Breakfast. This morning. Out came a clean pot and in went organic polenta from the bulk bins for a new batch of porridge. Stir, stir, stir. Then to the garden to round up what have you. A couple scallions. A handful of young fava beans. Back in the hippie kitchen. Choppity- chop for the veggies and into the pot they went. Just a quick stir and then covering to let hot golden polenta turn the greens al dente.

Fry an egg. Grab a couple roasted chiles. Ultrafast. Healthy. Thrifty. Local/Seasonal. Me and Swish were ready to feast.

Oh–and that last fava that turned up in my pocket unchopped and uncooked. I just chomped that down au naturelle, tender and young freshly picked as it was…

In case you haven’t appreciate what a radical tune Jimmy Crack Corn is before, here are the lyrics:

When I was young I used to wait
On master and hand him his plate
Pass him the bottle when he got dry
And brush away the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
My master’s gone away

When he would ride in the afternoon
I’d follow him with my hickory broom
The pony being rather shy
When bitten by the blue-tail fly

Chorus

One day he rode around the farm
Flies so numerous that they did swarm
One chanced to bite him on the thigh
The devil take the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Well the pony jumped, he start, he pitch
He threw my master in the ditch
He died and the jury wondered why
The verdict was the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Now he lies beneath the ‘simmon tree
His epitaph is there to see
Beneath this stone I’m forced to lie
The victim of the blue-tail fly

In this case, there were leftover French lentils and quinoa in the fridge–so into the bowl they went with some jarred roasted red peppers, a pear from the season’s end, and a handful of raisins.

Next a quick troll through the garden for a clutch of kale and cabbage leaves and a stalk of immature green garlic that I treated like a scallion. Flip the high heat on under a puddle of water in the cast iron wok. Choppity chop and into the wok. In half a minute the works has wilted nicely, so off goes the heat and into the bowl go the veggies.

Then some olive oil in the work and a bunch of local hazelnuts. Stir-stir while they toast a little, and over the salad they go, oil in tow.

Red wine vinegar, coarse salt, a crack of fresh pepper, and a scatter of red chile flakes.

This baby was done, and boy was it a lip smacker. “Beans and rice” never tasted so fine–just like my new hero Dave Ramsey knows.

Sing it Dave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BEANS AND RICE (RICE AND BEANS)
Copyright Scott Dawson Songs 2008

Fannie Mae, GMAC and MasterCard
Had control of me
I was sinking, sinking in a river of debt
When a friend
Shared with me
A radio personality
With a message
That I wouldn’t soon forget

Act your wage, budget the till
Name every dollar bill
Sell the Rolex, the speedboat and SUV’s
The only time you shall haunt
Your neighborhood restaurant
Will be working
As a server for Applebee’s

So I’m squeezing every dime
No fish, no beef, no pork
Now when dinnertime rolls around
I don’t even need a fork

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Keeps me fed for a modest price
I’m adjusting
To living on beans and rice I got pintos, kidneys, limas too
With a can of spam I got
Poor man’s stew
Thanks Dave Ramsey
For teaching me beans and rice

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Cayenne pepper and a onion slice
Mighty tasty
I’m cooking up beans and rice

I got long grain, short grain
Wild and brown
This recipe is spreading all over town
I’m making progress
By living on beans and rice Someday soon
You’ll hear me
On the air screaming “I’m debt free”
But until then
I’m living on beans and rice

First off, notice their milk carton–not just the usual about our health and tastes, but a nod to the mama cows getting out to pasture. What a concept. Just like it was 50 years ago before the corporations stomped the family farmers into smithereens. And also like it’s getting to be again now that people have seen what all that cheap food means in terms of farm animal welfare.

Secondly, unlike Horizon, the other major organic milk producer, Organic Valley has had no scandals. Not even a whiff of indication that they haven’t been walking the talk–as in keeping cows confined to barns, their 1500 pound frames standing day in day out on unforgiving cement floors. Indeed, even organic producers are only required by regulation to have the cows out 120 days each year–or every third day. Seems to me that’s already right up there pushing the limits of humane treatment.

The other advantage of Organic Valley is that mainstream groceries carry it. Often not with the other dairy. Usually over in some obscure health food section. But it’s there. Not only milk, but cream, cream cheese, cheese, eggs, and butter–each of which you can see are in my fridge at the moment.

Finally, the Organic Valley system is organized to that in my town of Portland, Oregon, for example, I’m drinking milk produced by dairies in our locale. So it’s not like it all comes from Wisconsin.

It’s true that when I’m at the local food co-op I’ll nab some milk in the glass bottles from a local dairy who uses no middle man like the Organic Valley farmers do. That said, when I’m out and about in conventional groceries, Organic Valley is my pal.

They know what the delicious revolution is all about, and because they walk the talk, I want to support them with my business. Does it get my attention to pay a hefty price for my dairy and eggs? Do I rest easier at night because I do? Yes.

As far as crust goes, it’s my usual whole wheat pastry-organic butter version at a ratio of one part flour to a half part butter. For this crust I used a cup of flour to a stick of butter plus a couple good pinches of salt. Here’s more on the technique if you need it.

Yes, I might be pushing the metaphor a bit far–but not all that much when you really stop and think about it. Stop and remember how it was when a family put down stakes somewhere and the very first thing they did was get the garden planted, some fruit trees in, and a house built for the hens.

It’s true that I am totally heads over heels in love with my kitchen garden–so much so that the third book in my Measure Free Trilogy is titled, Grow Your Own: From the Garden to the Table. As with the others, it will focus on the cooking side of the proposition even as it pays homage to how what’s happening in the garden and how that influences the directions things take in the kitchen.

That said, I realize not everyone has a place to garden or even wants to garden. And I respect that. You get tired and dirty in the garden. There’s weeds. And slugs. Bugs too. So far be it from me to be a garden pusher. To try and push gardens on the unsuspecting public.

But people. It’s so far beyond that, this business of the grocery cart pushers and us as grocery cart addicts. Now that they’ve got us in their stores wandering the aisles of their wares with our carts, they’re not satisfied to just sell us the raw stuff of life from the gardens. Nope. Instead it’s bags and boxes and bottles and cans and cartons. Even at the food co-ops and natural food stores. People are buying product and lining up at the deli counter. We don’t know how to cook anymore. Plus that we think putting a simple meal together is a big deal or has to be gourmet to be good. More’s the pity.

What helped me pierce the gauzy beguiling veil was coming of age in the Sixties when mainstream ways were considered suspect. But that was only have the battle. The other part has to do with funds. When I lived 10 years with the Hopi and Navajo I saw how people did when they managed on incomes well below the poverty line. And what I discovered was that their food was beautiful, creative, delicious, local, seasonal. All around lovely stuff.

And in my journey back in my own culture, I soon discovered that if I ate like an Indian (or peasant if you will) I’d have money to do some fun things in life–like go to graduate school and write books. There were even a bonus. The food I learned to make was light years better than anything you can buy. That’s because it was fresh. Also because over the years I learned the art of flavor and how to use the sacred quartet–oil, vinegar, salt, pepper–to very good advantage. I also learned the difference between just tossing things in willy nilly and thinking about what really might help a dish. For example, nuts and raisins with some vegetables in a warm salad to add a few fun notes.

So that’s my bit on the pushers and how they’ve got us hooked on their grocery carts and bottled salad dressings and bagged spinach. And here’s to all of us increasingly backing away from our addiction on all this junk. Increasingly leaving our money in our pocketbooks instead of squandering it on inferior food. Increasingly leaving our measuring cups behind and having fun cooking in our own kitchens.

We will be getting a real deal, they imply, if we take a fast track to pizza with their “quick” sauce! Even better if we’re health conscious, we will get nine fabulous whole grains with their bagged cereals and flours.

Never mind that it might be almost as quick, and much more creative, to put some garlic and a few herbs together with tomato paste for your own pizza sauce. Or that our bodies might not need nine grains in one fell swoop, and that we have to pay for someone to mix those blends up for us and put them into the bags. Never mind all that because that’s really not the issue.

Not the issue because we have been trained to react (not respond) to these messages–as were our parents and grandparents before us. Buy this, the message really says, and you’ll be happy. And we want so to be happy. It’s true….

In my hippie kitchen, though, I’ve found that the further I steer clear from packaged things, the happier I am. That’s because when I buy the basics and pull them together myself I discover that:
1. It doesn’t take long
2. The results aren’t too bad
3. The food is fresh
4. The price goes down
5. We get a chance to be creative and think for ourselves.

Think for ourselves. Become empowered cooks. Yes. That’s the passion that drives me–and the one I want to share. But don’t worry. We don’t have to do it too much. Just a little here and there is all it takes.

This morning’s cereal for example. A handful of oats cooked on high in a little salted water for a minute. A couple big spoons of flax meal fresh from the coffee grinder. Some wheat germ from a plastic bag that lives in the fridge. Yogurt. Apple. Fresh lime juice. Walnuts. A few ruby pomegranate jewels that so mark the season. My own blend of cinnamon, allspice, coriander, cayenne sprinkled over the top. A hot black cup of free trade, organic espresso to go with.

If you’d a been here I could have easily made enough for two. And I think we both would have agreed that it was quick and healthy enough for a couple characters like us…. Chuckle.

Here’s to empowered everyday cooks. Here’s to leaving processed food behind and taking back your kitchen. It might not have the short term glitz of Pizza Quik and Nine Grain Cereal, but in the longer term–like The Beatles sang–it’s guaranteed to raise a smile.

Case in point: this roll of towels has been on the spindle for a couple years now. Yes. It’s true. I save the paper towel genuflecting for rare occurrences. Instead, see that stack of cloth towels? Those tattered bits of fabric do yeoman service in my kitchen and get washed so they can get up and do it again–amen.

So yah, it’s about our disposal culture: diapers, pens, razors, bottles, bags, and paper towels. The point is, of course, that if we’re willing to wash our own, fill our own, and generally change our own–we’ll need less cash at the store–and leave a lighter footprint on Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Besides, the last woman I saw reach for the paper towels was only eating a heart-shaped section of polenta waffle with some fresh end of the garden salsa on it. I noticed, though, that because the roll of towels was sticky and did not release easily (these towels are the tougher almost cloth-like kind) she changed her mind and simply held her spare hand under her tidbit as she ate. Seemed to work okay as far as I could tell–although I forgot to watch whether she licked her fingers or just wiped them on her jeans like the rest of us–chuckle.

Anyhow, I can’t say I do it perfectly, but I’m definitely not a paper towel grabber. How about you? Do you use kitchen towels and cloths made of fabric that can get up and do it again, amen?

So here you go: a three-part vid you can sample if you’re inclined–plus a bonus clip of me shucking the blue corn I use in the lastavera and reminiscing about my time in Hopiland–as well as a clip from one of the Hopi social dances.

Cheers. Hope you find some simple, healthy, thrifty ideas that inspire you in your everyday kitchen.

Part 1: Lastavera Frittata–Jean’s blue apron on Beyond, skipping the onion, getting the right size pan, eggs from the hens next door, flash cooking, baskets of harvest tomatoes red and green

Part 2: Lastavera Frittata–ratio of vegs to eggs, tomatillos from their papery wraps to the skillet, green chiles and heat, cutting corn off the cob, beans-beanpaste-hummus, GMO.

Lastavera, Winding It Up–blue corn makes for interest, getting up close and personal with your food, the cook counts too, how Hopi cooks roast their green chile, celebrating kale, taking chances with the pan, and pulling it off!

Bonus Clip: Shucking Blue Corn and Talking About Hopi Cooks and Farmers

If you made it this far, here’s a special treat: the Hopi Butterfly Dance that the villages hold for the young people who are coming of age. Don’t the young women look beautiful in their headdresses? And the young men so very vigorous?

and one more–appropriately called The Corn Dance

Absent from the sensationalized reporting, however, has been that the current food movement started with the hippies in the Sixties. Ditto the contemporary interest in yoga and meditation and other Eastern meditative arts. So yes, the counterculture may have had its excesses and walked down more than one counterproductive blind alley–although I certainly wouldn’t consider rock & roll one of them. But hippies also had their moments of genius. Moments of understanding at a fundamental level that plastic fantastic corporate America was a big nightmare of a bust.

The mainstream news also likes to talk about how the hippies sold out and turned into stock traders and such. Perhaps a few. Perhaps many even, maybe. But certainly not all. And not me and many others I know. We might have taken off our long skirts and trimmed our hair a bit so we could earn a living…but we really never returned. We’ve carried the banner all these years. We’re about local. About community. About most anything that frees us from the grip of mind-numbing corporate control–which not only robs us of our money and health, but also renders our lives so hideously boring that even television seems like a relief.

So there. There’s my soapbox hippie stuff. I use the hippie cook moniker as an homage to the Sixties and what was great and good about the counterculture. All that business of relying less on services and products that turn us into passive consumers and more on one’s own actively engaged initiative. In terms of food, for me, that’s meant cooking from scratch and growing my own garden–clearly activities that have offered up the friendly gifts of creativity, empowerment, and joy.

Honest food from my no chem garden. A celebration of harvest. Putting up for a rainy day. Selling out less and less to factory farms and the corporate food industry. Buying into the delicious revolution.

So come on and rock & roll in your best measure free hippie cook fashion. In your best John Lennon fashion.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you’re everywhere
Come and get your share.

…so on getting our share, this first vid shows me flashing (or blanching, wok-style) the beans for the freezer:

…in this second part takes a look at how easy it is to use freezer paper and wean ourselves off the plastic bag train. So come on and get your share. Then we’ll all shine on like the moon and stars and the sun.

One last for the the old daze. Sixties. Penny Lane. Cherry Street. Whatever….Yes, SF?