How it's going

(a little update on our weekday vegetarianism... plus a Frog Trouble Times mystery)

We officially started our climate-motivated, weekday vegetarian experiment last Monday, and so far, it’s going pretty well! At least, I’m pretty sure we’ll make it through another week without heading to Old McDonald (that’s what Harriet calls McDonald’s).

This experiment was made easier for our family because our resident chef (that’s me) is already a Tidewater Vegetarian, but our kids are still picky eaters about some things. They don’t like spicy foods, onion, bitter foods, or curries (all stuff I love! sigh).

Last week we had:

Monday: Cheese pizza (starting easy) with crispy chickpea Caesar salad.

Tuesday: Rigatoni with spinach, squash, walnuts, and Parmesan.

Wednesday: Cheesy beans with panko and grape tomatoes on the side. Salad.

Thursday: Vegetarian ramen with spinach, tofu, boiled egg, and shiitake mushrooms.

Friday: Spaghetti with Rao’s marinara sauce (perennial favorite), roasted chickpeas and salad on the side.

Bea’s favorite was ramen because “it’s Japanese and delicious” and Harriet’s favorite was the spaghetti, because: spaghetti. Everyone liked the cheesy beans. I like that all of these recipes pushed me to use something from our farm share every night, and to shop at other farmer’s market booths, like the mushroom growers at Eco Farm (mushrooms lift your mood, improve your memory, and strengthen your bones, among other benefits).

Not every meal was a hit. On Tuesday, Harriet got up from the table and announced that she had a secret to tell me. She galloped over to my chair, cupped her hands, and breathily but loudly whispered in my ear I DON’T LIKE SQUASH.

Noted.

I roasted a chicken on the weekend, which is pretty normal this time of year. What’s different is that I’m not thinking or worrying about supplementing the weekday meals with meat or fish—instead, I’m supplementing with trips to the farmer’s market for mushrooms or the dreaded squash.

In her new whole-foods cookbook, Super Natural Simple, Heidi Swanson recommends finding ten recipes you love and that “embody the way you aspire to cook and eat.” A list of ten hits, she advises, will help you focus, organize, and delegate some cooking tasks. In my house, I aspire to cook food we all like, so I’d put cheesy beans and vegetarian ramen on the list. And definitely the roasted chickpeas, which make a great side or add-in to salads.

This week, so far, we have had pasta con ceci and hard-shell tacos with black beans and butternut squash (Harriet was still not a fan, so I made a cheese quesadilla for her to eat with avocado). Apparently, kids may need to try something twenty times to like it, so buckle up, Harriet.

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For all of you mystery lovers out there, here’s a nature mystery—and a genuine question—posed by our neighbor David. He asks:

Have you noticed that there are hardly any acorns this year? What are the squirrels gonna eat?

Have any of you noticed this too? Do you know anything about it? Let us know in the comments, and in the meantime, enjoy this amazing article about animal (especially squirrel) intergenerational wealth and privilege.

We’ll be back to work on David’s question on Friday.

P.S. Omicron continues to break infection and hospitalization records, but there is hope and evidence that it will peak by the end of the month.

One thing we realized that we can do to help is send in extra child-sized KN95 masks to Harriet’s preschool. If you have some extra KN95s, consider giving them to other people who might not have access, and replenish your supply.