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…

As you can see, when fava beans are fresh picked young and tender, they are beautifully ready to go straight from the pods. No second peeling needed at all. I discovered this simply by working with fava beans from my own garden, and then was gratified to see Italian and Spanish cooks echoing my experience in their books.

With the double peel debate settled, then what to do with fava beans? First is to think of them like a fresh bean. Once you do that you can rock and roll just like I do in Hippie Kitchen. The official recipe is called Fava Bean Sass, a dish made by flash cooking the favas then tossing them with spicy peanut sauce that includes diced apple and shredded carrot to sweeten things. So simple. So delicious. So thrifty–especially if you planted favas in February and are now about ready to harvest them.

The main thing that makes a measure free hippie kitchen work, though, is getting on a roll with things. So once I’ve got a new vegetable or recipe idea in tow, I play-play. If you try this I think you’ll find that eating with the seasons–as in fava beans for days on end while they are the happening thing–does not get boring.

The second round with favas I suggest on page 54 of Hippie Kitchen is incorporating them into a grain salad with leftover millet, radishes, and raisins. A little dressing and you have a balanced spring primavera in one bowl.

Fun, you say, but there’s more favas coming through the door daily. No problem, flash cook them as always with spring onions and green garlic. Spoon the works into warm corn tortillas and top with blue cheese. Then name this Fava Bean Heaven.

———-I hope I’ve piqued your interest in these early summer beans. They are great since along with the peas they are among the first food to grace our gardens and appear in the markets. And if you aren’t growing them just yet and do have to buy favas that need double peeling, don’t give up. Once they are flash cooked, they pop right out of their casings whether the cook does it all ahead or people do it themselves–together at the table while they slow down to relish the harvest whether it’s in a hash, warm salad, or pizza pie.

Flash cooking is the heart of my kitchen scene. It nets me plenty of fresh seasonal vegetables in short order–warm salad style. I’ve talked about it many times here on the blog, but people resonate with the idea so, that we did a video. It’s a 6 minute clip from chopping the onion to chowing down.

Belly and Soul—Eating Locally and In Season

Like someone scouting for a spouse in a bar, there was good reason I spent much of my life under the fluorescents trolling inner aisles of the groceries for things in crinkly packages. I was looking for flavor, and I wanted it pronto, on my terms.

These days, though, I’ve found love in the bounty of Oregon’s seasons. Fresh corn snapped from the stalk…dark baby kale, fronds nipped by winter frosts…raspberries in the morning sun, plucked right from the vine…new potatoes, freshly unearthed, coddled with a bit of butter…snow peas so pale in the early spring light they break your heart.

I never followed the foodie scene or spent much time in the kitchen—except to make cookies—so sexy things like having all the right cookbooks and brining turkeys passed me by. Thus, my transition from packaged fare and tomatoes-on-demand was bumpy. I mean, how could broccoli ever compete with American pizza?“It’s tough,” said Catherine Pantsios, Chefs Collaborative board member and former co-owner of the critically acclaimed San Franciscan restaurant, Zolas. “People have become so anesthetized.”

Cynthia Harriman, director of food and nutrition strategies for Oldways—the food issues think tank that started the Chefs Collaborative to foster connections between local producers and restaurants—echoed the dilemma. “Since a lot of Americans see eating as a fueling up the tank operation, many see eating well as a hair shirt,” said Harriman. “No one’s going to eat right unless we can convince them this stuff is delicious.”

A balmy spring breeze ruffles my hair as I stoop to pull leeks that have wintered over in my garden. Next stop is the carrot patch. Then the kitchen where the leeks get sautéed with tarragon, while the carrots simmer with some potatoes. The works takes a whirl through the blender before joining forces in the soup pot for a healthy slug of white wine, crack of fresh pepper, and bit of salt. I take some to my mother along with a baked pear. “You could serve this to a queen,” she said. It was that delicious.

Making soup, though, is a bit of an ordeal since you have to get the blender out. What really brings me to my knees in the spring and early summer is pasta primavera—or most any kind of primavera for that matter.

But you have to go the distance to make it work. Run the gamut on combinations of fruit and nuts and cheese to accent your winter greens and root crops and spaghetti squashes. That’s when you can hear snow peas dangling off the vines in their sensuous arcs speak.

It’s how it was during my Grand Canyon days. The river trips stopped at one gorgeous side canyon after another. But the experience was never as sublime as when I’d hike in, hour after hour under hot sun over dry terrain. Finally we’d drop into a single, lush side canyon, shuck our packs and dusty boots, and slip into the plunge pools. It was delicious.

Cynthia Harriman observed the same phenomenon when she was in the Czech Republic in 1990 just after the Iron Curtain fell. “Watermelon season started, and that was the only fruit you could get anywhere,” she said. “But rather than complain about the lack of variety, the Czechs were excited. There they were with all this pent up emotion; they really appreciated the melons having their moment in the sun. We’ve lost that joy of the seasons.”

It’s the same with me and pasta primavera. In I come with my clutch of snow peas and whatever else I could find in the garden—some tender chives, parsley, carrot, scallions—perhaps even asparagus if any heads have poked through the loam. Maybe even an early strawberry for dessert.

I get the high heat going under the pasta water and my cast iron wok. In the latter goes a tad of olive oil and the aromatics. While they’re sizzling I grate the carrot and chop the pea pods and asparagus. If I have some morels straight from Oregon’s spring forests—which I often do since New Seasons stocks them—those earthy treats get included too, right at the very end. Rice wine vinegar is usually the spike of acid I balance out this kind of delicate fare with. Beyond that, it’s a grate of asiago and whatever salad greens look good.

For Julia Child, it was much the same according to K. Dun Gifford, founder of Oldways. “I had many, many lunches with Julia over the years. She always made omelettes and we’d have a glass of wine—sometimes two,” said Gifford with an arch of his brow. “It was always the same. She’d go to the refrigerator and say, ‘Dun, dear, what shall it be? Shrimp? Scallions?’ I’d always answer, ‘Oh, whatever’s in there that needs using, Julia.’”

Half the secret to cooking well is going with the flow—using what’s on hand—eating local, seasonal fare. Indeed, now that I’ve paired my food to the seasons, the sun and earth’s majestic pas de deux speaks to me belly and soul. Before I might have marked spring by nestlings chirping away for their mammas and papas. Now it’s about my own stomach as well—about ruffled scarlet leaf lettuces and fiddle head ferns and buds on the kiwi vines about to burst.

We’re all products of our culture, of course, and even though I’m not an Oregonian blueblood, the ethics pioneers left must have made their way into my psyche. Those sturdy folks were more about family and less about profits than most nineteenth century Americans. A little trading on the side was cool. Mostly, though, they just wanted to build strong communities and grow their own.

Portland’s new small, local chain of grocery stores, New Seasons, embraces that ethos as well and was singled out by the New York Times as being on the nation’s local-seasonal cutting edge. “Our home grown program is really about creating a regional food economy,” said Lisa Sedlar, president of New Seasons where ‘home grown’ stickers alert consumers to things that come from around here. “The joy for us is having relationships with 125 farmers who we pay fair prices. If it doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work for us.”

Amen, says Carlos Petrini an Italian political activist who founded Slow Food International. Petrini believes that changing our food system is the most vital and revolutionary act we can make in today’s world.

Catherine Pantsios gives that bold thought a nod. “I think people feel powerless in the face of the whole global situation and wonder how they can affect things. Where your food comes from,” she mused. “It’s an area where your decisions can help preserve farm land and strengthen the local economy. It just makes it nicer.”

Dun Gifford couldn’t agree more. “In 1993 when we introduced the concept of sustainability, the whole business of techno-foods was going to take over the world. At Oldways we’re all about everything that’s natural and traditional—fresh as opposed to frozen—a wide variety of lettuces as opposed to iceberg.”

Certainly variety is the key as far as Josh Kirschenbaum, product developer at Territorial Seed, is concerned. The company is a strong proponent of plant varieties that have gotten lost in the shuffle. “Big corporations make more money from larger varieties that they can sell in volume,” said Josh. “It’s lead to standardized homogenization that people want to move away from.”

Portland, Oregon gardener, farmer’s market patron, and New Seasons shopper, Laura Berg is one of those. “I grew a variety that I’d not heard of last year—Long Island Cheese. A friend roasted one rubbed with olive oil just recently. The skin was so tender we could eat it.”

“I buy locally because I want Portland to be a nice place to live,” Berg added. “And as far as my garden goes, going outside and picking something for dinner is glorious even if I’m doing in with a flashlight and in my raincoat.”

As for me, I’ve got a pot of lima beans simmering with rosemary on the stove and some quinoa all steamed up. Now I’ll make my rounds outside where red chard and white radishes wait. I’ll do the chard stems in a dab of oil with minced garlic first and then ladle in some bean juice.

The result will be a gorgeous, jammy bit of crunch alongside the warm salad of wilted chard leaves. Tender but still utterly, deeply green, the chard leaves and stems will grace the sturdy peasant fare decorated with a scattering of artisan cheese and hazelnuts. I’ll pour a glass of wine in Julia Child’s memory, too. After all, she made life such fun.

One secret of this take on tabbouleh is making it the way they do in the Levant–where as my friend Rula Awaad-Rafferty observes, “it’s about the green, not the grain.”

The other secret is to go with what’s seasonal. No fresh tomatoes in spring, so a grand riot of greens held the day. Just ask Angela and Lenore who live next door. This salad is a hit for mommas and young’uns alike.

On Herbal Trips to the Spring Garden—

Even in the spring trips to the garden net different offerings from day to day. On this venture, who called out along with the parsley, mint, and thyme but some young onions, a couple small spinaches that wintered over, a few tarragon fronds, and a totally luscious hyacinth that went into a vase to keep the cook happy.

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.)

Who says tabbouleh must always be made with Bulgar wheat and the requisite parsley and mint. Surely not a creative cook who understands grain salads. Ditto for Spring Salad on a Theme of Radishes and  Jicama from Cooking Beyond Measure. No need to start with spaghetti squash if there’s a pot of quinoa all cooked up and just waiting to be chosen in the fridge.

That’s what I did at two cooking demonstrations hosted by the Multnomah County Library recently. Paired quinoa with all manner of fresh spring vegetables plus a few surprises. The dish earned rave reviews at each event, and everyday cooks in attendance said they were inspired to try Spring Salad at home. I hope you are as well. It’s easy. It’s delicious. It’s very polite to our bodies and the planet.

Here’s one I just got from Bob, friend in Northern Arizona, who has grown a four-season organic garden for years with his wife, Beth:

“I put some throw-away skylights over the spinach in the garden. So we have had fresh spinach to go with our sprouts all winter.” Bob’s a carpenter and roofer–not to mention a climber and caver. He and Beth have salvaged and recycled since the Sixties. As a result, they’ve had enough funds while raising two boys and building a home to hike, ski, and raft the best of the West. That’s the Bohemian live for you.

He even included a photo. Pretty hip cold frame, Bob. Thanks.

Thanksgiving Breakfast complete with Cottage Cream and KBJ’s Cranberries is such gorgeous food–as delicious as it is healthy and affordable.

Indeed, that’s what measure free cooking is all about. But a cookbook without measurements and prescriptive rote directions is so unprecedented that people tend can get wrapped up in the novelty, forgetting the point.

That Thanksgiving Breakfast is delicious, is clear from the photo. So let’s talk health and wealth. The yam that I shined with oil, baked and sliced into rounds didn’t lose any nutrients by being boiled and packed into cans. It also costs pennies–since there’s no extra 10 to 50 percent added to cover processing and packaging.

Ditto for KBJ’s Cranberries, an uncooked compote of fresh crans, sweet oranges, and pomegranate seeds. Not only do we get all the nutrition that fresh seasonal produce offers, the lovely flavors tantalize so much that we didn’t even consider inviting sugar to the party. Oranges are affordable right now, and we’ve already saved by not buying canned yams or cranberry sauce, so we can splurge a little on the small amount of cranberries needed and a pomegranate that will have all who enjoy it feeling very festive indeed.

Cottage Cream, as well, which is just a carton of cottage whizzed up in the blender, is high-protein, yummy, and easy on the food bill. No need to pay a premium for those spendy little cottage cheese and fruit thingies that have appeared in the stores the last few years. It’s easy, gratifying, and fast to make your own.

So, rock and roll during the holidays. There’s no need to break the bank–or eat food that’s not good for us. Just cling to the perimeter of the store, spend extra time fingering the seasonal produce, and then get ready to be enticed in the privacy of your own kitchen.

The beauty and feel of fresh food: the leathery pomegranates, the solid tubers. The sounds and smells of things when they’re freshly chopped–cranberries that pop, zesty fragrant oranges. The empowerment that comes leaving off following rote instructions and taking command. The secret joy & knowledge that you are practicing thrift even as you are offering high quality food to those gathered together.

As usual, it’s what you put on your foundation that makes or breaks a meal. Buried under all the Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts are nothing more than beets, garbs, and beet greens plus Swiss chard. Here’s how it all worked.

My first catering job appeared last week, so I turned to the Red and Yellow Beets with Blue Cheese in Cooking Beyond Measure (page 116). An inspired recipe idea but not one that worked for me at the moment. No yellow beets. No time for roasting. Still, the idea compelled, so I got on a roll went with the flow. Beet and Blues appeared nestled down in a big casserole for toting to the do-wah.