“It’s empty!” they remark. “And you’re a cook?” they say. “What’s up?”

What’s up is that I like food that’s freshly made from scratch and also that I work with leftovers right away, usually in the next meal. Also that I see the big boxes in our kitchens for what they are. Seductive. Power-grabbing. And not always as necessary as they’ve convinced us they are.

Oftentimes thinking back pre-something or other can help us get a purchase on our current experience. In this case, think pre-refrigeration. Back to the days of the ice box. To when the carts came by the houses with blocks of ice in sawdust for the lovely old ice boxes.

Point being, there wasn’t much room in these babies. So the women thought about what they used the precious space for.

Now transport yourself to the 1980s on the Hopi Mesas where I was living next door to Joyce Tawayesva. Way up top on the rocky bluffs where they’d just got electricity the year before. Ma, as everyone called Joyce, had a fridge, but she still operated the old way. We ate leftovers the next day before they spoiled. We kept the food moving. No plastic containers of it piling up in the corners of a fridge to get old and unpalatable. No store bought stuff since the stores were far away.

It’s true that the stew Ma and I often ate for breakfast was pretty humble fare–so humble that when they had a chance, the kids and grandpa went for milky cold cereal. But Ma and I made it fun. We roasted some fresh chile to go with, and there was always freshly baked yeast rolls to dip in the broth. Plus that, the flavor of the stew would improve overnight. At least I think it did. It was either that or simply a function of eating out of the limelight of dinner. Just her and me there in the slow morning, not saying too much except for a gentle chuckle now and then. Probably it was both. But no need to put too fine a point on it.

That’s because the real issue is how we think about food and work with it. In my hippie kitchen these days, there’s no old fashioned ice box–even though I could dig one. And there’s no Hopi stew. But I do celebrate food. I don’t waste it. I like it fresh and gorgeous. So when there are leftovers–and here’s the key–they become part of the next inspiration.

Case in point: polenta. I made a pot up for some waffles yesterday.

Oftentimes I just stick the pot of porridge in the fridge for more waffles the next day. This time, though, I poured it into a pan to harden. Then I flashed cooked a bunch of french cut green beans and tossed them with some cubed polenta and pecorino for a brunch salad of sorts.

And the beat goes on. Leftover veggies? Into a frittata they go–or a soup or tabbouleh-style cozied up to some steamed grain for a salad. Or if you’re into pasta, rocking & rolling that way.

So you get the idea and it’s not particularly a new one–that of using leftovers. The take home point of this post, though, is the immediacy of it. While they’re only a meal from coming into your reality, leftover food still has appeal. That’s because it’s still fresh. So all it takes is for the cook to creative and give it a little spin–toss in some raisins, play around with the fresh lemon juice. grab the nutbutter. Whatever.

I think if you go slowly and explore this way of thinking about food, you’ll find that you don’t think in terms of “oh I’m having the same thing again.” And it’s not because the “thing,” the food from the previous meal, is disguised in any way. Rather it’s because it has a fresh spin. Some minced parsley. Some cream. Hues in a thousand shades that as artists know are what give a piece the nuanced sophistication people love.

So go ahead. Be a sophisticated lady–or gent. Dazzle yourself–and pocket money you’ll save on your food bill. You can use that to buy an ice box once you decide–as I ponder from time to time–to toss that hulking refrigerator out the door.

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.

Cooking Beyond Measure, p. 72.
On Roasting Vegetables—

Vegetables roast marvelously well from low to high temperatures. On highs around 450 F, colors are preserved but you have to watch things like a hawk. Medium ovens of 350 work well too, and depending on what you’re roasting, munchies will be yours in a half hour. Then again if you’re going out for a walk you can turn the oven to 250. When you return, you’ll have the sweetest caramelized morsels a soul could ever ask for.

My preferred roasting vehicle is—or was—Jessie Branom’s extra large cast iron skillet. The iron and the sides of the pan cradle the vegetables in a cocoon of heat that caramelizes, and the veggies y turn out sweet and golden. Baking trays work too, but as you’ll discover if you use both vehicles like I usually do, the results cast iron produces are decidedly superior. Yet at this writing, a new over-sized cast iron skillet is on my shopping list. Here’s why.

Jessie Branom and my mother were close friends in Phoenix during the early 1960s where they raised their families. Jessie had two children; Mom had four. So the women reasoned that my mother should have the big frying pan Jessie owned, and Jessie should have my mother’s medium sized skillet. The swap was made, and much later after Mom passed away Jesse’s skillet came to me. I used it for years but as a historian who thinks in terms of centuries, I’m aware of how numbered our days are—and how things can get lost in the shuffle at the end of life.

So it was that Thanksgiving of 2007 when Jessie’s first granddaughter married, I posted the skillet swathed in wedding wrap. As I wrote to the young bride, Jenny Branom Patberg, “Great scratch cooks have used this skillet for a half century. May its journey go on.”

Postscript: I have by this time, 3 years after the above was written, purchased a new skillet which has definitely earned its keep and love as a new member of the kitchen family.

So Mark Bittman’s recent NYT piece on Mexican markets was a nice reminder of my own cruise-arama. Here he’s talking about how Mexican women get fresh veggies on the table pronto–but he apparently hasn’t got the flash cooking thing wired yet.

“Equally interesting to me was the huge variety of pre-chopped, mixed vegetables, carrots mixed with squash and cabbage, or nopales (cactus leaves) with peas, red peppers, mushrooms, and onions, or simply corn and squash. Bags and bags of these, and trays and trays of them, to be bought by the kilo, taken home, and quickly cooked for tortillas or stews or simply, for want of a better term, stir-fries.”

It’s true that when I first started working with the concept I too called this method of cooking stir-fries–hippie stir fries to be exact. That’s because it uses the Asian stir fry idea but without the oil or Asian veggies or flavors. Still stir fries didn’t quite capture it and my friend Laura couldn’t get behind the phrase. All a good thing, since eventually the term flash cooking came along. Here’s what I write in Hippie Kitchen:

On Flash Cooking—

My Dad called me “High Heat Johnson.” He had me pegged and knew I took after my mother. Mom’s friends said she couldn’t even spell the word patience.

So I come to flash cooking honestly. When I cruise into the kitchen I want stuff done now. I want to pull leftover grains and legumes from the icebox and spin them together with a bunch of vegetables pronto. So I turn the heat up full blast and go for it. I used to think this tendency an indolent cop out, but after traveling in other countries, I discovered that I’m not the only one flash cooking and that there’s not a thing in the universe wrong with this approach to food.

To flash cook vegetables, start with a puddle of water, spices if you’re in the mood, and high heat. The idea is to use just enough water to cook your vegetables, adding small pours as you go—making sure to get things that take the longest to cook in the pot first.

My favorite vehicle by far for flash cooking is a cast iron wok because it holds the heat so beautifully and turns the vegetables crisp tender in minutes. But as I’ve discovered cooking in other people’s kitchens, regular woks, heavy bottomed skillets, and generally any pot or pan rattling around in the cupboard will be your friend.

It is true that flash cooking is an Asian stir fry in spirit since there’s lots of vegetables and full blast heat. But that’s where the similarities end. That’s because flash cooking isn’t bound by a particular orchestration of bok choy, soy sauce, and their buddies. Instead flash cooked dishes are free to move about in the world of fusion cuisine.

Flash cooked dishes can also skip the heat entirely and use raw vegetables. So in truth, the idea behind flash cooking is more about the flash and less about the heat. It’s also a way cooks in hippie kitchens get to muster all the soul at their command and sketch out flavors that appeal in a thousand different hues.

So, get all those blues. Must be a thousand hues.
And be just differently used. You just know.
You sit there mesmerized.
By the depth of those eyes that you can’t categorize.
She got soul. She got soul. She got soul!

~Bluebird, Buffalo Springfield, 1966

You got soul?

Mesmerized?

Far out…

Historically, of course, my affair with blended things began with smoothies in the Sixties–the old faithful banana-yogurt-honey-wheat germ routine. Given such a sagacious history, it hasn’t been too much a leap to start riffing around on Cucumber Melon Soup.

I’ve got a recipe for Mango Mint Ice coming out in Hippie Kitchenand at the moment I’m playing with a Strawberry Mint Ice that most likely will make the pages of the third in the measurefree trilogy, Grow Your Own: From the Garden to the Table But Grow Your Own won’t be out until next year, and it’s strawberry season right now. So here’s the skinny.

That’s it except for the Spicy Watermelon Ices I’ll be sampling out for Fourth of July down at Whole Foods in The Pearl. I could spell out my approach to this number as well, but I’m thinking that if it gets hot and you’re in the mood, you’ll come up with something pretty cool on your ownsome. Yes?

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…”

Here in Portland, Oregon, it’s as if Mother Nature threw a switch and autumn commenced. I’m sure golden days are yet to come, but at the moment it’s brisk and cloudy. Gone are the fresh tomatoes and the lean, clean flavors that taste so great when it’s hot. Here are chiles and spices and everything that make fall and the holidays so enticing, so mysterious, so fragrant and alluring.

Pictured are the outrageously hot Thai chiles, fresh from the Asian grocery down the street. One of these babies minced together with garlic puts serious wow-appeal in everything from soup to warm salads.

Then, of course, there’s the whole nutmeg. It goes on my cereal daily, fresh off the petite rasp grater a friend gave me. Once you get a taste–and a yen for the arresting smell–of fresh spices, you’ll be hard put to settle for the preground stuff.

The green pods are cardamom, that potent spice favored by Scandinavians for cookies, breads, and fruit soups. I’ve found that it also is lovely for dipped pears and oranges–as well as almonds. In fact, I included a recipe note for cardamom almonds in Beyond Measure–basically tossing toasted almonds in melted butter and dusting them with peppery cardamom.

Cardamom pods are great to work with while you’re watching one of the presidential debates or the latest news on our fearsome economy. Before I settle in in front of the tube, I crack the outer husks on the cutting board with a rolling pin. Then it’s just a matter of picking the dark brown spice out.

Once your tv-watching for the evening has come to a conclusion, a quick whirl in the coffee bean grinder nets you fresh, fragrant cardamom that will stay lovely throughout the holidays. Also cardamom’s bold smell is a great antidote for whatever you saw on the tube that didn’t set quite right. Free aroma-therapy and all that jazz.

There’s a reason we all love carrots. They’re sweet and flavorful. Especially fresh carrots.

Then if you’re lucky and have a planter full of pink zinnias–like I do compliments of my neighbor Sarah–all’s left to do is take your salad out by the flowers and enjoy.