Technically, I’m on vacation, so this might end up being short. However, since I forgot to tell our managing editor that I wasn’t going to have anything for noon today, well, here I am putting something together at the last minute.

I wanted to spend another minute discussing the realms of responsibility for environmentalism. I mentioned earlier that corporate America could be doing more to help in the cause. A recent article in the NY Times that I can’t seem to find any longer also lamented the lack of environmental leadership from our corporate and industrial higher-ups, and even went to far as to say that the small things that people do every day to green their lives puts up a facade of progress that might actually prevent real progress from occurring.

The District of Columbia recently enacted a tax on shopping bags. The supposed motivation for this tax was to help the highly polluted Anacostia, the tributary of the Potomac that joins its more famous cousin in the heart of the monumental core. This tax helps the river in two ways, supposedly. First, it encourages reuse of plastic bags or use of reusable non-plastic bags, resulting in fewer bags mindlessly disposed of in the street, washing through the city’s storm drains into the river. Secondly, the money raised from the collection of this tax also is to go to the clean-up of the Anacostia river and its watershed. All in all, it sound pretty sensible from an environmental perspective. Right?

My father celebrated a birthday recently, and when I started thinking about a gift, I started considering the environmental impact of gift-giving for the first time. (Writing this column has green on my mind, it seems.) After thinking about it for a while, a familiar expression came to mind: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Chili is the perfect winter food. It’s hot and hearty, and can both warm and fill you up on a cold winter day. One big complaint of mine with making homemade chili is that the usual chili bean, the kidney bean, requires a lot of soaking and cooking before it can be used in a recipe. Unless of course you buy them in cans, which is heavy and expensive and worse for the environment than using dry beans. The quick and easy solution to this is to use lentils instead of kidneys. Sure they are not your traditional chili bean, but you don’t have to do a lot of prep work to use dry lentils and they taste really good. Here’s my recipe for lentil chili.

The best part of last week’s split pea soup recipe is that you can easily make lentil soup using the exact same recipe, just swapping lentils for split peas. I did just that this evening, so I am not reposting a whole new video. However, I did make this recipe a little different. Instead of adding in the dried spices from last time, I seasoned this soup with lemon juice and cumin, salt and pepper. I also added cubed potato to add more texture and to make it a little more hearty. In the video below, I briefly describe this new soup and illustrate how to peel and chop a potato and juice a lemon.

On Mondays, Michael explores the world of environmentalism and its intersection with queer culture in the column It’s Easy Being Green, despite what Kermit says.

This week I make a …

Things are a little mixed up around here, and I was unable to do a video of the huge pot of soup I made tonight. However, instead of posting a video, I’ll just post the recipe and links to steps that I’ve already posted.

From what I understand, minestrone soup was invented to use up extra ingredients that one happens to have around the kitchen. As such, it feels silly going out and buying small amounts of random vegetables and tossing them together. But it’s such a great soup, with a wide variety of vegetables and legumes to provide a lot of protein, carbs and nutrients. Enjoy.

I am indeed going to focus on cooking instruction in this space in the coming months. However, I just spent a week off the grid and haven’t spent any time in the kitchen lately. So today, instead of a video, I’ll share with you some comments about a book I’m currently reading, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.

The book’s first subtitle is “An Eater’s Manifesto” but the second subtitle, cutely hidden on the band holding together the bunch of lettuce on the cover is the title of this post: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Not surprisingly, this book is right up my alley. So much so, actually, that I wasn’t even going to buy it, since I figured me reading it would be like the choir buying the sheet music. But then I reconsidered and figured it could probably teach me something. It has already, and I’m only halfway through it.

I whipped up a great huge pot of Black Bean Soup last week, velvety and seasoned with toasted cumin and chipotle peppers. Good stuff. You can do it yourself at home. Just watch this video.

Starting today, this column is going to be something completely different. As I’ve brought to your attention before, the production of meat for human consumption is one of the largest contributors to global warming greenhouse gases and other pollution. Instead of continuing along with an intellectual discussion of self-greening, I’m going to start showing people how to make delicious food that doesn’t harm the environment.

Today is the first of a hopefully long series of videos spotlighting cooking technique and vegetarian cuisine. I have to mention that today’s clip was filmed a few months ago, so the items I’m cooking with are not likely any longer in season. So, if you want to cook and eat local produce, you might not be able to make this recipe until next summer. However, if you don’t care where your broccoli and basil come from, then get cracking.