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.

In short, I’ve learned that if I am open to the at bounty lies outside the kitchen door, I can connect with what eating truly fresh food in season is all about. I can free myself  from the trap of thinking it’s reasonable to eat tomatoes and lettuce during the dead of a Pacific Northwest winter or fresh strawberries outside of their luscious, local June season. I can revel in the joy of anticipating new potatoes, of discovering that fava beans that are ready by June when not much else is, and of putting up my own roasted red peppers for winter.

Growing your own comes at a cost of course. Some years things don’t produce well.There’s turning the compost piles, if you’re low tech like me and just use a pitch fork. And then there’s straightening up from yet another row and leaning wistfully on your hoe to watch your neighbors heading off to something spiff like a farm-to-table dinner in wine country or a luxurious yoga class.

My experience is, though, that the garden brings its own enduring joy. It’s own peace of mind. The beauty of the garden is simply and undeniably luxurious. Then there’s the exercise you get, all without having to pay for a class or head off to the pool. And we haven’t even gotten around to the savings on our food bills. Or how by being less dependent on the cash economy, we can trade in our 40-hour weeks for part-time work.

Quite the deal a kitchen garden is. Mental health therapy. Significant cash savings. (As in I’ve probably spent all of $20 on fresh produce over the past year.) Physical exercise. And fresh delicious food.

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

In the photograph above I used conventional mozzarella, unaware two years ago when I shot it, of the abuse factory farm cows are subjected to–ie not seeing the light of day for obscene time periods, basically turned into milk machines that stand with their 1500 pound girths on cemented barn floors as opposed to getting out to pasture daily where they can switch their tails and chew their cud.

Thus, exceptionally pleased am I to have discovered that the reputable people in the Organic Valley cooperative make a mozzarrella. It’s square not round, sorry to say. But it’s taste is all the sweeter since it helps connect the dots between our bioethics and our consumption habits. So if you haven’t connected with a local cheese maker who does mozzarella–or don’t make your own–know that Organic Valley has its products available nationally. The good stuff is ours for the asking–and for paying the extra price it costs dairy people to treat the mama cows well.

So here you go.

In these vids I show how to

1. Turn the burner on high with a puddle of water.
2. Put your rustically chopped veggies in, in the order of which takes longest to cook Build your flavor using the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper
3. Pair with protein and carbs
4. And bring on the goodies to make Plain Jane fare rock your socks!

It’s as simple as that, and the clean-up is too. Plus I talk about eating seasonally, thrift, health, and how delicious this food revolution really truly is. Hope you come along. We’re having a blast…

Over easy and whisked into omelets, eggs delight many. But the hens that laid the eggs are another subject. Visit 95 percent of the egg operations in the United States today, and you’ll find as many as a quarter million hens crammed into batteries of cages stacked ten rows high—quarters so tight they cannot even flap their wings.

“The modern hen lays an egg on around 320 days each year, and during the two hours surrounding that process, she is severely frustrated,” Ian Duncan says, expert on laying hens and emeritus professor in the department of animal and poultry science at the University of Guelph, Canada, who holds a university chair in animal welfare. “That seems unacceptable to me.”

Duncan also notes that without perches, the chickens do not sleep well at night, and because they cannot get exercise, they develop weak bones akin to osteoporosis. That said at least with the growing minority of producers, “the trend seems to be getting the birds onto the floor of the barns and even outside,” Duncan observes.

“This new ethic is conservative, not radical,” says Bernard Rollin, PhD, faculty in the departments of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University. “It is a return to the roughly fair contract those who have husbanded animals for virtually all of human history have had with animals—that of taking great pains to put one’s animals into the best possible environment one could find to meet their physical and psychological natures.”

Rollin’s point is well taken. No less a mainstream organization than the Humane Society of the United States formally began a campaign to raise awareness about conditions related to confined farm animals in 2005. By the end of 2006, HSUS had drawn sufficient public attention to the wretched plight of laying hens to help change the egg-purchasing policies of several large companies including Ben and Jerry’s.

“We will be phasing over to the good eggs over the next four years,” says Sean Greenwood, spokesman for the ice cream company that markets itself as socially conscious. “We’re not chicken experts and learned about all this from the Humane Society. But we are a company that believes in being fair to animals.”

“We looked at major buyers and worked with them to stop buying the most abusive types of eggs that are available,” says Paul Shapiro, director of the Humane Society’s Factor Farm Campaign. “Ben and Jerry’s is a huge company, and they deserve credit for improving the welfare for hens who are laying eggs for their ice creams.”

But Shapiro cautions against assuming that all is well. “Consumers need to realize that cage free eggs don’t necessarily mean cruelty-free,” he adds. “That said hens free from the nightmare of battery cages are leading much better lives, so this is a serious improvement that ought to be applauded. There is significantly is less suffering involved.”

Hens living in cage free operations, as John Brunnquell, president of Egg Innovations notes, “are free to move around the barn, interact with peers, and enjoy natural sunlight,” but they do not get outside. That’s because we, the consumers, still have not indicated we will support full lives for the hens that give us our eggs.

“We want to expand significantly the number of people in this market so this is a way to produce affordable cage free eggs,” explains Brunnquell. “On the other hand, eggs that are labeled organic by definition must come from hens that are free roaming with access to the outside.”

“The organic shoppers have said they are willing to pay the price for the more expensive outside access, but the cage free shopper hasn’t. So we don’t want to lose those people by pricing product out of their range.”

Brunnquell grew up on a small family egg farm in Wisconsin that used cages, but after earning a masters degree in poultry science, he decided to move his operation to 100 percent cage free, complete with third party audits to ensure full compliance. “Back then, I could articulate all the arguments for cages, but at the end of the day when I walked into a poultry barn, I evolved a stronger feeling that cage free was a correct way to go.”

The third party audits Brunnquell uses from Humane Farm Animal Care are in lieu of formal federal or state regulation protecting animals in confined farming operations. According to Rollin, that’s because the agricultural industry has pressured for a laissez faire approach to regulation.

“These big companies are kingdoms unto themselves and aren’t used to the oversight that animal research enjoys in university settings,” Rollin says. “They account only to their stock holders, so many owners simply say they will just move to Asia if US regulators clamp down.”

The US bureaucracy might have lagged, but as Shapiro sees it consumers are coming around. “Since we started our campaign in 2005, we’ve praised a number of companies that now have switched over to cage free eggs: Ben and Jerry’s, AOL, Google, the Bon Appetit Management Company that services more than 70 universities, and, of course, natural food purveyors Wild Oats Natural Marketplace, and Whole Foods Market.”

To expand this net, Shapiro suggests people “use their power as consumers, ask grocery store managers to stop selling cage eggs all together, and talk with the directors of dinning halls at their companies, schools, and hospitals.”

Duncan agrees that consumers can change practices, but he thinks education is critical. “I think it’s got to be a labeling scheme with compulsory photographs showing quite clearly how the hens that produced the eggs are kept.”

Compulsory photographs on cartons of eggs? Consumers aware of how the animals who provide the product they purchase spend their lives? The concept might sound extreme, but surely the hens that are laying the eggs would flap their wings in approval—if only they could.

On Vinegared Milk, Buttermilk, Yogurt, and Beer—

You can buy buttermilk which is already sour and certainly genteel. But vinegar’s always on hand in my kitchen and making my own soured milk is cheaper. All it takes is a spoonful of vinegar to clabber a cup of milk—or if the truth be known I add the vinegar to the egg, milk, and oil, letting it do its thing right in the bowl.

There’s also yogurt which in addition to sour power has all those healthful organisms. Since it’s thicker than milk, add a little water if you go this route. Or you can skip milk products altogether and use beer like the Wild West’s grizzled prospectors did, either flat from the night before or splurging with a fresh bottle.

On a Roll with Corncakes—

I often add spaghetti squash and minced cilantro to corncakes, skipping the cheese altogether as pictured on p. 53.

Another twist is departing from the cornmeal and using leftover quinoa. An egg beaten into a half cup of salted quinoa and a little vinegar and soda yields a great batter for spooning onto the griddle.

Here a Chick, There a Chick—

Hens who get to peck around like on Old MacDonald’s Farm might be a minority at this point in history, but as Bob Dylan sang in his rusty 1960s voice, “the times, they are a-changin.” In response to pressure from the Humane Society of the United States, Ben and Jerry’s has pledged to stop using eggs from hens who live out miserable lives in batteries of cages stacked ten high in cavernous barns.

Such ideas are not new for Ben and Jerry’s. The company’s United Kingdom plant that produces ice cream for Europe has used cagefree eggs for years now. That’s because British consumers have a record dating back to 1876 of insisting farm animals be treated humanely even if they all aren’t out on Old MacDonald’s any more.

“This new ethic is conservative, not radical,” maintains Professor Bernard Rollan, who is widely recognized for pioneering the field of animal ethics and policy during the 1970s. “It is a return to the roughly fair contract those who have husbanded animals for virtually all of human history have had with animals. That of taking great pains to put one’s animals into the best possible environment one could find to meet their physical and psychological natures.”

Once we tasted her pumpkin pie and declared it a home run clear up, over and out of the park–every bit as good as the ones mama used to make–she divulged her secret.

“Acorn squash from the garden.” To her husband’s lifted brows, she explained that she was darned if she’d buy official pumpkin when she had perfectly good winter squash in the house.

Laura with some of her Liberty apple harvest a couple years ago

Yes! This is the kind of talk thrifty, innovative cooks understand. Cooks who are primarily concerned with where their ingredients are sourced. Cooks who realize that threads running through flavor and sustainability and health will make whole cloth if we just let them.

Speaking of health. Laura didn’t stop with the filling for her pumpkin pie. She made her butter crust from 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour–flour that I’d bet half a hundred, came from the organic bulk bins.

Yah. My kind of eating. My kind of cook. Laura gets it.

(Camera was nowhere in sight to capture Laura’s acorn squashes or her 2009 pie, but here’s one of my own winter squash harvests. Those spaghetti squashes are such charmers piled up in their basket.)

Given all that, why does this blog languish in the backwater of everyday cooking, making a big deal out of the measure free kitchen? A cutesy ploy? Not for this historian who’s thought some about Americans only getting measuring cups 100 years ago.

Here I am (front right) in Puebla, Mexico a few years back with on food writing assignment for the Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine. What I saw in Puebla was the same thing I witnessed in Indian Country when I lived a decade with the Hopi and Navajo. Great food. Pride and creativity. Appreciation of sustainably sourced produce on which a community can depend. It’s all interwoven.

That’s the point, then. If we cooked more we’d care more. And we’d cook more if it was easy and fun–not some dutiful direction-following exercise.

Big Cooking really kicked in with Fannie Farmer. Fine and good–some might argue– for late-19th century Boston elites who wanted their help to follow orders from headquarters. But what about us? Do we really need to be told what to do in our kitchens? Other everyday cooks around the world don’t–southern France’s Provence and Asia included.

Unconvinced? How about this: Ethnic cookbooks superimpose measurements and prescriptive steps for our western taste–or lack of it. In effect, we get the blue print but not the heart and soul.

Like so many in the food biz, including the New York Time’s Mark Bittman, are confiding: everyday cooking just ain’t all it’s trumped up to be. No fine knife skills or knives required. No need to create a mini-masterpiece. Just going for it like women around the globe have for centuries. Using what’s in the cupboard to make good, healthy, affordable eats.

So Big Cooking? Buzz off:) Some of us are finally getting wise out here!