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

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

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 romance of Indian spirituality. But what I found was the women and their kitchens–and a corn cuisine to write home about. Scarcity really can bring out the best in our creativity and ingenuity.

Bob and his wife, Beth, still live down on the big pink Colorado Plateau along with my ex and the old crowd. Last year he sent up a lid of blue corn meal along with some seed. So here you be: a recipe for blue corn waffles. And because when I lived up on Second Mesa we used to have a skillet of fried red chile in the center of the table to dip and dab in, that recipe’s below. Both measure free, of course. No room–or need–for Big Cooking here. After all, precise measurements and prescriptive step-by-step directions is hardly the Hopi Way–or mine.

I also included the bits below as side bars in Hippie Kitchen. Basically tips on waffles, working with cornmeal, and Hopi memories.

On Avoiding
Sticky Wicket Waffles—

I’ve dug my share of failed waffles out of the little square indentations. That was back when I didn’t oil the iron nicely with a pastry brush, and more critically, when I used too much liquid in the batter. It’s true that sometimes I can get by with a thin batter that results in the cracker-like, crispy waffles, but the safest bet until you get your sea legs is to go with a thicker than thinner batter, something akin to thinned mashed potatoes. At one point in my waffle making, I thought milk products made things stick, but I never got very scientific about it and can’t really say it wasn’t because those batters were simply too thin.

The main thing is that making waffles isn’t as much of trip as I used to think. Plus, they’re better than pancakes because there’s no possibility of doughy middles. Sort of like the difference between baking a cake in a regular pan and a Bundt pan—the indentation in the center helps the cake cook through.

Finally, on the horror of lifting the lid and finding your lovely waffle pulled apart and clinging to the top and the bottom. Never fear. All it takes—given that your batter was thick enough—is closing the iron and letting the heat finish doing its thing. In another minute or two, the miraculous will have happened. The waffle will be waiting under the lid in one dazzlingly fabulous piece.

On a Roll with Blue & Yellow Corn—

It goes without saying that you can substitute yellow for blue cornmeal and still rock. You can also easily turn waffle batter into pancakes or cornbread. The gist here is to make pancake batters thinner that waffle batters so they pour onto a griddle easily and aren’t too thick to cook through. On the cornbread route, follow the lead of your waffle batter, augmenting it with whole wheat pastry flour, a little honey, and another egg or two. That way you’ll get a moist cornbread plus leftovers to toast into croutons and toss into to Bourbon Chard Ribbons (page 134).

Most recipes that use cornmeal—whether for waffles, pancakes, or bread—call for at least part wheat flour and sometimes I go that route. Mainly, though, I like to explore what happens with 100 percent cornmeal and have found I can control how well what I’m making holds together with the amount of oil and eggs I use.

On Leavening—

I remember a novel set in the early 1800s in which the older women criticized the young marrieds for using the new quick leavenings. It was just one line, but it’s stayed with me. The idea of how little the old guard thought of the young moderns and their penchant for being in such a hurry they couldn’t wait for yeast to work. There’s not a reason other than time that you couldn’t use yeast to make Blue Corn Waffles, using a ratio of a teaspoon of yeast softened in warm water for every cup of dry ingredients. But what can we say; we get more biz-biz all the time it seems and want things on the double.

Sodas can leave an off taste in quick breads if you goof and use too much, which is one reason so many recipes call for baking powder. But as my all time favorite cookbook, Laurel’s Kitchen, points out, you can make your own aluminum-free baking power using one part soda to two parts cream of tartar. Frankly, whenever I have some of this made up I use it instead of straight soda. But I can be a very lazy hippie cook. Besides, isn’t it the Irish that use nothing but soda in their famous bread?

On Blue Corn—

I still remember the time after I’d moved from Hopiland home to Flagstaff. It was back in our rafting days and someone wanted to take some blue corn meal along on a trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. So I called Alfreda out on Second Mesa.

“How can we get some blue corn for the river trip?” I asked.

Her answer? “Grow it.”

Tough love from a Hopi woman for sure.

I arched my middle class brow and thought, “Forget it.”

The times, though, they really did change. This season I’ll be sowing the blue corn kernels Bob sent along with slew of other things. Perhaps not the big time thrills of a romp through the Grand but an experience sure to bring its own enduring joy.

On the wok post I talked about ways to use late season zucchinis, tomatoes, chiles, and corn. Here’s another from Cooking Beyond Measure, p53. Just grate and chop the veggies and stir them into an eggy batter with some corn masa added for heft. Grease your pan and bake in a medium oven.

The roasted chiles pictured in foreground are from my days on the Hopi mesas. But more about that next time. In the mean time, I hope your cooking is kwangwa which in Hopi means delicious.