Good Recs
7 Effective Food Justice, Health, Environmental & Animal Welfare NGOs
And now a break from our regularly scheduled post on what to cook for the holidays, to ways you can amplify your impact on the health of the planet, and animal welfare. To round out the year, I’m offering advice on where to make end-of-year, tax-deductible donations. (If you need ideas for a Holiday Dinner, click here. And for tasty appetizers and sides, click here).
Summer to Fall: Simple Seasonal Suppers
As the lazy days of summer morph into Fall, our schedules tend to get busier. School, sports, cultural events, neighborhood gatherings — no matter what you’re into, the Fall seems to bring more. Which often translates into less time for cooking.
There’s no getting around it: Plant-based meals require more creativity than throwing a marinated chicken breast in the oven, or a turkey burger onto the grill. But creativity doesn’t necessarily mean complicated. What it does require is parking your shopping cart in supermarket aisles you often speed by:
- The Mexican food section (Fun Fact: In 1992, salsa surpassed ketchup as the top-selling condiment in the U.S.)
- The Asian food section
- Spices beyond McCormick’s dried oregano and parsley
- Canned beans
Taking the time to creatively stock your pantry, spice rack, and refrigerator door, translates into faster mealtime prep and — money back guarantee — always more savory and creative meals.
Guilt-Free Goodies: Dessert Recipes
Did you know that Strawberry Shortcake, Chocolate Mousse, and Blueberry Cobbler — just about any dessert, in fact — can all be made without a single egg, or an ounce of dairy? Which means all will be 100% cholesterol-free. With just a few substitutions, and no fancy or artificial ingredients, you can learn how.
Use Your Kitchen to Fight Climate Change
I’m writing from Vermont, where people are rebuilding roads and salvaging their homes after the latest in a series of heavy rains and floods. Small farmers continue to grapple with submerged fields. A friend who works on one of those farms recently told me,
“I am so anxious about climate change, sometimes it keeps me awake at night.”
She’s not alone. “Climate anxiety” is now a thing. And for good reason. Let’s review what happened just last month, July 2024:Read More
More than Romaine: Light & Hearty Salads for Every Craving
Did you hear last week’s Good News? The Caesar Salad turned 100! Feliz Compleaños, Caesar. You may be wondering, why a Spanish congratulations to a salad most famously eaten in Italian restaurants? Because it was invented in Mexico. By an Italian immigrant, Caesar Cardini.
In honor of the Caesar’s Centennial, I’m gifting you my two favorite non-fishy, non-dairy, uber-umami, Caesar dressing recipes. Both are thick and creamy, which makes them happiest coating sturdy greens like kale and/or romaine. Unlike the original, neither has any cholesterol, are chock full of “good” fats and copious amounts of fiber, anti-oxidants, and protein. Which is why I Hail Caesar!
7 Plant-Based Dishes Every Cookout Needs
My friend Sharon loves bringing people together at her picture postcard-perfect, pastoral Vermont home. She marks milestones — her sons’ engagements, birthdays, the arrival of two new international exchange students she hosts each spring — with cookouts. Everyone contributes the sides, and Sharon provides the main course: sausages, which guests impale with a tree branch (plenty of free branches in Vermont!) and cook over her family’s infamously smoky homemade fire pit, big enough to seat twenty guests around its perimeter. For those who take a pass on the sausage, there are veggie and beef burgers. Last spring, Sharon told me, was the first time requests for veggie burgers surpassed beef.
Breakfast! The King-Prince-Pauper Diet
I was shocked to learn this: The calories you eat at breakfast are less fattening than those you eat for supper. Here’s how it works:
Assume you eat 300 calories for breakfast, 500 for lunch, and 1,200 for supper. If you switch the timing of your calories, and eat 1,200 for breakfast, and 300 for supper, you’ll lose weight. Eating the exact same food.
What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking
An insane amount of my brain’s real estate is devoted to food. My internal food-chatter is relentless — while I’m walking my dog, watching a not-very-engaging TV show, or at 3 a.m. trying to fall back asleep. Should I turn my fresh kale into maple-sesame chips, or use it to make Meera Sodha’s luscious Tuscan kale saag? What should I make for the dinner party I’m throwing three weeks from now? Do I have enough dark chocolate chips to make another mousse? Yes, I’ve tried meditation and yogic breathing. Neither works. I’ve come to accept who I am: A woman who loves thinking about, discovering, and cooking creatively flavored plant-based suppers. There are worse habits.
Cooking Made Easy: The Ultimate List of Plant-Based Recipe Websites
Every day, I scour the internet in search of plant-based recipes that inspire healthy and flavorful eating. Some websites are culinary goldmines, others, well, less so. I’m excited to refresh my list of top picks and share these culinary gems with you.
10 Tasty Plant-Based Gifts for Every Foodie’s Wishlist
Last year, when my husband Max and I took off on an extended road trip, we rented our house to another family. Which meant we had to empty everything out of our kitchen cabinets, bedroom closets and drawers, the office desk drawers — all of it.
Take a moment to reflect on what that would be like in your home. What did I learn from the experience? We had way too much!
The 7 Best Vegan-ish Cookbooks of 2023
It’s time to update my list of favorite vegan cookbooks. This year, I’m not kicking any of last year’s recommendations off Good News Veg Island. They’re Evergreen Treasures. Some of my new additions have been around for years — it just took me a while to find them. Two are vegetable-forward, not 100% vegan. But both are so good, I had to include them in my list.
3 Questions for a Stress-Free Dinner Party
Think about the last time you hosted a dinner party or an extended family meal. At what point while you were cooking or setting the table to be perfectly “just so,” did you think, Why the hell did I decide to do this?
My friend Patti says, “If you don’t hate your guests by the time they arrive, you haven’t worked hard enough.” Dinner Party Hosting Anxiety (DPHA) is a thing, experienced by even the most seasoned host. I blame Martha Stewart.
SH*T! Vegans are Coming to Dinner!
What to do when an omnivore wants to invite a couple of vegans to a dinner party? If you’re my friend Chris, you spend months reading recipes until you find it, the perfect wowza! dish.
Only an over-achiever like Chris would attempt a vegan lasagna. Frankly, if I had landed on the recipe I would have kept scrolling. Lasagnas take a lot of time, and eliminating dairy is a challenge.
Chris nailed it. Even her meat-loving, fly-fisherman, vegan-skeptical husband said, more please. The casserole was flawless and beyond delicious. I’ve added it to my dinner party repertoire.
And yet.
Chris had many challenges, which I asked her to share with you.
Reading it, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel Chris’s pain. You’ll cheer for the damn no-cook noodles, and best of all, you’ll learn how to make Vegan Lasagna Bolognese.
2023 Guide: 10 Essential Kitchen Tools for Plant-Based Cooks
Last year, I debuted my first annual Essential Cooking Gadgets list for the vegan kitchen, inspired by my friend Jan’s wisdom that the right kitchen tools make all the difference. After trying her velvety New York-style cheesecake (made with her KitchenAid Mixmaster), I was sold. Although I’ve not eaten cheesecake in some time, I have held on to Jan’s advice, and assembled a group of reliable gadgets and appliances that make cooking easier and more fun.
11 Best Recipe Websites (According to Marla)
From 30-minute weeknight meals, to gobsmacking dinner party wowzers, these websites will have you covered. In my humble opinion, they’re the Best of the Best.
Warning: Once you get scrolling, you may not be able to stop. (I have the name of a good massage therapist who can help with those tight lower back and neck muscles). Happy hunting!
My 10 Favorite Cookbooks
In the early days of my learning-to-cook journey, (before Al Gore invented the Internet), I was a sucker for just about any cookbook that had “Vegetarian” in the title. My library was impressive. It took a cross-country move (i.e., packing) for me to realize I didn’t cook from most of those books. Some had a couple dog-eared pages with smears of dried sauce, signifying my go-to recipes. But the rest? Inspired writing, and hunger-inducing, air-brushed food photography do not always translate into useful cookbooks. I gave many of them away. (Today, I’d deposit them in my Little Free Library, but those weren’t invented yet, either).
Now, here’s how I buy a cookbook.