Last night we had more haddock with browned butter. My husband, Clif, and I know very well that there are other ways of cooking haddock, but when it comes to browned butter, we just can’t seem to help ourselves. Now, this might be a little hard to believe, but when browned butter is combined with haddock, the flavor is reminiscent of lobster. I thought so the very first time I served it to our friend Diane, and I continue to think so each time I make it. In fact, I’ve come to regard haddock with browned butter as a sort of poor person’s lobster. The beauty of this dish is that not only is it delicious and elegant, but it is also easy to prepare. A perfect dish for company.

But here’s something I’m a little ashamed to admit: until last summer, I was unaware of the delights of browned butter, which I discovered in a Mark Bittman recipe for chicken meunière. How could a foodie reach the age of 51 and not know about browned butter? A terrible lapse, but, readers, I have been making up for lost time. As soon as I realized how glorious browned butter was, I began drizzling it on carrots, green beans, and fish. I especially love watching it turn from plain old melted butter—which is pretty darned good—to the nutty, caramel substance that is even better. Fresh green beans with roasted almond slivers and browned butter could convert even a confirmed vegetable hater, and carrots with browned butter and chopped fresh parsley are nearly as good.

To go along with the haddock, we had home fries made with the last of the Maine potatoes. In our local Hannaford, we have found small, very expensive bags of tiny Yukon gold potatoes that have been grown in Maine. Delectable as these potatoes might be, they are not what you would call an all-purpose potato suitable for baking, stuffing, or using as a base for cheddar cheese soup. I’m debating whether to buy some of the little Yukon golds for our daughter Shannon’s birthday dinner, which we will have this Saturday, the last day of Earth Week.

On the mouse front, the news is not so good. A whole multigenerational mouse family has decided our basement is just the place to set up housekeeping. (Or should I say mousekeeping?) The cats will take care of them, I know, but it jangles my nerves to witness the stalking and then to find the little dead body in the dining room the next morning. Clif scoffed loudly when I suggested that the cats know we eat there and that they are putting the mice in the dining room on purpose. “Cats,” he said crisply, “are not that smart.” Maybe not, but it seems like a funny coincidence that the cats almost always bring the dead mice to the dining room.

This squeamishness on my part is why we are mostly vegetarian. Recently, I read the excellent book Farm City by Novella Carpenter. In Oakland, California, a tough neighborhood not exactly known for its pastoral lifestyle, Novella Carpenter has grown most of her vegetables on “borrowed” land, and has raised chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and pigs in the yard of her apartment building. (She had a very tolerant landlord and neighbors.) Carpenter slaughtered everything but the pigs, and I skimmed right through those sections. I just didn’t want to read about the details. Nevertheless, I admire Carpenter’s grit and her willingness to kill what she eats. (Carpenter also has a blog called Ghost Town Farm where you can read more about her urban homestead.) Farm City has made me evaluate my own hierarchy of food I’m willing to harvest and kill. When it comes to clams, mussels, and shrimp, I have no qualms about digging, steaming, or frying any of these succulent creatures. Then we move to fish and lobster, and my comfort level is not so high. I will cook lobster, but I hate it, and most of the time we buy them already steamed from various markets. Likewise, I have gone fishing in my younger days, but I don’t enjoy it, and I haven’t done so in a long time. Then, when we get to birds and mammals, let’s just say that chickpeas and black beans start looking better and better.

This is a big, complicated subject because along with meat is the issue of dairy and eggs, which depend on overproduction and thus the slaughtering of animals. (This is especially true of dairy products.) While I could go without eating meat, I could not do without butter, cheese, and eggs. Vegans go that route, I know, and have come up with acceptable substitutes, but nothing can take the place of butter, eggs, and good cheese. Nothing.

Yet it is fitting to think about all aspects of the food we eat, to bring mindfulness to what we cook and prepare, to question and evaluate. Not only for Earth Day but also for every other day of the year.