Here’s how ultrafast cooking works in my hippie kitchen. In the morning when I’m having breakfast, I steam up a pot of quinoa. This grain cooks in 10 minutes and has the highest protein of them all. I leave it sitting out at room temperature and then when dinner comes along all’s that needs doing is chopping the last of the garden tomatoes, walking outside and plucking the end of the basil, and dressing with a polite pour of olive oil, swig of red wine vinegar, coarse salt, and fresh crack of peppper from the grinder.

All that and I get some leftover quinoa to put in a soup the next day or even mix with an egg and minced celery and onion to fry up into crisp patties. Yep. Having a pot of leftover whole grain around–whether it be millet, amaranth, wheat berries, brown rice, or quinoa–can make your kitchen life easy, frugal, healthy, and wise.

So rock & roll. It’s easy to make simple everyday food in your own kitchen. Fun too since you get to be the boss.

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?

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…

But generating measure free recipe ideas to inspire creative cooking is only part of what my work is about. That’s because, as our mothers and fathers always told us, we’re not done until we’ve cleaned up.

Indeed, it seems that the prospect of cleanup is often what stops us from cooking. We don’t like the mess, or the idea of storing things away in all their little cartons. Here’s what I have to say about that. It’s straight from page 58 in Hippie Kitchen (where if you do have a copy, you might find the sections just below on getting sauced and herbed rather fun).

So make it easy on yourself. After all, the cook counts too.

If you want to see me on camera whipping these lovelies up, just scroll on down.

The recipe for Rolled Ups is on page 38 of Cooking Beyond Measure, and you can find Thai Slaw on page 139.

As my mother used to say, “These are so good you could peddle it!”

Really, truly–I could live on these babies…

Here’s hopin’ you give them a whirl. Even picky husbands and pb&j kids like Thai Slaw Rolls.

You heard it here first. Straight from Hippie Kitchen, p. 44.

On the Cook Counts Too—

Fussing with cooking vegetables by the singleton is something I do less often than not. That’s because when you’re going for a quick meal, it’s easier to get a bunch of veggies onto the heat to flash cook together, warm salad or soup style. Between that and leftover grain and protein waiting in the fridge, you’re there.

The singleton scene could be that’s why so many of us spend forever in the kitchen—sometimes resenting the time and trouble. We think we have to make picture perfect meals every day with these separate little piles of whatever.

Contrast that with the spirit of one-bowl meals popular around the world. Ethnic cooks from Asia to Latin America to Africa know how to combine an enticing array of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes into easy meals. They know that the cook’s happier and the food’s better when they keep things simple.

It’s the same thing on how much of this and that to put into what you’re making. The cook needs to count. The cook does count. It’s the cook’s call.

That’s why one day when journalist, Laura Marble who took to measurefree cooking instantly, asked how many tomatoes I knew to put in some dish or other, I came back with a reply that made us chuckle. “I don’t know?” I said gearing up for a flip but seriously radical remark. “Like when I’m tired of chopping.”

That’s why I’ve been smiling since watching Meryl Streep bring Julia Child alive once again on the big screen. Ah, yes. Wasn’t our Julia a grand dame.

And the Sole Meuniere scene. No way but that writer-director, Nora Ephron, would include Julia Child’s epiphany. That moment, when seated across from her debonair husband in Rouen, France, Julia Child tasted her first morsels of Sole Meuniere:  dover sole boned tableside and decked out in a buttery wine sauce.

It wasn’t more than two days after I saw the movie that I queued up at the fish counter. No dover in sight so I bought some cheap little Rex sole fillets. A quick dredge in flour (whole wheat of course, since the white stuff is sooo paste-y) and a quick pan fry. Then the sauce, which was the real reason for all this business. And I made so much of it that there was plenty leftover the next day to spoon on some zucchini.

Tak, Julia. Tak. Beurre Blanc made my eyes roll, too, right here at my own table.

You were right. We Americans do need to splash the wine about more in our kitchens–and get the butter out, too.

Olive oil’s good, definitely. But butter and wine? Mais oui!

At least that was the take home message I got from this latest film dedicated to your refined, magnanimous, brilliance.

Tak, Julia. Tak.

This post is for one of the women at the last cooking class I did. I was talking about how much it streamlines cooking when you keep things you use a lot out handy. She wanted to know what was out on my counter.

Well, here it is–at least this is how it looked at one point not long ago by the looks of the unheaded cabbage from the garden that I was getting ready to flash cook.

Mainly there’s a bunch of vinegars and even a wedge of lime left from the last go round. Beyond that in the fun yellow dish is salt, red chile pepper in the green depression glass, a black pepper mill, cinnamon and a pretty spoon in the orange pot, soda in the tiny powder blue dish, and whole nutmeg in the white dish with the piano score.  Oftentimes there are bouquets of fresh herbs too–big ones of parsley and cilantro when I get those herbs store bought and a small one of mixed herbs from my garden, the various sprigs of summer savory, mint, thyme, rosemary, and sage each clamoring to be chosen. There’s usually a bottle of good oil sitting there as well to complete what are essentially the components for making vegetables taste good–whether you’re dressing a cold salad or dolling up a soup or warm salad.

This is just my scene at the moment, though. You can count on it to change as I get on a roll with this and that. Sometimes the dry mustard will come out of the cupboard and take a handy place. Other times there might be a bottle of fish sauce lurking about–since after being in Thailand I discovered how fabulous a conservative squirt of this anchovy elixir makes so many dishes, Thai or not, taste. Then again, sometimes the spices aren’t around at all when I switch into a mode of working mainly with the classic quartet our grandmothers understood so very very well: oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Having things out handy. It doesn’t take much. You get to be an artist if you want and stash your bits and bobs in pretty vessels. Mostly, though, when it comes time to cook, things are at the ready and you’ll find yourself less inclined to grab bottles of prefab dressings and sauces. As my accordian-playing grandmother from Norway used to say, “Here’s hoping…”