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

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…

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!

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.

Flash cooking is the heart of my kitchen scene. It nets me plenty of fresh seasonal vegetables in short order–warm salad style. I’ve talked about it many times here on the blog, but people resonate with the idea so, that we did a video. It’s a 6 minute clip from chopping the onion to chowing down. There’s also a section devoted to it in Hippie Kitchen: 43-45. Think stir fry without the oil, Asian vegetables, or Asian flavors.

Linda’s my new pal. She knows about computers and business and such. So what could I do when she arrived once again to help the cause, but offer a munch.

It was mainly leftovers that took me 15 minutes to pull together. Mahi mahi (because when I talked to Gary last week that was what he was making) and crook neck squash from the grill that I’d done the night before, lettuces from the garden, and warmed corn tortillas into which to fold the fish along with some blue cheese.

The usual suspects were there: fish sauce and red chile into the warmed mahi mahi, olive oil worked onto the lettuces with my hands, fresh cracked pepper, pinches of coarse salt.

Linda ate with the same relish I do. She loved my simple, affordable measurefree food. She can come to dinner at mi casa any time.

Speaking of the living being easy, you might notice the braids of garlic in the photo. I spent a joyful evening a couple weeks ago harvesting. It’s a first for me to grow a year’s supply of garlic and the feeling of provisioning the larder is quite nice. My braids ain’t half bad either for a newbie, don’t you think?

When it’s too hot to even think about boiling the pasta water, try a variation on homemade hummus with a little blue cheese crumbled over the top and a drizz of good oil. Here I smashed up some limas and favas I’d cooked earlier. Seasoned nicely with what have you–in my case, fish sauce, red chile flakes, and coriander–this hummus is a perfect counterpart to the gorgeous lettuce that’s available now–with leaves perfect for dipping and wrapping around the beany paste. A little bread on the side. Some berries for dessert. You’ve got dinner.

You’ve also got food worthy of Hippie Kitchen where Stoned Salad Rolls appear on page 72 along with this rap:

Stoned. Stoner. The Stones. There was plenty of it going around in the Sixties—as far as I recall anyhow. Still, give a bunch of hippies four decades to get their act together, and they’re ready to join the renaissance. Yes! We may have gone to extremes and lost our bearings for a bit, but our original ideas were on target.

So bring on the Stoned Salad Rolls. Bring on food free from the taint of factory farming and corporate processing. Fine with me to do the work of cooking the beans and smashing them up in my hippie kitchen. Ditto on washing the lettuce. It’s honest labor. It’s heavy, man. It’s a stoner.

I bought some red peppers the other day. It was against my local, seasonal religion and all, but I guess I was feeling rebellious. For sure, the kale, spaghetti squash, and tofu dish I pulled together took on a wow when I added the red peppers. Still, I thought wistfully back to last year when I waited humbly and patiently for the tomato and pepper season. It’s true, I did appreciate the peppers and their saucy cousins way more when I let the anticipation build and counted the days.

So, I’m back on the straight and narrow. I don’t know why I was tempted by the peppers when spring greens are so very, very sublime. Absent is the strong taste that comes from mature greens. Ditto on the toughness. Spring greens are all about tender sweetness–so much so that they really are a different animal altogether.

All they take besides a minute flashed on high with a dab of water are some sliced scallions or green garlic and good oil along with red chile flakes for attitude. I enjoyed these greens with pan-fried Dover sole and leftover quinoa that I reheated in the hot wok once the greens were done. There were wedges of lemon to squeeze over the fish and greens, plus a little chopped parsley to decorate here and there.

As an afterthought, I also flashed some mushrooms once the quinoa was out of the wok. Again, it was a brief minute on high heat in enough water to help things along. I saved the butter for the end once the shrooms onto the plates. All that and it was still a 10-minute meal, clean-up included.

(The mushrooms were a real treat since I only buy the expensive organic kinds. Non-organic shrooms have some of the highest residues of fungicides and pesticides of any food. In addition to spraying the crop, the compost and sheds in which the mushrooms grow are treated as well.)

You can even douse frozen grapes with buttermilk and give them a whirl in the blender. However you spin frozen grapes, you’ll find that some in your winter freezer makes waiting for spring berries easy. Each oval morsel is like mouthful of world-class sorbet–and it’s a very real deal, with no “natural flavors” added.

With grapes in the freezer I’m never tempted to rush the spring berry season by buying those bizarre large strawberries that have such hard bloodless, hearts–and are grown with chemicals that fowl the earth and sky.

This meal isn’t new with me. Most every inventive cook these days makes a version of this great dish. Every mouthful is so delicious. More it’s a one-skillet flash cooked pull together.Still, as you can see it’s so beautiful that I chose it for the cover shot on Beyond Measure. It tastes every bit as good as it looks.

Snap the tough ends off your asparagus and flash cook the spears on high in a little water. Once they’re done, plate them and do your eggs on medium in a little butter, salt, and fresh cracked pepper. (I used a lid to help the egg cook without having to turn it. That way the yolk remained a little runny even as the white cooked through.)

From there is just some shaved Parmesan and a knife and fork. Truly the bestest, bestest way I’ve ever had asparagus. So divinely superb and sunny and seasonal.