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.

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 it went for me the other evening: I had wild shrimp, garlic, and organic butter from mama cows who get out to pasture–but I spaced out the wine. Wine in cooking really does make all the difference, given the umami that it brings to food. So I zipped into a shop down the street, Blackbird Wines, for some white.

Owner Andy Diaz suggested a blended bottle from France’s Gascony coast. “They do a lot of fish in Gascony,” Diaz observed. “Their wines are perfect with seafood.” He was right; the wine was a hit. I sizzled up the shrimp in olive oil, added some smashed garlic, a healthy splash of the vin de pays, and a lace of butter over the top for those first all important bites.

Beyond the succulent shrimp, it was biz as usual with seasonal vegs: flash cooked broccoli with spaghetti squash and roasted red peppers–plus slices off the room temperature yams I’d baked the day before.

So it was that in 10 minutes I sat down to a seasonal organic dinner complete with a glass of wine that was refreshing, not to mention priced right. Thanks Blackbird. Glad you’re in the hood. Glad I don’t have to go clear to Tuscany…

But my garden squash patch is almost entirely devoted to spaghetti because it’s such a work horse in flash-cooked warm salads. On the previous post, Getting Our Acts Together, I showed how prettily spaghy dressed up a New Year’s potluck dish (that I took to KCC). And how easily I got fed the following day by simply making some gremolata to go with.

Now here’s day three. Still spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge so I got a full blast burner going under my cast iron wok, poured in a puddle of water, grated a broccoli stem and gave the florets a brief chop. Into the steaming heat the good greens went along with some scooped out spaghetti squash. By the time I found some olives to toss in and a plate, the squash was warm and broc al dente.

Dressing was some olive oil poured over, pinch of coarse salt, grind of black pepper, lemon zest grated right on top, lotsa fresh squeeze lemon juice to follow, and a big fluffy grating of parmesan using my hand dandy microplane.

Yup, I could have stopped to mince some garlic but I didn’t and things were luscious with the olives especially saying, “hello.”

So, that’s getting on a roll with spaghetti squash, day 3. You can put it in a blender with eggs and cornmeal to bake up like pizza crust and top it with the usual too. Who knows, day 4 might just roll on out with that little number–or even some big puffy yellow muffins. How about you? Into to getting around and getting on a roll?

Let’s keep it simple to start. Simple not only for the sake of explanation but also because making food taste good really can be done very simply. The pantry items I used for my New Year’s potluck dish were nothing more than the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper (as in red chile peper because who says the only pepper in town is black). The key was that they were handy and inviting in their fun bottles and pots. Oil and vinegar sitting out within arm’s reach in blue glass. A pot of coarse salt (the yellow dish from Itay) that I can dip into. Ditto with red chile pepper (in the footed dish of green Depression glass). You can see there’s also a black pepper mill and some garlic there along with kitchen tools ready and waiting.

As far as how it all worked, I had half a baked spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge and a packet of green beans thawing in the kitchen sink (both items, I’m pleased to say, where from my summer garden).

Then there was the end of a pot of homemade veg soup that got a whiz in the blender and then enough whole wheat flour to turn it into goop akin to mashed potatoes. This made veggie patties that I fried up on my cast iron griddle–an item that hangs conveniently on the wall above my stove. Yes, it’s true that if I’d had a couple eggs to stir in they would have been lighter. And also that some wheat sprouts or chopped walnuts would have added interest. But there you have it, my pantry was on the bare side, so I had make do.

If you can picture yourself putting this dish together…here you are at the counter with a nice platter for your arrangement. (In this case an oven proof quiche dish for reheating later on.)

You get the green beans out and give them a nice chop (if you didn’t already French cut them when you froze them last fall as I did). Then grab your olive oil and use your fingers. That way you can tell when your beans are nicely coated. Same routine for the spaghetti squash, your fingers being quite useful for pulling the strands apart as well. Once your lovely green and yellow circles are in place, you can nab the vinegar for a healthy sprinkling. Then some coarse salt and red chile flakes–the secret on the latter being not to over do.

All that’s left to finish this dish is a bowl of dip in the middle and the patties arranged around the edge. For me that day, no yogurt or humus in sight, so it was my home canned plum sauce from the summer that served as the dippity-do-dah. A few more red chile flakes over that for pretty-pretty and the deed was done. Ready for people at the buffet to shovel up some green beans and spaghetti squash, nab a patty and spoon on a little plum sauce.

It was quick to make, too. From start to finish I guess about a half hour including doing the veggie patties. Also yes, it depended on me working right along through the year and putting things like plum sauce up during harvest. Or at least buying things at the store with an eye toward mixing and matching. In addition to the sacred quartet, there’s keeping winter squash on hand. Not only spaghetti but other kinds, and when you bake them always do extra for on down the pike as they’ll keep a good week in the fridge. Same with the green beans or some other kind of green vegetable besides those boring old salad greens. Kale. Broc. Those are my choices this time of year if you don’t have a supply of others put up from your summer garden.

The other part of this equation is frugality. You can see I didn’t make many veggie patties. That’s because there wasn’t much soup left. The key, though, is that I did not throw it out. Why? Because I grew most of the vegetables in the pot and couldn’t bear to see them wasted. More, I thought, was the brew was blenderized, it was perfectly good goop to use for most anything. In this case the patties; another day it might have been the liquid in some homemade focaccia.

That’s the method to the madness around this measure free hippie kitchen. Hope it helps the cause in your kitchen too as the New Year kicks in. Here’s to healthy, wealthy, wise, and rocking & rolling….

If you’ve followed me much, you know that I like getting on a roll. Here’s what my lunch the next day looked like.

Spaghetti squash fluffed up on a plate, dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon juice (once you’ve captured it’s zest). Some gremolata spooned over and Parmesan grated around the edge. So delicious and easy. Healthy. Seasonal. The works. And if you don’t speak gremolata, let me introduce you to minced parsley flavored with garlic and lemon zest.

Cut the stems off your bunch of Italian parsley (nice with its flat leaves but use the curly stuff if that’s all you have) just above the tie thing. Then get your sharp chef’s knife and mince away until you have no visible stems or leaves left–until the parsley brew is fine indeed. Then mince equally fine, a clove or two of garlic. (If you have a deep mortar and pestle you can pound the garlic instead of mincing, but whatever–all roads lead to Rome.) Then take a microplane and zest a lemon or two.

Mix the works into a nice blend, and you just made gremolata–something that goes as easily on fish as it does on spaghetti squash.

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!

I think each of these readings is 3 minutes or so. Hope you have time for a listen. Merry Howdy, Jean

if you’re inspired–and I hope you are–you click over to the cookbooks page and take advantage of the December sale–all told with the free domestic shipping it’s a 20 percent savings

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