All entries for November, 2009

Laura Gets It

27 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
Healthy, thrifty, delicious, and green. That's the whole point behind measure free. The idea that if we quit being slaves to paint-by-numbers recipes we'll be likely to cook more, eat well, be healthy, and save a bundle on the food bill. So at the end of the day, it's not ...

Home Made Pie Crust–Made with 100% Whole Wheat Flour?

23 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
Life's too short for store bought pie crust. Here's a recipe note from Hippie Kitchen for pie crust the old fashioned way. Home Made Pie Crust Use two parts flour to one part fat for your crust. In the pie pictured, I used two cups of unbleached white flour (departing from ...

Big Cooking Never Hurt Anyone–Or Did It?

17 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and Big Food break my heart. That's why cheap breakfasts don't impress me. The hens and pigs pay so very pitifully for our pleasure. Factory farmers prostituting themselves under the guise of feeding the world--never mind the big bucks. Given all that, why does this blog ...

Need a Job? Hire Yourself as Chief Cook & Bottlewasher

16 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
It's official. We're in a jobless recovery with unemployment rates above 10 percent--the highest since the late-1980s. Before we go off half-cocked and fearful about our financial futures, it serves us well to consider the term job-less. That's right. It means fewer jobs than we'd like. But it doesn't mean ...

Playing with Your (Real) Food is Good Medicine

5 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
Researchers at the University College London think they're onto this depression thing. The conclusion of their latest research? Off the land of crinkly packages and eat real food. Sounds good to me. Besides you can even play with it. Along with the idea that junk food causes depression is a new Scripts ...

Eating Animals

4 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
The review of Eating Animals on Alternet calls the author, Jonathan Safran Foer a younger grittier Michael Pollan. Cool. And he'll be at Powell's tonight. 7:30.

The Cereal Bowl

by Jean Johnson
Beans in your morning cereal bowl are cool. A few garbs rolling around with the hazelnuts. Some blackies and a spike of red chile and lime to go with chunks of fresh pears. A pink hummus spread on apples. (Cooking Beyond Measure, p. 32) And now even a nod from ...

Affordable Local Produce

3 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
Once you discover fresh local produce, there's no going back. But the problem for me has always been the spendy price tags at farmers markets. I solved it by growing my own and here's a snippet of this year's harvest. Kitchen gardens aren't everyone's cup of tea, of course. So Bion ...

Blue Corn Waffles, Fried Red Chile & Hopi Memories

2 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
After the Sixties in Flagstaff where better to go and chill out than Indian County. Call me lucky. I managed to cobble together an education degree and spent the next decade out on Navajo and Hopi posing as a school teacher. It's true, I arrived looking for smoke and feathers--the ...

Thoughts on a Measurefree Life–and Ian McEwan’s Hearty School

1 November 2009 by Jean Johnson
Here's how Booker Award winner Ian McEwan describes not measuring in his novel, Saturday. The passage comes through Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon and husband of Rosalind: "What he likes about cooking is its relative imprecision and lack of discipline--a release from the demands of the [operating] theatre. In the kitchen, the consequences ...