I was on NPR’s “1A” last week to talk about plant-based fall cooking, with fellow panelists Mark Bittman and Dalia Colón. They asked us to bring some recipes we’d share for the season, and I chose: beans en escabeche; butternut squash pastelillos; and pumpkin flan.

Weirdly, whenever I go on these types of shows, listeners assume a level of nutritional expertise on the part of food writers that… no one expects of omnivorous food writers! I’m always telling people to talk to a doctor because I can’t help with their IBS, sadly… But I do love to get on the radio and talk tofu, and I appreciated that their framing for this was that the price of meat is high and going plant-based for more meals is a way to save money. More of this!

I spent most of the past month working feverishly on a forthcoming piece. Food was the focus of this piece—even the act of cooking, really—and yet as it so often does when you’re really immersed in writing about food, food itself became an afterthought. I’m grateful to visitors and a short jaunt to New York to see my sister graduate from her first nursing program for forcing me to come up for air and touch grass, though a better phrase for me personally would be eat oysters. Onward.