In this newsletter I take a few steps from home and look back: as a traveler abroad, as an immigrant twice over, as an outsider by training, and as a cook. One way to see a country is to journey toward it: the other is to journey away.

Any view from a distance requires a lens, and mine is sustainability. Each weekly issue will bring you two types of recipes for disaster:

• Ways to live sustainably in the widest sense, meaning to experience a more satisfied, meaningful and balanced life: Observations to come from my travels to Italy and Canada, countries of my formative years, and from my adventures in American consumption
• Meal recipes for sharing a joyful table in joyless times

Expect some joy in these letters too: I'm not going to Italy to mope about the state of the world, though neither am I going to stick my head in the semolina. You can always speed past the metaphorical recipe if you're not in the mood, and hop to the real one (with the VERY large pdf button at the end, thank you Beehiv, we see it!).

Eventually I would like to host dinners for small groups of subscribers, because the most important part of sustainable living, to me, is the sustenance of human connections.

To start, I will see you on email. This is not a bite-sized newsletter, nor will it come with appetizing photos and visual tutorials, at least most of the time. You may like these letters if you are burned out on rapid scrolling and video hopping, and are ready for a slow read and slow food (I would mail you these letters if I could, and maybe I will someday).

My recipes quiet the stomach and, ideally, tickle the mind (see next week’s “Meatballs of Sufficient Size”). Funny or serious, my writing tries to decompose the ingredients in our American recipes for disaster: the inherited assumptions, societal values and economic pressures that make it so hard for us to live as content, loving and cooperating humans.

I know I’m writing against the grain. America has been an experiment in unsustainable growth from the start, leaping from one careening vehicle to another like a CGI action hero. So far it has worked, more or less. And these days, sustainability is a word out of fashion. Plenty of progressive Americans are secretly glad to get a climate holiday.

For me, though, sustainability has everything to do with the day’s news, and not just in the weather. Even the most casual observer knows we have taken the side of non-renewable energy, and that choice forces other ones. The new world order, as we seem to want it, is the Fossil Axis of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia, united by fear of a shrinking market. Unfortunately, most extractor states are as repressive as they are backward.

Fortunately, individuals still have power. A sustainable life is a private reward and a public statement.

I invite you to eat joyfully and live carefully. When we start to buy better — when more of us choose quality over quantity, demand emissions offsets, switch to clean vehicles, and spend more on services than goods — others will follow. Dumping exhaust into a large greenhouse is currently acceptable. So was smoking indoors, until enough people decided it wasn’t.

We can change how we live, or it will be changed for us. Some say talk of doom never motivates change, and that the better tool is hope. That’s half wrong. Hope doesn’t motivate change. Change motivates hope. Do a little, feel better, repeat.

That said, commentary — as a rule and especially with this topic — can make for tough chewing. When all else fails, on the page or in the world, have a good meal in good company.

I have supported environmental studies, Earth science and climate policy in communications roles at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Los Angeles mayor's office, and the University of Southern California. In that work and as a journalist before then, I was most effective when looking in from the outside.

Born and raised in Italy, I take food almost as seriously as sustainability. Coming of age in Canada, I learned to love the pristine forest. Having grown up Catholic, I am interested in questions of spiritual life — which, when you think about it, is sustainability in the longest term. "Interested" does not equal "successful." I fail regularly at altruistic living, but as a cook at least I can offer a type of nourishment.

I plan to write you once a week for the next 12 months, after which I’ll decide whether to adjust the recipe. You are welcome to invite others to join at guidosrecipesfordisaster.com/subscribe. I don't have comments enabled yet, but I will read all replies to these emails.

Since you had the patience to read all the way to this point, allow me to impose just a little longer: I want to recognize Lillian Ingabire, editorial designer at Studio Kalili, for the playful, sensitive and functional graphic elements that support this newsletter. Any design sins are due entirely to my stubbornness and the limits of this platform or of your email reader. You can find Lillian on the Contra hiring platform.

Spinach and silky chick peas pasta

At last, here is the inaugural meal, chosen to satisfy almost any palate and budget. It's a regular in our rotation and a proven crowd pleaser on two continents. There are several variants online. I was inspired by a comment to The New York Times version: the reader suggested using broth instead of cream, which would make the dish far too heavy. It works. I've since modified other ingredients, mainly by adding more spinach and rosemary, and using pepperoncini instead of red pepper flakes. A little anchovy paste with the garlic and shallot doesn't hurt. It's not in the recipe because few ingredients are as polarizing as a harmless little fish (making my sympathies clear there).

You could get the lemon and rosemary at the store, but why? Here in Los Angeles it's more fun to go foraging. Thank you, cooperative neighbors, for letting your plants grow into the public right of way!

I cook for flavor first and health second, but this one is a tie, densely rich in legumes, leafy greens and olive oil. The kids (and a few adults) will pick out the spinach, and it won't matter much: this is one resiliently delicious dish.