to 18 months to grow a calf to adult size and slaughter it for beef. Its process produces 84 percent lower carbon emissions per "unit of production" than chicken, which in turn has only about 12% of the carbon footprint of beef. The founder of Maia Farms calls his product "arguably the most efficient form of agriculture that will ever exist" and says it could be a "global solution" to the problem of meeting the protein needs of a growing population. All of which, obviously, sounds fantastic. 

But I was not impressed. Why not? Because I've heard this same story so many times before from so many other producers of plant-based protein—all of which have, so far, completely failed to make a significant dent in humanity's meat consumption. 

In 2023, for instance, the Climate Coach column in the Washington Post ran a story (free gift link for non-subscribers here) about Plantible, a California startup producing a protein called rubisco from fast-growing duckweed. The article touted rubisco as a versatile protein that can easily step in to do the job of eggs, meat, or butter. It also noted how easy the duckweed is to grow, producing "36 metric dry tons per hectare — roughly 10 times more than soy." It sounded like it should be utterly revolutionary. Yet in the 19 months since that article came out, I have not seen Plantible's Rubi Protein, nor any product that contains it, in any store. Obviously, it takes time for a new product to scale up, but based on Plantible's website, I can't find any evidence that its product is available anywhere at all.

If these plant-based proteins are so revolutionary, so efficient, so sustainable, then why aren't they everywhere? The Climate Coach article implies that the main barrier to wider adoption is taste: plant-based proteins, it says, "fall short of the savory appeal of eggs, dairy and meat." But I don't buy that argument. Brian, a longtime fan of beef, says burgers and bratwursts from Impossible are, to him, indistinguishable from the real thing. That is, until you look at the price tag. On Target's website, a bag of six Impossible Burgers (in their new red packaging, designed to appeal more to carnivores) costs $13.59, or $9.06 per pound. A 3-pound bag of store-brand beef burgers costs $13.99, or $4.66 per pound—roughly half as much. At those prices, what reason would anyone who isn't a vegetarian already have to switch?

I can only see two ways that plant-based proteins will ever become more popular than the animal products they're meant to replace. Either they'll have to get a lot cheaper, or the animal-based products will have to get a lot more expensive. And there's some chance that economies of scale will, in fact, drive down the cost of plant proteins. A 2021 analysis from the Good Food Institute (GFI) shows that, while plant-based meats and cheeses were about 40 percent more expensive in 2020 than corresponding animal products, plant-based products in "more developed categories," such as plant milk and butter, had a much smaller price premium of 7 to 11 percent. So maybe, once mycelium and rubisco proteins have been around as long as soy milk, they'll be more affordable. But they won't be doing much to halt the growth of food-driven carbon emissions in the meantime.

But there's also the second possibility: a spike, or even a sustained rise, in the price of animal proteins. We're starting to see it right now with eggs, which have jumped in price to an average of $4 per dozen from $2.50 just a year ago. That inflated price is still considerably cheaper than Just Egg, but it's significantly more than scrambled tofu. One large egg weighs about 2 ounces, so a two-egg scramble would be about 4 ounces' worth and cost 67 cents. Last time we bought tofu, we paid only $1.29 per pound, so a scramble made with 4 ounces of tofu would cost only around 32 cents. Even if you throw in a pinch of turmeric for color and a pinch of black salt (kala namak) to give it an eggy flavor, it won't cost more than about 34 cents—roughly half the price of real eggs.

Honestly, I'm thinking the next time we make a recipe that includes scrambled eggs, like our staple weeknight meal of roasted Brussels sprouts with eggs and potatoes, we should just scramble up a corresponding volume of tofu instead. At both half the price and half the carbon footprint, it's an ecofrugal no-brainer. The only downside is that the leftover tofu in the package won't keep as long as eggs in their individual shells, so we'll need to make sure to use the rest of it up within a few days so it won't go to waste. But with the number of recipes we know that use tofu, that shouldn't be difficult. And it will allow us to save our precious eggs for the jobs that only they can do properly, like holding matzo balls and rice casserole together.

[Edit, 2/26/26: I've just learned why I've heard nothing about Plantible's products in the three years since they were announced. Turns out they've spent all that time waiting for approval from the FDA to use their Rubi Protein in food. Now that they have that approval and a working factory that can make Rubi Protein at scale, we might—maybe, possibly?—see it on shelves in the next year or two. Or three. Or...not.]

Fun with legumes

After last week's partial success with the Spicy Orange Broccoli, Brian did not rest on his vegetable laurels. Over the past week, he has continued to explore our two new vegan cookbooks, preparing not one but two of the recipes I flagged as interesting. Both of these involved beans—but not beans served in their natural form, as in last month's recipe. Instead, they were mashed up and formed into new shapes to masquerade as something else. Neither of these bean disguises was entirely successful, but one worked much better than the other.

Last Sunday, even as I was writing up our first recipe from Everyday Happy Herbivore, Brian was in the kitchen working on the Chickpea Tenders from the same cookbook. This was a lot more complicated than the previous recipe. Before he could even get started on the tenders themselves, he had to whip up three mixes from the same cookbook that were ingredients in the recipe. First, there was a Poultry Seasoning Mix made from five dried herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage, marjoram, and basil) ground together. Next came the No-Chicken Broth Powder, made from nutritional yeast ground up with various herbs and seasonings (onion powder, garlic powder, fresh sage, dried thyme, paprika, celery seed, dried parsley, and turmeric, which I suspect is mainly in there for color). And finally, he had to blend up a small batch of Vegan Mayo from silken tofu with Dijon mustard, white vinegar, lemon juice, and agave nectar (for which he substituted simple syrup).

With all these ingredients ready to go, he began on the laborious process of preparing the tenders. First, he had to drain and rinse a can of chickpeas and mash them thoroughly with a fork. Then he mixed the resulting mash with the seasoning mix, broth powder, vegan mayo, and some Dijon mustard and soy sauce. (The recipe called for low-sodium soy sauce, but as with last week's recipe, he just used regular.) Once he had that combined, he mixed in a third of a cup of vital wheat gluten and a few tablespoons of water and kneaded it all together. He divided the resulting dough into four balls and shaped them into long, flat ovals, which he laid out on a baking sheet. And for the final step, he baked them for a total of 40 minutes, removing the pan to flip them over every 10 minutes. 

After all that work, he ended up with four flat oblongs that, frankly, didn't look much like the chicken tenders they were meant to replicate. They were more like veggie burgers, but not particularly good ones. They were dry and somewhat crumbly, and their flavor, despite all the elaborate seasonings that went into them, was unremarkable. Brian had served them with frozen green beans and roast potatoes, and the cutlets were by far the least appealing part of the meal. I had to slather each bite of mine liberally with the two dipping sauces Brian had prepared—the rest of the vegan mayo and a vegan "honey" mustard from the same cookbook, containing equal parts Dijon mustard and simple syrup—to get the whole thing down. Brian didn't have as much trouble with his, but he certainly wasn't enthusiastic about it, and he sees no reason to attempt this recipe again. It's much less interesting than any number of other things you can do with chick peas, most of which are a whole lot less work.

It occurred to me after trying this dish to check the other vegan cookbook, Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Vegan, to see if Richard Makin had any better ideas about how to make a vegan replica of a chicken tender. He did, but his recipe was even more ludicrously complicated than the chickpea one. His called for wheat gluten and cannellini beans and silken tofu and seasonings (some of which we don't have), all processed together in three our four stages in a high-speed blender (which we also don't have). Then the resulting dough has to be kneaded and rolled out into ropes and tied into knots and simmered in broth for an hour, after which it has to go into the fridge and marinate in the broth for at least another four hours before it's ready to cook. So, yeah, we're not doing that. 

The recipe Brian actually selected from Anything You Can Cook was a much simpler one: Cannellini Gnocchi with Pesto. Brian has made his own gnocchi before, both a simple version using potato flakes and a more elaborate, but tastier version using baked potato, but this recipe had one thing those lacked: protein. With canned cannellini beans in place of the potatoes, it would go from a starchy meal to one that balances carbs and protein, with some fiber to boot. 

Making the gnocchi from beans wasn't that much more complicated than making it from potatoes. The recipe called for them to be mashed and then strained through a sieve to remove lumps and skins, but Brian didn't bother with that step. He just mashed a can of beans and blended them, lumps and all, with a cup and three-quarters of flour and a bit of salt and pepper, kneading it until he had a reasonable ball of dough. He rolled that out into a long snake, cut that into little nuggets, dusted them with flour, and pressed each one with the back of a fork to make ridges—more or less the same process he uses for regular potato gnocchi. Then, as directed in the recipe, he dumped them into a pot of boiling water and cooked them until they floated up to the surface.

Brian did not use the pesto recipe that accompanied the dish in the cookbook, since he already had his own. He just combined about a half-cup's worth of frozen basil-and-olive-oil cubes with a third of a cup of toasted pine nuts, two cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast, and half a teaspoon of salt, and blended it all together to get a smooth paste. Because the basil had been frozen, the pesto came out a sort of olive-drab color instead of the nice bright green you get with fresh basil, but it tasted fine.

The cannellini gnocchi themselves, to my taste buds, were also fine. They didn't have the same light, pillowy texture as Brian's potato gnocchi, but their chewier texture was satisfying enough. Brian, however, found them too stodgy for his taste. He thinks they could still work, but next time he'd make them about half as large, and he'd serve them with a nice, thick tomato sauce that would add more moisture to them than the pesto. So this recipe wasn't a failure, but it's not quite ready for prime time.

Based on these two experiences, I'd say there is some potential in the idea of using beans to mimic other things. I can certainly think of at least one more recipe I'd like to try that uses them for that purpose (the Kidney-Quinoa Burgers in Everyday Happy Herbivore). But, to be honest, I think there's even more potential for interest in recipes that use beans as, well, beans.

Recipe of the Month: Greens, Beans, and Mashed Potatoes

As the days ticked down toward Christmas and our annual trip to Indiana, I realized I had one task to complete before the trip that had nothing to do with holiday gifts: finding a Recipe of the Month for December. I had a couple of downloaded recipes I'd been meaning to try, but none that were both vegan and vegetable-forward. So I turned to our shelf of cookbooks and started flipping through them, looking for inspiration. On page 69 of Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven, I found what looked like just the thing: a dish called "Green And White Beans Under Garlic Mashed Potatoes." It was a casserole of white beans, fresh green beans, and spinach topped with a layer of mashed potatoes, in the manner of a shepherd's pie. All the ingredients were either in our kitchen already or easy to get hold of. It did have a rather lengthy preparation time (an hour and 45 minutes, with 30 minutes of hands-on work), but since Brian had three extra days off before we had to leave for our trip, he'd have plenty of time to make it.

As usual, Brian modified the written recipe in several ways. First, he had to swap out a few ingredients to make it vegan. That wasn't difficult: he just replaced the butter and milk in the mashed potatoes with oil and soy milk and the gruyere cheese that was supposed to go on top with a spritz of oil and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast and salt. He also replaced the olive oil used to saute the veggies with cheaper canola oil and the fresh green beans, which are quite expensive in December, with frozen. He boosted the 10 ounces of frozen spinach the recipe called for to a full pound and dialed down the half-teaspoon of nutmeg the recipe called for to just a quarter-teaspoon to avoid overpowering the other flavors. And rather than simmering the white beans and boiling the potatoes on the stove, he did them in the pressure cooker, thus saving a good chunk of time and energy.

Even with that change, this recipe was fairly time-consuming. First, he had to cook the soaked white beans and set them aside. Then he cooked the potatoes and mashed them (skins and all) with soy milk, oil, garlic, and salt. The next step was to saute two chopped leeks in oil with salt, thyme, and more garlic, then add flour, pepper, nutmeg, and water to make the sauce. When all that was done, he integrated the cooked white beans into the dish with the green beans and spinach, cooked it briefly, and spread it in a casserole dish with the potatoes and his improvised nutritional-yeast topping layered on top. And finally, he loaded the whole thing into the oven to bake for around 40 minutes.

The finished casserole didn't look much like a vegan dish. Between the golden-brown topping and the white sauce that had bubbled over the sides, it gave a very good impression of something rich and cheesy. Unfortunately, its flavor and texture didn't live up to the hype. The biggest problem was the green beans; after nearly an hour of cooking between the stovetop and the oven, they were mushy and bland, doing nothing to relieve the stodginess of the bean-and-potato mixture. (Fresh ones might have stood up better to the long cooking time, but even they might not have survived it.) And while the leeks, garlic, nutritional yeast, and spices did their best, there just wasn't enough of them to perk up such a vast mass of greens and starch. Unfortunately, Brian had decided to make a full batch of the recipe (six servings), so we had quite a lot of it left over after that first meal. We managed to get through it all before leaving for our trip, but we were pretty sick of it by the end.

Despite these shortcomings, I think this dish has potential. If you left out the green beans altogether and made it with only spinach and leeks, it would basically be a variation on colcannon, a classic Irish greens-and-beans mixture, but with an added pop of protein from the white beans. Another variant of this dish, called Rumbledethumps, was a staple meal of ours for years until we gave up cheese; this beany casserole, with a little more nutritional yeast to boost the flavor, could potentially fill the same role. (But if we decide to try it this way, we'll probably go with just a half recipe.)

Recipe of the Month: Roasted Butternut Squash Curry

After slipping October's Recipe of the Month in just under the wire, Brian decided to get started early hunting down one for November. He did a general search for "hearty fall recipes" and came across a list that included an intriguing-looking recipe for butternut squash curry—a serendipitous find, since we happened to have all that butternut squash from our fall harvest. But we didn't have all the other ingredients required for that particular dish, so Brian did a second, more targeted search for similar recipes that we could make using only what we had on hand. And that's how he came across the Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry at Cupful of Kale. The only thing it called for that we didn't already have was curry powder, and he could easily whip that up using another recipe he found on the site Feasting at Home. (It calls for 14 different spices and seasonings, but our well-stocked spice cabinet has all of them.)

As usual, Brian made a couple of minor modifications to the basic curry recipe. Following a tip at the bottom of the recipe, he added six ounces of frozen spinach to the dish to boost its veggie content. He also substituted home-cooked chick peas for the canned ones and changed the unspecified "salt and pepper" in the recipe to a teaspoon and a half of salt and no pepper. Also, since I'm a spice wimp, he replaced the quarter-teaspoon of "hot chilli powder" with a dash of our not-that-hot cayenne pepper. And, midway through the cooking process, he decided to omit the 200 ml of vegetable stock the recipe called for because the sauce seemed quite liquid enough without it.

The result was a mild but flavorsome curry that both of us enjoyed. Roasting the squash, rather than just cooking it on the stove, definitely seemed to add more depth and complexity to the flavor. Of course, it also added time to the cooking process. The squash had to roast for about 40 minutes to get tender enough to go into the dish, and while you spend part of that time preparing the rest of the sauce, it's still not exactly a quick weeknight dinner. So we probably won't make this as often as other squash favorites like our roasted vegetable medley (diced squash roasted with Brussels sprouts and potatoes, with scrambled egg added for protein) or butternuts squash souffle. But it can join our beloved butternut squash lasagna as a dish we trot out for relaxed weekend dinners.

If at first you don't succeed, try something else

In the words of my favorite wizard, Harry Dresden, if you have one problem, all you have is a problem. But if you have two problems, you may also have an opportunity, because one problem can sometimes provide a solution to the other. A case in point: two failed crops in our garden.

I've already told you about how our attempt to grow potatoes in our old rain barrel was an abject failure, producing only a literal handful of potatoes. But that wasn't the only crop that gave us a very disappointing harvest this year. Of the 30 cloves of garlic we put in the ground last fall, only six grew into garlic heads—and pretty small ones at that, with only four to five good-sized cloves each. As with the potatoes, the total weight of the harvest was probably less than the amount we planted.

Frustrated by this failure, I checked out an article in Mother Earth News on garlic growing, looking for some pointers that might improve our results next year. And the one piece of advice that jumped out at me was, "Plant in crumbly, light soil that drains well and that is high in organic matter." Our rich, heavy clay soil does not, by any stretch of the imagination, fit that definition—which might explain why even in a good year, our garlic harvest comes to only around 25 small heads. 

However. we did happen to have some soil sitting around that fit the description perfectly: the mix of bagged topsoil and aged manure in which we'd attempted to grow the potatoes. Brian had originally intended to dump this out into the garden beds to add more organic matter to the soil, which has grown compacted over the years. But after reading the Mother Earth News article, we thought, well, why not try repurposing the potato barrel as a garlic barrel? Growing garlic in a container would also prevent groundhogs romping through the crop and crushing all the scapes, so it could remedy two problems at once.

The Mother Earth News article recommended planting garlic cloves 2 to 4 inches deep, 4 to 6 inches apart, in rows 12 inches apart. Trying to figure out how to adapt this spacing to a round barrel about two feet in diameter, I looked up "grow garlic in containers" and found an article in The Spruce that said putting them "at least 3 inches apart" would be sufficient. Working my way around the edge of the barrel and spiraling into the middle, I was able to fit in a total of 20 cloves. Since the soil was so light, I didn't bother digging holes for them; I just pushed them in with my fingers until they were about 2 inches deep.

The Mother Earth News article recommended mulching the garlic with "several inches of leaves or straw" to protect it from the winter cold. We don't have enough leaves in our yard yet to cover it that deep, but I added one layer, and I'll continue adding more as fall progresses. I left the lid off the barrel to let rain in; if we don't get much rain, I'll water by hand to "keep the soil moist but not soggy," as The Spruce recommends. In the spring, we'll pull the leaves off and give the barrel an extra top-dressing of compost. And in the fall, we'll see if this container-grown garlic yields a better crop than what we planted in the ground this year. One thing we know for sure: it can't be much worse.

Recipe of the Month: African Peanut Stew

All week, I've been nervously watching the last days of September running out without a single good idea for a new Recipe of the Month. Fortunately, Brian came to my rescue. After a quick search for "high protein vegan recipe," he tracked down something that didn't look (at first glance, at least) like anything we'd tried before: this African Peanut Stew from The Plant-Based School. He picked up most of the necessary ingredients (sweet potatoes, onion, crushed tomatoes) on our weekly Lidl run and grabbed a bunch of fresh spinach at the new SuperFresh in town, and he was ready to cook.

Brian made only a couple of minor modifications to this recipe. Knowing that I don't like things too spicy, he dialed back the red pepper flakes from 1/2 to 1/4 teaspoon and the 1/8 teaspoon of black pepper to just a pinch. He cooked everything else just as directed, and it was pretty straightforward. Not lightning-fast, since it takes half an hour on the stove (or in this case, the new induction burner) to get the sweet potatoes tender, but it didn't require a lot of baby-sitting. The only real work was the ten minutes of chopping, grating, and sauteing before tossing everything in the pot.

Then there was the matter of garnishes. The recipe recommended topping each bowl with "a small handful of crushed, toasted, unsalted peanuts, a generous squeeze of lime juice, and some pickled red onions." Brian wasn't entirely convinced the lime juice would work with the rest of the dish, so rather than waste a fresh lime on it, he just got out the bottle of lime juice and set that on the side. (As it turned out, his instincts were good: neither of us felt that the stew would benefit from this addition.) But he did chop and toast some peanuts and whip up a small batch of the Quick Pickled Red Onions from the same recipe site: sliced red onion steeped for half an hour in a mixture of vinegar, lemon juice, salt, sugar, and red pepper. Since I'm not a huge fan of onions (and they don't love me, either), I skipped this garnish, but Brian tried it and found that it did indeed go well with the stew. However, he didn't think it added so much that he would go to the effort of making it again.

The stew, on the other hand, was something we both deemed worthy of being added to our recipe rotation. It's healthy, vegan, and easy to make, and it doesn't call for any expensive or hard-to find ingredients. And it offers a complex, satisfying mixture of flavors and textures, with chick peas, tender chunks of sweet potato, and chewy strands of spinach in a flavorful broth blended from tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, pepper, and peanut butter. This combination sounds quite unusual, but I realized after a few mouthfuls that it wasn't so different from another dish Brian is very fond of: the tahini-spiked Garlic, Chick-pea and Spinach Soup from Linda Frazer's Vegetariana. However, that recipe isn't vegan (it calls for heavy cream), so this one fits better into our current diet.

The one thing we might do differently next time we make this dish is to plan ahead and make sure we have a suitable bread to serve with it. The recipe suggests either naan or pita bread, but all we had on hand was a loaf of Brian's sturdy whole-wheat bread and some whole-wheat tortillas. So instead, we accompanied the meal with some waffles left over from that morning's breakfast. They were made with whole-wheat flour too, but their lighter texture made them a closer approximation to what the Plant-Based Schoolteachers had in mind.

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: Harvest Home

Usually, the crop we're most excited about in September is the tomatoes. And they are doing pretty well this year; to date, we've harvested 9 big Pineapples, 61 Premios, 66 San Marzanos, and 490 little Sun Golds. But all summer rolled into fall, we found ourselves focusing more on a new crop: the potatoes Brian planted this spring in our old rain barrel. The plants, which were green and healthy at midsummer, began turning yellow and dry in August, and Brian figured he'd harvest them once the foliage was completely gone. But a little quick research showed that they're actually ready to harvest a couple of weeks after they start yellowing. In short, they were now as ready as they were going to get, and we might as well go for it.

After scooping all the mulch off the top of the plant and setting it aside, Brian began digging into the dirt itself, transferring it into an empty trash can as he went. And just a few inches in, he saw the first little tuber peeping out of the dirt. Unfortunately, it was green on top, meaning it probably wouldn't be safe to eat. (The green itself comes from chlorophyll, but it's a sign that the spud may also contain high levels of solanine, which is poisonous.) But we took it as a sign that there was probably plenty more where that came from.

Sadly, this was not the case. As he kept digging deeper and deeper into the barrel, he found almost no further spuds. Brian burrowed right down to the layer of rocks he'd put in the bottom of the barrel for drainage and unearthed only a scanty handful of potatoes—far less than we'd harvested from our 5-gallon buckets in 2020. The total weight of spuds we produced was probably less than that of the seed potatoes we put in.

So what had we done wrong? Why had such lush, healthy green potato vines produced so few usable tubers? We put this question to the Internet, which told us that the most likely culprit was over-fertilization—particularly the over-application of nitrogen at the time the potato vines were in flower. But that didn't make sense, since the only fertilizer we'd added to the potato barrel was a single bag of aged manure that we mixed in at planting time. Other possible explanations—poor soil, insufficient sunlight, too little water—also didn't fit the data. The plants had gone into rich, crumbly soil; we'd given them plenty of water; and their patio location provided a good 6 to 8 hours of daily sunlight. And the plants themselves looked healthy and vigorous, with no signs of disease or pest infestation.

But after a few dead ends like this, I hit on a site called Growing Produce. The author said her neighbor had a situation exactly like ours: his potato plants "looked great all summer, with vigorous and healthy tops," but produced "only a few small tubers." She immediately diagnosed the problem: His spuds were grown in containers, which "can yield poor results when high daytime temperatures warm the soil." The high temperatures "promote leaf growth at the expense of tubers," resulting in lush plants that are scarce o' tatties. According to the article, "The optimal temperature for tuber growth is said to be about 59°F, while for leaf it’s about 75°F." And according to my home energy use spreadsheet (yes, of course I track our home energy use on a spreadsheet. Are you really surprised?), the average daily temperature throughout June, July, and August of this year was consistently over 75—much more conducive to healthy leaves than abundant spuds.

In short, this potato-barrel experiment was probably doomed from the start. We might conceivably have better results growing potatoes in the ground where the soil would stay cooler, perhaps in the sloped part of the yard where they'd have a big thermal mass to protect them. But we'd have to plant them early, and there's still a chance that too much heat or too much rain would ruin the crop. We might give it one more try just for the hell of it, but we won't be getting our hopes up.

Fortunately, we have other crops in the garden that definitely won't be letting us down. Along with our trusty tomatoes, there are plenty of green beans, peppers, and, surprisingly, zucchini. Normally these summer plants are entirely played out by the time fall comes around, but this year they're still growing, spilling over the edges of the beds and into the paths, and producing healthy squash. And if we still want potatoes, our new local supermarket (which just opened this weekend, about 18 months after the old one shut down) has them on sale for just 30 cents a pound.

Recipe of the Month: Seitan Burgers

A new month, a new Recipe of the Month. And this one's something we haven't tried before: a veggie burger. You might think that doesn't really fit the criteria for a Recipe of the Month, which is supposed to be a veggie- or fruit-centered dish, but this one features a secret veggie ingredient: beet. (Actually, it turned out to be not so secret, but more about that later.)

One of the difficulties of being a vegetarian in summertime is grilling. Don't get me wrong, grilled vegetables are fantastic, but they're just not that substantial. (We love our grilled eggplant and pepper sandwiches, but we have to supplement them with smoked herring to add protein to the meal.) We've tried all the brands of veggie dogs and sausages without finding one that we both like. (Brian quite enjoyed the Impossible Brat, saying it tasted just like a real bratwurst; I concluded that I must not like bratwurst.) We've also attempted multiple recipes for homemade vegan sausage, and none of them really ticked all the boxes for taste and texture. And when we tried taking some veggie patties from Trader Joe's and tossing those on the grill, it was a complete failure. (Maybe that was partly because they'd been in the freezer too long, but I don't think it would work much better with fresh ones.)

After that failed attempt, I decided to check the It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken blog for a vegan burger that would work on the grill. Not only did the author have one, she confidently billed it as "The Best Vegan Seitan Burger." This, she maintained, was due to its weird-sounding combination of ingredients, including vital wheat gluten, cooked lentils, soy sauce, liquid smoke, peanut butter, and raw beets. I was skeptical about that last one, since I have never been a fan of beets, but the post insisted that this ingredient would "add a deep earthiness that really makes these burgers taste authentic." Even her beet-hating husband, she assured me, loved these burgers. So I decided to swallow my objections and give it a try. Even if it was another failure, I reasoned, it would at least give me a Recipe of the Month for July.

This recipe has multiple steps, so Brian spread it out over a couple of evenings. First, he cooked up a batch of lentils in the pressure cooker. (The blogger said she'd used canned lentils, but we've never seen those in any store. Maybe it's a Canadian thing.) The second step was supposed to be mixing those up in the food processor with the other ingredients, but Brian quickly realized that even the half-batch he was making would be too much for our little Magic Bullet. So, instead, he mixed up the dough in stages. First he pulsed the beet in the Bullet; then he added the lentils and mixed those in; then he dumped the contents into a bowl and stirred in all the seasonings; and finally he blended in the wheat gluten by hand. 

Once that was done, he shaped the dough into patties and steamed them. The full recipe was supposed to make six patties, but he found that his half-recipe was enough for four reasonable-size patties, just enough to fill our steamer basket. At this stage, the burgers looked very much like actual ground beef patties. They then went into the fridge to be chilled until grill time. 

The next night, the burgers went onto the grill, along with some zucchini spears and sliced potatoes. With a coating of oil to keep them from sticking, they held up quite well on the grill, coming out firm and nicely browned. Nor did their texture disappoint when they were served up on buns. The burgers had a satisfying, meaty chew, and they weren't dry or tough like so many other meat substitutes. If I were judging them strictly based on texture, I'd say they were by far the best homemade plant-based meat we've ever tried. 

But their flavor was a disappointment. Despite the blogger's assurance that I wouldn't be able to taste the beets, to me that distinctive bitterness was the dominant note. Brian, who is not a huge fan of beets either, said he couldn't detect them at all, and other commenters on the recipe post have said the same (including one who loves beets and was quite disappointed that she couldn't taste them). But for me, it was clearly present, and neither ketchup nor mustard could entirely disguise it.

Still, all hope is not lost for this recipe. I left a comment on the post asking if there was any way to make these burgers without the beet, and I got a response suggesting I could "try substituting with sweet potato for a milder flavor." So my idea is to give this one more go, using that substitution, and see how it comes out. If we both find that version palatable, it could be the perfect protein for summer grilling. The wheat gluten is a somewhat pricey ingredient, but it's still only a little over a buck for four patties' worth. That makes these much cheaper than Impossible Burgers, with a lot less packaging to boot. And, assuming we can eliminate the beet flavor, just as satisfying.

Quick updates

On this blog, I tend to focus on what's new and different in our ecofrugal life. This makes sense, but it has a downside: you hear the beginnings of a lot of stories without hearing the endings. I tell you that I've tried a new homemade conditioner, but I don't think to tell you that it turned out not to work all that well with everyday use. I tell you that we've added a strawberry bed to our garden, but I don't remember to follow up and tell you whether we got any actual strawberries out of it. 

So for this week's blog entry, instead of telling you what's new, I'm going to fill you in on the latest updates to some older stories. I'll start with the most recent stories and work my way backwards, so we're going from the smallest updates to the biggest ones.

Update #1: Potato plants

Last summer, when we got our new rain barrel, I mentioned that Brian was planning to use the old one to grow potatoes. We'd tried before to grow them in five-gallon buckets, but the results were disappointing. Brian thought that a bigger vessel, with plenty of room for the stems and tubers to form, might give us a better crop.

It's too early to say yet what our harvest will look like, but the plants themselves are flourishing in their new home. The stems have already reached the top of the barrel and are loaded with lush green foliage. They just recently flowered, as well. Brian snipped off the flowers because apparently you get more potato production that way, but I got a picture of them first. The trimmed-off blooms are now in the bud vase in our kitchen, so we've already gotten some benefit out of the plants regardless of how the potato crop turns out.

Update #2: Garden paths

Over the years we've had our garden, we've struggled to find a suitable covering for the paths between the beds. I thought I'd hit on the perfect solution with the leftover stone dust from our patio project, but within a year, weeds (and a few stray vegetable plants) were forcing their way through it. So, last winter, I decided to try a new approach: covering the paths with leaves. Using all the leaves we raked up in our own yard, as well as a bag or two of our neighbor's that we scavenged from the curb, we managed to cover all the paths a couple of inches deep.

This approach has been a moderate success. The blanket of leaves hasn't managed to suppress weeds entirely, but we're getting far fewer of them, and the ones that do pop up are easier to remove because they're rooted in loose, leafy soil rather than solid clay. (I'm only bothering to do this with the tall weeds, like crabgrass and dandelions. Ground-hugging weeds like barren strawberries, I figure, can just get walked on. If they pop up in the garden beds themselves, I'll yank them, but otherwise, they can stay where they are.) And since the leaves cost us nothing, we can simply keep replenishing them year after year.

Update #3: Strawberry bed

Last year was our first attempt at growing strawberries. Our new seed supplier offered seeds for the small Alpine variety, and we decided on a whim to add a packet to our order. The plants grew faster than we expected, and we actually managed to get a small handful of fruit off them that first year. But this year, they have really come into their own. The plants are flourishing, and we have already harvested 6 cups of tiny red and white fruits. (They're supposed to be red and yellow, but it's a very pale yellow. Alongside our honeyberries, which ripen around the same time, they make a very patriotic-looking fruit salad.) 

These little berries aren't as plump and juicy as regular strawberries. Their flavor is more concentrated, with a sort of floral undertone to it. They also don't keep nearly as well, which explains why you don't tend to see them in stores. We have to eat them up within a day or two of picking or they turn into mush. This means we can't use really use them in recipes, since we only get a cup or so of berries with each picking, and we can't save them up to get enough for a fruit crisp or a batch of jam. But eating them fresh every day (by themselves or in salads) is certainly no hardship.

So, all in all, I'd consider this experiment a success. The question now is, how long can we keep it going? According to the seed packet, these plants will only remain productive for about two years. But other sources on Alpine strawberries recommend dividing the plants "every four or five years" to keep production high and prevent overcrowding. That suggests that we should be able to expect them to last another couple of years at least. I guess we'll keep an eye on them next spring, and if it looks like they're not coming up, we can pick up a few strawberry plants of the more conventional type to replace them.

Update #4: Homemade deodorant

Over the years, I've tried various alternatives to commercial deodorant in an attempt to avoid both animal testing and excess packaging. Plain baking soda, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, and peroxide didn't work very well; milk of magnesia did but turned out to have an undesirable laxative side effect. The best of the bunch was alcohol-based hand sanitizer; it wasn't strong enough to keep me fresh as a daisy on hot summer days, but it was good enough for light activity in mild weather. 

However, this sanitizer deodorant had a few drawbacks. It still produced some plastic waste; the bottle was recyclable, but the pump top wasn't. Also, annoyingly, the pump was never able to extract all the sanitizer from the bottle, and it also made it impossible to turn the bottle upside down to get the last drops. And it became difficult to obtain during the pandemic, though I was able to get by with a homemade version made from rubbing alcohol and aloe vera gel.

So when I came across a recipe for another homemade deodorant with just three ingredients—one part baking soda, two parts cornstarch, and three parts coconut oil—I thought it was worth a try. True, straight baking soda hadn't worked that well for me, but neither had straight rubbing alcohol, yet the alcohol-based gel worked fine. In any case, it wouldn't cost much to mix up a small batch and test it out.

Well, as it turns out, this baking soda mixture works at least as well as the hand sanitizer. Like the sanitizer, it doesn't always last all day, but it's no big deal to reapply it. It also produces no plastic waste whatsoever, and it's easy to get every last drop of it out of the container. And it's cheap—less than 25 cents for that initial batch (6 tablespoons total), which has already kept me going for a few weeks and is nowhere near running out. Can't get much more ecofrugal than that!

Update #5: Patio furniture

Back in 2013, we furnished our DIY patio with a cheap patio set from IKEA. At $120 for a table and four chairs, it was a much better deal than anything available at Home Depot or Lowe's, where outdoor furniture sets started at around $500. We refinished it once in 2014, but after that we decided to just live with the weathered look.

After 11 years of use, though, the furniture was starting to have problems with more than just its appearance. The pieces had become rickety, wobbling noticeably when we sat down, and tightening the bolts didn't solve the problem. We finally concluded that we were going to need a replacement.

The obvious place to look for one was Craigslist, which we now prefer to IKEA for home furnishings. But there was a snag: unlike IKEA furniture, pieces on Craigslist come fully assembled. How would we fit a whole patio set into our little Honda Fit?

The answer: we didn't. We already knew we'd have to rent a truck at some point to haul home the lumber for our laundry room renovation (which, yes, is still in progress) and for another project that Brian wants to do outdoors (more on that one in a future post). So, once we'd booked the truck for that, we took advantage of the opportunity to haul home a $135 patio set from Craigslist as well. We were still able to get the truck back by the end of the day, so the rental fee was the same; all it cost us was a little extra for gas.

Our new patio set is superior in almost every way to our old one. The glass-topped table is larger and includes a center hole where we can add a patio umbrella, should we ever feel the need for one. The chairs, with their woven plastic seats, are quite comfortable even with no added cushions. And both table and chairs are made of materials that should stand up better to the elements than our old wooden pieces. The previous owner had already kept them outdoors for several summers, and the table during the winters as well, and they're all still in good shape. So, given the same treatment, this new set should serve us for many years to come.

Gardeners' Holidays 2024: Mulching Day

April and May are insanely busy for us this year. What with our eclipse trip to Indianapolis at the beginning of the month, Passover this week, meetings and other events with Citizens' Climate Lobby, and dance gigs with Millstone River Morris, we don't have a single free weekend on our calendar between Easter and Memorial Day. 

Unfortunately, all this is happening during a busy part of the gardening year. We've managed to keep up with the absolutely essential chores, like planting squares of lettuce and spraying the plum trees. But less urgent jobs, like weeding and mulching, have languished on the to-do list for weeks. As a result, the weeds have been running more or less rampant over all our permanent planting areas—the flower and herb beds, the rhubarb and asparagus patches, and the areas under all our fruit trees and bushes. 

This morning, we finally decided we couldn't afford to put these tasks off any longer. Even if we couldn't do the entire job today, we could at least pick up a load of bulk mulch so we'd be able to get it started. So, right after lunch, we made the trek out to the Belle Mead Co-Op and bought half a yard of mulch, which we loaded into our usual assortment of containers (two trash barrels and a pile of empty birdseed bags). We also bought a package of seed potatoes to plant in our old rain barrel. (We'll probably have to buy soil in bags to plant them in; although the Co-Op also sells bulk topsoil, we can't currently use an entire half-yard of it, and we can't buy less than that.)

Once we got the mulch home, we spent the next couple of hours getting some of it into place. After first clearing away as many weeds as we could with our trusty stirrup hoe, we used up one of the big barrels on the spaces under the plum trees and the other in the asparagus bed. Then we hauled the remaining bags of mulch—which, though lighter than the barrels, were still quite heavy—down to the shed and hauled our panting, sweating selves inside for a couple of much-needed showers.

While putting down the mulch, we had a decent opportunity to observe the various areas of the garden and see how our crops are shaping up for the summer. The answer: It's kind of a mixed bag. The plum trees have finished blossoming and are starting to develop little fruitlings where the blossoms used to be, so there's at least a chance we'll get some plums this summer (though we're not counting on it, since we seem to alternate between bumper crops like last year's and complete duds). The cherry bushes have also shed all their blossoms, but not only is there no fruit to be seen on the branches, there are hardly any leaves. We don't know whether the bushes are just stressed or actually dying, but we're already thinking ahead to what we might replace them with in case they don't recover. (It looks like the best bet for our heavy clay soil might be aronia, also known as chokeberries.)

In the garden itself, our scallions and parsley are looking reasonably healthy, and our arugula and spring lettuce are just starting to come up. However, our snap peas are a big disappointment. We're used to getting only about half as many pea vines as we plant, but this year only 9 of the 32 plants I put in have come up—less than one in three. The seeds were brand new, so the problem wasn't their age, and we soaked them overnight before planting them, so it wasn't lack of water. Based on a guide at Tiny Garden Habit, the likeliest explanation seems to be that birds or other critters have been eating the peas before they can take root. Next year we may have to try covering the seeds with a cage for a couple of weeks, or maybe even starting them indoors. 

Another thing we've had a chance to observe early results on is the leaf cover we put down on the garden paths last winter. As you can see in the picture above, it appears to be somewhat effective, but far from perfect. There are quite a few dandelions and a few stray strands of mugwort poking their heads through the leaves, but the paths aren't completely overrun with them. I guess we'll try adding more leaves to the paths this winter and see if we can eventually build up a thick enough carpet to keep the paths weed-free. Even if it doesn't work, a carpet of leaves with a few weeds poking through is a lot better than a carpet of weeds tangling around our ankles every time we enter the garden.

So, all in all, our garden appears to be off to a bumpy start for this year. It's not clear how much of a harvest we have to look forward to, and it will probably be a while before we're able to harvest anything at all.  But considering how little time we'll have to spend in the garden over the next month, maybe that's just as well.

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: Purchases that have paid for themselves

Since last year's abbreviated Thrift Week celebration focused on the least ecofrugal products money can buy, I thought it would be only fair for this year's to go the other way and look at some of the most ecofrugal products. Each day, I'll be looking at one specific purchase Brian and I have made that has paid for itself many times over. And I'm starting it off with one of the first purchases I ever discussed here on the blog: our pressure cooker.

When we bought this back in late 2011, it was kind of an impulse purchase. While visiting Brian's folks for Christmas, we saw an ad in the paper for a 5-quart pressure cooker on sale for $20 at J.C. Penney. On top of that, there was a $10-off coupon that reduced the net price to just $10. Even then, we came very close to passing it up, since we didn't "need" it, but we decided $10 wasn't too much to risk on a gadget that might be able to help us with a wide variety of cooking tasks.

Well, in the 12 years since, we have used this little pressure cooker countless times and gotten far more than our $10 worth out of it. In 2017, I was even inspired to write an article for Money Crashers about all the ways it has saved us money. For instance:

• It saves energy on cooking. It can make all kinds of things—rice, potatoes, barley, quinoa—much faster than a regular pot on the stove, reducing the amount of gas we need to burn for cooking. And the faster cooking time also means we heat up the kitchen less in the summertime.
• It helps us use dry beans. We used to use a lot of canned beans because dry beans, though cheaper, were too much hassle. In addition to requiring an overnight soaking, they needed over an hour of cooking to get them tender enough to eat—far more time than we could spare most nights. Now, we can soak the beans right in the pressure cooker in the morning, turn it on in the evening, and have them ready to use in as little as half an hour. Besides being cheaper, the dry beans produce far less packaging waste, and they take up a lot less room in the pantry.
• It makes homemade applesauce. Another product we used to buy fairly regularly was applesauce to go with potato kugel and other potato-based dishes. Not only did this produce a lot of packaging waste, but often the applesauce itself would start to grow fuzzy before we'd finished the jar. Now, with the help of our trusty pressure cooker, we just whip up a fresh batch of applesauce to go with every kugel. Pound for pound, this homemade stuff isn't necessarily cheaper than the kind in a jar, but it's definitely cheaper than buying a whole jar and having to discard half of it. And it tastes much, much better, even when it's made with the cheapest apples the store has to offer.
• 
  It doubles as a space heater. On cold winter days, Brian often fills up the pressure cooker with plain water in the morning and lets it come to a boil. Then he moves it to the office, where it sits on a trivet atop my desk and radiates heat throughout the day. It takes all day to cool off fully and allows me to stay comfortable without turning up the heat.
  

I'm so attached to this kitchen gadget that if we ever replace our gas stove with an induction model, we'll have to buy an adapter plate so we can keep using it. We could find ways to replace or get along without most of our non-ferrous cookware—our aluminum saucepans, our double boiler, even our big stock pot—but giving up the pressure cooker would be a deal-breaker.