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 this case, there were leftover French lentils and quinoa in the fridge–so into the bowl they went with some jarred roasted red peppers, a pear from the season’s end, and a handful of raisins.

Next a quick troll through the garden for a clutch of kale and cabbage leaves and a stalk of immature green garlic that I treated like a scallion. Flip the high heat on under a puddle of water in the cast iron wok. Choppity chop and into the wok. In half a minute the works has wilted nicely, so off goes the heat and into the bowl go the veggies.

Then some olive oil in the work and a bunch of local hazelnuts. Stir-stir while they toast a little, and over the salad they go, oil in tow.

Red wine vinegar, coarse salt, a crack of fresh pepper, and a scatter of red chile flakes.

This baby was done, and boy was it a lip smacker. “Beans and rice” never tasted so fine–just like my new hero Dave Ramsey knows.

Sing it Dave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BEANS AND RICE (RICE AND BEANS)
Copyright Scott Dawson Songs 2008

Fannie Mae, GMAC and MasterCard
Had control of me
I was sinking, sinking in a river of debt
When a friend
Shared with me
A radio personality
With a message
That I wouldn’t soon forget

Act your wage, budget the till
Name every dollar bill
Sell the Rolex, the speedboat and SUV’s
The only time you shall haunt
Your neighborhood restaurant
Will be working
As a server for Applebee’s

So I’m squeezing every dime
No fish, no beef, no pork
Now when dinnertime rolls around
I don’t even need a fork

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Keeps me fed for a modest price
I’m adjusting
To living on beans and rice I got pintos, kidneys, limas too
With a can of spam I got
Poor man’s stew
Thanks Dave Ramsey
For teaching me beans and rice

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Cayenne pepper and a onion slice
Mighty tasty
I’m cooking up beans and rice

I got long grain, short grain
Wild and brown
This recipe is spreading all over town
I’m making progress
By living on beans and rice Someday soon
You’ll hear me
On the air screaming “I’m debt free”
But until then
I’m living on beans and rice

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.

Not much to say here other than enjoy this vid on mixing up a bean loaf. There’s even an afterthought on one of my favorites, spaghetti squash.

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.

On Former Husbands—

McKee, my ex, loves his pizza. He and I consumed our share through the years, snugged into a booth over a pitcher of beer at Alpine Pizza, a joint that’s become institution on Leroux Street in Flagstaff. Yet, MacSpee—as I have taken to calling him most recently—has been so co-opted by the white dough clan that it would take a leap across the Grand Canyon for him to first run some whole wheat rapids never mind scaling the heights of pink hummus and millet. Too bad the turkey always had such little faith in my hippie cooking. Then again, I guess I wasn’t the best either. Here’s how I got a clue on that score.

It was a few years ago when I was in Northern Arizona and stopped out to see him. Some of the old gang happened by, and we were shooting the breeze when McKee tosses out this remark about how in 1969 a year after we were married, I announced we were becoming vegetarians.

“What?” I thought, stunned at his implication that I issued some sort of edict. “He wasn’t into that? He never said a word.”

I guess at some level I thought that since he mainly controlled our lives outside the kitchen—and yes dear, in your unassuming way, your hiking boots were planted firmly in the patriarchy—our food decisions were pretty much mine. Also I think I might have concluded that turning vegetarian was such a cool move, that he was as into it as I was.
Besides, as I noted, this then-husband of mine didn’t give me an inkling that he wasn’t a happy hippie veggie. Sigh. Sometimes I don’t know why I’ve stayed friends with him all these years. Maybe it’s because just when I think I’ve had it, he sends me a letter like the one I got this past May.

It starts with him saying how he was just sitting around spacing out, reading a little nineteenth century history, and listening to
Bob Dylan. Turns out that “Tangled Up in Blue” was on—the piece Dylan wrote in 1974 that came out on Blood on the Tracks.

“A line from Dylan’s song reminds me of you,” McKee penned in his old familiar backhand. “‘We always did feel the same. We just saw it from a different point of view. ’”

On Pink Hummus—

Hummus made of smashed garbanzo beans and tahini (sesame seed butter) is traditional from the Middle East. But what happened in my hippie kitchen is that I only had pinto beans cooked up and also wanted a lean version of hummus.

What to do but toss the pintos the blender with enough water to rock & roll. Salt, vinegar, and I was there. Pink hummus for crackers, to thicken soups and sauces, as a dip for carrots and apples—and to add to brownie batter.

On Yeast Dough—

Take this section seriously and you could save some real dough. That’s because yeast dough, whether you turn it into loaves, flat focaccia, or pizza pie, is just an affordable mix of flour, water, salt, and yeast—way cheaper than bakery bread. Besides, it’s serious play-play.

Play-play on how long you knead it, if in fact you do at all. Play-play on whether you add sugar to the yeast or pink hummus or little crunchy bits of millet or use oil in the dough and for painting the tops. Play-play on how long to let it rise, including overnight if you decide to stir some up on a winter evening before going to bed. Even playing around on whether or not to oil the bowl in which you let the dough rise.

The only critical thing with yeast dough is that the water needs to be baby bottle warm so it can dissolve the yeast but not kill it like hot water will. So test your water with a drop on the inside of your wrist. That way you can make sure your yeasty microorganisms will be able to feed on the natural sugars in the flour and release lots of carbon dioxide to make the dough rise.

What Really Happened—

Someone polished off the last of the pink hummus so I whizzed up some garbanzo beans thawed from a tub I’d frozen the week before (page 74). No tahini around either, so I called it good and named the beanpaste blonde hummus.

Also, I painted the pizza with oil but left the focaccia plain. The former was soft; the latter was crusty.

On the millet it was a different story, since there was a bag from the bulk bins up in the cupboard. But when I poured a handful into the bowl, I realized I’d nabbed the quinoa, not the millet.

The quinoa wasn’t quite as crunchy as the millet after the bread was baked, but its seedy nature (technically quinoa is seed not a grain) was uptown and had a pleasing visual
presence. Cool when serendipitous mistakes take you in directions you might otherwise not have gone.

Also cool when you make focaccia in the spring, split a wedge for the toaster, layer on ultra thin slices of caramelized goat cheese from Norway (gjetost) and a few local berries, grate on fresh nutmeg, and pour a cup of very dark espresso from just-ground beans.

Spice plus sweet. An equation the Thais understand, and one the rest of us are cluing into as well. Neighbor Patrick Earnest is in the savvy camp. “Who’d a thunk? Red pepper flakes on cookies???” He dashed off in an email “Wow…Delish!”

On Whole Wheat Flour in Goodies—

Whole wheat flour, flax meal, and wheat germ in cookies? Hey, there’s nothing like a little nutrition with your sweets. It will help you—as the Rolling Stones belted out in Ruby Tuesday—“catch your dreams before they slip away.”

Wheat, of course, is only one of the grains we can draw on. If you can’t deal with gluten try whizzing up any number of grains like barley, rye, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, or even the much maligned brown rice in your grinder—whether it be a first rate grain grinder or simply the little one you grind your coffee beans in. All’s fair game for creative cooks.

Plus you’ll discover how amazingly flavorful freshly ground grains are. Simply no contest between those and the stuff that sits around in bags and bins for months. Really and truly.

Afterthought on Sour Power—

I served these cookies with Bosc pears and lime wedges which got me to thinking that the next time I’ll try some fresh lime juice in the dough—like instead of the buttermilk, use half lime juice and half sweet milk. Or even experiment with a vegan approach, letting oil stand in for butter, and using half lime juice and half water—or all lime juice.

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.)

For those who really think crepes are beyond them, read on or better yet cruise over to the Hillsdale Farmers Market this Sunday at noon. I’ll be in action, and you can have a taste. If you can’t make the market and want a rolled ups class, I’m doing one in June at Whole Foods Market in The Pearl as part of their “You Don’t Have to be Gourmet to Eat Well” series. (Date TBA on the Where’s Jean page.)

In the meantime here you go, straight from Beyond Measure:

On Learning Curves

If rolled-ups sound daunting to you, all you have to remember is to make them the next time grandpa’s around. Then just whisper to him that no matter how they turn out, he’s supposed to ooh and ahhh. That’s what they do in Hopiland. Cooks learning to make piki bread, something much more difficult than rolled-ups, always present their first efforts to grandpa. That’s the patriarch’s cue to tell the fledgling cook how delicious her creation is and eat the offering with great delight, even if it’s thick and the ladies are teasing her about how it looks a map.

On the Griddle

There’s nothing like a cast iron griddle. Not only does it carry heat that cooks evenly and browns beautifully, all there is to cleaning is a quick wipe with a cloth. Between my griddle and cast iron wok, each of which have staked out rather permanent claims on the stove top, there is little washing of pots and pans going on in my kitchen.