Hello! It’s a long holiday weekend here in Canada. The temperatures look perfectly springy, so I’ll be in the garden for three days in a row. We have season tickets for a local baseball team and their home opener is this weekend also, which will be great! We’re also going to meet up with friends for coffee at our favorite spot. And then we’ll be hiding in Cleo’s blanket cave during the nightly fireworks. We have tried the Thundershirt before, but she just prefers her little calm cave/blanket fort, poor thing.

With that, I’ll leave you to it! If you ever have a question for a future edition, please feel free to leave it in the comments here or you can email me! Take care out there :)

5 Things I’m Reading:

1. The Grown-Up’s Guide to Growing Down via The Big Slide! on Substack
2. Life, Death and Rebirth in the Land of the Buddha via The New York Times Style Magazine (gift link)
3. The solution to urban heat is much, much simpler than you think via Grist
4. What Taking Off My Health Tracker Taught Me About Wellness via The Good Trade
5. What is an aging face supposed to look like? via Vox (non-paywalled link)

5 Things I’m Enjoying:

1. Me being left behind by AI
2. Alicia Kennedy on Mark Bittman’s podcast
3. I discovered Bold Bean Co. on Instagram recently and love their content. The recipe page of their website is super inspiring!
4. Not a thing I can link to, but I discovered that one of our smaller gardens actually has nice, well-draining soil (most of our yard is dense, wet clay). It just has a bunch of hostas in there from the previous owners, so I’m taking those out, splitting them, and planting them in another spot. And then I get to start the garden from scratch! I’m thrilled haha. Hopefully I’ll have photos to share next week.
5. I’ve been making this tofu broccoli rice thing for lunch that I absolutely love. I make a batch of brown rice on Sunday and chop up a bunch of broccoli super fine (rice-sized bits). I reheat a portion of the rice with an equal amount of broccoli bits, a splash of stock and spices while I air fry the tofu in this style. The end result is a seasoned broccoli rice mix with the crunchy tofu on top. I usually finish with some extra veggies (sliced cucumber/avocado/greens), and a drizzle of spicy mayo.

5 Questions:

1. I am wondering about what prompted you to quit reddit and why life is better without it? Just curious if you could share more.
   I read the news every day and going on Reddit honestly just felt like a more volatile re-hash of the day’s headlines. It can be very useful for some things! Especially if you’re looking for an unbiased review of something that you’re thinking about purchasing or you’re trying to solve a gardening problem. But my feed on the platform was pretty cluttered with news and politics, which I get enough of already. I would waste so much time reading other people’s takes and I would wonder why I was feeling so irritable all the time–this makes me laugh now.
2. How do you keep you keep the animals out of your garden?
   I don’t really. Lots of squirrels live in our yard and they love to dig everywhere–especially in the loose dirt of our raised veggie beds. I find that sprinkling cinnamon and leaving orange peels around things you want to protect does help, but you have to keep refreshing both of these items for it to be effective.
3. I got a milk frother recently. Can you recommend store bought dairy-free milk options?
   My favorites: Tache’s unsweetened barista pistachio milk (this is my #1), Elmhurst’s Cashew or almond milks (the 2 ingredient ones), MALK’s almond milk, Pacific Foods’s Barista Soy option, and Earth’s Own Barista Oat (I actually prefer the “light” one over the regular). I really think I’ve tried them all in latte format!
4. Can your two big muffins recipe be made into smaller muffins? Can I use blueberries/other fruit/nuts instead of chocolate chips?
   Yes! I think you could get 3-4 standard muffins out of the recipe. Keep the initial higher temperature bake for 5 minutes. Once you lower the temperature after the initial bake, I would start checking them for done-ness around the 14 minute mark. And yes to blueberries. It’s a great base muffin recipe that’s not too sweet. Just use an equal amount (scant 1/2 cup) of add-ins and you’ll be good to go.
5. What do you make of some of the vegan influencers eating meat again?
   I do get this question a lot, so have probably shared thoughts on this before! There were SO many vegan influencers/vegan cooking personalities/actors and musicians going vegan around 2015ish because it became this trend-propelled movement. Of course folks have been vegan for ages before that, but it really picked up steam during that time period, merging with this drive for vegan capitalism (tech meat, Blackstone’s Oatly investment, fast food places introducing vegan options etc). At some point, folks were going to fall out with it–whether due to disillusion, health outcomes, a desire to reconnect with cultural/familial eating practices, or simply wanting to get on the next trend cycle. I get that people are sometimes disappointed when this happens, but I think there’s a lesson there about putting folks on a pedestal/not seeing them as a regular person with other life situations going on. Your life is your own, their life is theirs. I recommend taking what you need from the situation to keep your own motivation/inspiration/conviction moving.

5 Seasonal Recipes

1. Roasted Cauliflower Lettuce Wraps with Sweet Chili Sauce
2. Charred Corn Quinoa Salad with Avocado & BBQ Tahini Ranch Dressing
3. Grillable Vegan Black Bean Burgers (10 Ingredients)
4. Seriously Luscious Chocolate Cherry Smoothie
5. Crispy BBQ Pulled Mushroom Sandwiches