Plus that squash is great food if you want to trim down some. I know when I stay true to winter squash et al–meaning there’s no silver bullet here and the idea is to eat a variety of  fresh seasonal vegetables–the scales tip in a favorable direction.

Long time friend in Northern Arizona says it’s true for him too. Here’s a shot of the harvest Bob sent along with a note:

Jean,

We have been eating a lot of this stuff this winter and have found that a piece of any kind of squash with a couple of poached eggs on it is an awesome breakfast. With something like half an acorn it is easy to turn it into a real show piece.

Now that Beth is retired I have been eating much more of her cooking and have lost twenty-five pounds. I went over to Mac’s and retrieved all his old Levis that now fit me.

Bob

[Note: Mac is my former husband, a tall bean pole of a Grand Canyon hiker guy while he walked the planet.]

****************

Squash goes great in a lunch box too. Here is fare I toted out one fall when there were still fresh tomatoes around. Nice meal it was:

sweet dumpling squash wedges
steamed beets
tomatoes
blue cheese
soynuts
on a bed of brown rice and garden greens
dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

A fraction of the cost of paying the man for unhealthy questionably sourced food as well.

Spaghetti squash is one of my favorites. Here’s a half ready for the oven on my griddle.

And here’s a warm salad I conjured up with it during pomegranate season over the holidays.

The flash cooked kale dressed with the usual suspects: oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper is a great foil to the sweet squash.

The walnuts and ruby jewel goodies help pull the whole thing off.

Speaking of squash, here’s what my oven looked like this morning.

Baking up some squash ahead for dinner.
Roasting some garlic to spread on polenta.
And warming some spice bread I made with squash for breakfast.

Not only did I get some nice food ready for later, the kitchen got warm enough to make folks want to linger a bit over coffee.

Not a bad deal all in all.

Oh. Did I say I’m down too?

Closing in on ten pounds and feeling skppety-do-dah.

A few big spoons of small white Navy beans that were waiting in the fridge all cooked up, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and we were there. Grab the Parmigiano Reggiano–that we can afford since we grown our own and eat beans–some homemade Tangled Up Focaccia and we were there. On the deck with a glass of wine eating first class peasant food and loving it. Indeed, we don’t have to be gourmet to eat well, no?

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 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.

On the stove at the moment is a clam chowder. Potatoes and frozen green beans from last summer’s harvest, fresh pulled leeks and carrots, and a can of clams. I even have a few leggy fronds of parsley from the kitchen window pot to add right before serving so it keeps it’s “somewhere-over-the-rainbow color” as I put it in one book or another.

All in all, not bad for the eve of winter solstice when it’s all we can to do keep the home fires burning.

Warm salads are another favorite of mine. Here I rely on garden spaghetti squash that’s keeps all winter in the basement or even in right in the kitchen–and is easy to bake. Then some freshly picked kale, flash cooked with garlic and red chile flakes. Dress with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and coarse salt. Garnish with ruby pomegranates jewels and a polite chop of walnuts.

Pretty tasty no matter what carb and protein you pair it with. And it even works for the vegans in the crowd. Merry Howdy!

More, these books are kitchen companions that forge new ground in poetic prose designed to lure us back into our kitchens. Here’s a snippet from the introduction to Hippie Kitchen’s Winter Chow chapter. I hope it resonates as much with you as it did with the crowd gathered at the Blackbird Wine Shop reading I did last night.

Winter Chow

If there was ever a culture of people who need to hook up with winter, it’s mainstream Americans. Us non-siesta-takers. Us independent, highly mobile, multi-taskers who have bought the more-is-better, time-is-money line.

I know the rush-rush vibe has dogged me more than I ever dreamed it would. Like one time in 1982 when I lived up on Second Mesa in Hopiland. You could see forever from the pueblo that day. Out across Navajo where dusty roses and muted purples were a mere
suggestion of weavers in pleated velveteen shirts decorated with silver liberty head dimes and buffalo nickels. West and south where the winds came from the San Francisco Peaks, home of the masked gods, the katsinas. I, however, saw little of that on this particular day. I was in a hurry doing something, going somewhere.

That’s when one of the neighbors piped up and said, “Oh you’re such an efficient white lady.” He smiled and everyone tee-heed compassionately most likely remembering the times they had been ribbed in their turn. Indeed, joking and teasing is one way tribal people hold a mirror up, helping each other to at least try and keep the bubble in the middle. What a relief to live in that society. To not have to pretend you have it more together than you really do. It was like The Band’s “take a load off Fanny” line from Big Pink.

So that’s what the gentle but firm nudge did for me that day. Got my attention. Reminded me that kicking back now and then is cool. I can’t say I’ve been all that successful, but the winter kitchen does help bring one back. It’s warm in a winter kitchen. You can turn on the oven and bake focaccia. You can smell the fresh yeast bread. You can make soup. You can feel the hardy winter roots in your hands. Hear the rush of steaming water when the broccoli hits the heat. Taste how fun chile and sugar are together in buttery cookies. You can create a very Zennish moment in your winter kitchen—in your hippie kitchen in winter.

If you got this far, you might be about ready for a listen to this cool cat.
Come on into your kitchen!
We don’t have to go to Tuscany to have a sexy food life!
It’s right here. Right now. All we have to do is turn on the lights….

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

A quick swab of the cutting board. And the deal’s done–plenty of time still to listen to Pure Prairie League’s Amie, isn’t that right Sandy?

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?