Meatless Monday: It’s a Frugal Thing

Happy Monday everyone.

By now most of you have heard that “going meatless” one day a week is healthy for you and for the planet. But have you ever thought about how healthy it is for your wallet? 

A bean-based meal, particularly if you soak and cook the beans yourself, is hard to beat in the frugality category. If you’re planning a dinner party on a budget, and if you have some time on your hands, choose a main dish with beans as a base. With all the money you save, you’ll have some to spare for a few more costly ingredients. 

We did that last week when we celebrated the first Meatless Monday of the new year with four friends, omnivores all! The dinner’s main course was Provençal Tomato Bean Gratin, a recipe from the New York Times which readers may recall from a post last March. As a side, I prepared Green Chile Corn Pudding, a new recipe from the Whole Foods site. Both were tasty and well-received. The most expensive ingredients were two cans of organic tomatoes ($1.79 each) and a small piece of Gruyére cheese ($2.85) for the bean dish, and 3 cans of chiles ($1.50 each) for the corn pudding. The bag of beans was $1.19. People had seconds, but there were still ample leftovers.

The star of the meal, however, was a sandwich inspired by one I had at a café years ago. For my attempt to replicate the recipe, I had splurged on the following ingredients: a jar of organic fig spread ($5.99), a package of organic baby arugula ($3.49), a 4 oz. log of goat cheese ($4.49), and a bag of Chabaso Bakery’s Olive Oil Ciabatta STIX™ ($2.99). 

To make the sandwiches I first cut each of the three STIX™ in half lengthwise. I was a little behind, so the first guest to arrive pitched in as sandwich assistant. She spread a thin layer of fig on one half of each pair, and a third of the goat cheese on the other. I sprinkled arugula on top of the cheese and closed up the sandwiches. We cut each stick into six pieces. Success — the sandwich of my dreams! There were no leftovers!

The carbon footprint for the sandwiches was a little large with the fig spread traveling from Croatia (4000+ miles) and the arugula most likely from California (around 3000 miles). The goat cheese was from Vermont, though, and Chabaso Bakery IS in New Haven. I try to be a locavore, but I admit that I am not hard core, particularly when planning a party to brighten up these oh so very short Winter days. 

The menu also included black-bottom cupcakes and libations (some local — while local wine may be a problem, local beer is not). No one missed the meat  — no one! And nothing went to waste — I assure you! What better way to start off the new year than by celebrating Meatless Monday with a few friends?

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Sharrows: Seen Any Yet? Do You Know What They Mean?

The title of this post is not a typo. Sharrows is an actual word.


A “sharrows” mark demarcates a roadway shared by motor vehicles and bicycles — a street too narrow to have a dedicated bike lane, but part of a designated travel route for cyclists. The arrow portion indicates the direction of the traffic, and the mark’s position on the road surface indicates where cyclists can ride on the street without being hit by a suddenly opened car door. The marks are prominently displayed, visible to both driver and cyclist.

The pictograph has gone through several metamorphoses. An early version was test-driven in Denver, CO in the 1990s. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) marked a number of streets in a 1998 pilot project, and later carried out further experiments on the effectiveness of several variants of the markings and their placement. The SFMTA presented a detailed report on the project’s outcomes at the Pro Walk Pro Bike Conference in Seattle in September 2008. You can read the complete report here. This well-illustrated fact sheet explains the details of the marks’ recommended placement on the road surface. A number of cities have since incorporated such sharrows into their plans for safe streets.

The sharrow above appeared on Grove Street in downtown New Haven, CT late in the Summer of 2010 as part of the first phase of improvements recommended in a 2009 bicycle safety plan created by Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates. The planners, hired by the City to find ways to make New Haven safer for cyclists, designated several bicycle routes to, through, and around the city to be marked with sharrows as a short-term improvement. As Jim Travers, head of the Department of Traffic stated in an article in the New Haven Independent, “These are shared road spaces. The street is not solely designed for the automobile. We are promoting biking on this road.” 

Many cyclists (including me) prefer bike lanes, but these marks do seem to increase motor vehicle drivers’ awareness of cyclists. I have to admit I was dubious at first. But you can’t miss these marks from either a motor vehicle or a bike, and their general meaning is not too hard to decipher. 

Google “sharrows” and you will find that many places are considering their use. If these modern-day glyphs have not yet appeared on the streets in your city, the chances are pretty good that they will show up sometime soon.

Meatless Monday: Waste Less

Happy 2011 everyone!

On this first Meatless Monday of 2011 it seems fitting to propose a New Year’s resolution — to waste less, food in particular.

In her most recent newsletter Lidia Bastianich, host of the television series Lidia's Italy, cookbook author, restaurateur, and partner in Eataly, pledges that in 2011 she will make a conscious effort to “not waste food” and invited her readers to make the same commitment. She states, “This effort will be made not only by myself, but by our employees in our restaurants and retail shops. I will also take the opportunity to share this message in the media, and my teachings throughout the year.” Lidia also invites readers to participate in her site’s discussion board — Community Table — to exchange ideas on ways to make such change possible. There are already 12 pages of comments!

In his blog journalist Jonathan Bloom “writes about why we waste food, why it matters and what we can do about it.” Jonathan states that “Americans waste more than 40% of the food we produce for consumption… At the same time, food prices and the number of Americans without enough to eat continues to rise.” Jonathan has been researching the topic of food waste since 2005, when he learned of food rescue efforts as a volunteer at a homeless shelter.

He has also written a book — American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food, for which he provides this summary: “American Wasteland examines how we waste nearly half of our food, chronicling waste from farm to fork. The book discusses why food waste matters and offers suggestions on what we can do better. American Wasteland is a journey through our food chain that raises questions about how our approach to eating has changed so much and what it means… A word of warning: It’s a book that forces you to reconsider your approach to food. Because once you’re looking for food waste, it’s hard to miss.”

Both Lidia and Jonathan are optimistic that together we can make great progress towards lessening food waste and getting more food to the hungry. The concluding words of American Wasteland’s introduction read, “You may be amazed by how freely and easily we dispose of food, from farm to fork. But it can be equally amazing how freely and easily we can diminish our vast squandering. To achieve that feat, though, we need to fully understand and acknowledge the scope of the problem.”

Who can possibly the dispute the merits of cutting down on waste? I’m in. I resolve to finish every box of cereal I buy (whether I like it our not), and to finish the produce I have before purchasing new. Together, let’s celebrate our leftovers and the contents of those doggy bags and turn them into a smorgasbord. This shouldn’t be too hard to do.

You can check out Jonathan’s and Lidia’s sites for more tips, or this 2006 NPR interview Ted Robbins conducted with anthropologist Tim Jones, who opens his fridge to determine not what he wants to eat, but what he needs to eat.

In closing, here is an adage from my youth: “Take what you want, but eat what you take. You can always go back for seconds.” It’s a start…

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”