These little stovetop cornbreads are quick, warm, crowd pleasers. On tours I make them round, stuffed with cheese or refried beans drawing on gorditas and empanadas as my guide.

In April 2010, though, Justine, a Facebook pal from Southern California, shipped a box of avocadoes from her tree, and inspired these corn crescents.

Details

~Use the usual ratio of one teaspoon leavening to a cup of cornmeal/flour. On the cornmeal/flour ratio, it’s generally three to four parts meal for each part flour. One to two tablespoons of butter for each cup of masa/flour softens the dough nicely.

~Taking time to knead your dough some makes for cakes that puff some when fried.

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.

A moment of silence. My brows arched.

“Is he a boy?”

That’s where it started and since then it’s been a few of us old biddies hatching plans and match-making in the best of traditions.

Why? Just a goof really. But also more about lightening up and not taking the kitchen so friggin’ (or froggin’) seriously.

That’s why even though Celeste insisted on the back cover of Hippie Kitchen as her exclusive preserve, she did allow HH to appear within its pages. Also, why after a year, she finally said yes to HH’s overtures.

We had their engagement party on Valentines Day and even made a video. Sort of a first try, but it was a good time–and many ideas generated on how to make the upcoming wedding more of a blow out. So stay tuned. Wedding’s scheduled for apple blossom time.

In the mean time, here are some photos from the engagement party in case you didn’t watch the vid.

The happy couple.

Celeste sporting HH’s engagement gift of a diamond heart necklace. You can see that Celeste is not a spring chicken–and even has a bad eye. Also that she makes no bones about her commodious belly. We think that’s partly what attracted HH–Celeste’s quiet dignity in the face of what life has brought.

Lastly, the “cross my heart and hope to love” polenta waffles we made for the engagement party. A play-play adaptation of Bob’s Polenta Waffles and Cashew Cilantro Pesto from Cooking Beyond Measure, pages 42 and 75. There are also vids of me making these posted here on the blog.

And last, you get out the roasted red peppers and olives for Cross My Heart and Hope to Love Polenta Waffles.

Part 1, Cashew-Cilantro Pesto

Part 2, Bob’s Polenta Waffles

Part 3, Building Cross My Heart and Hope to Love Polenta Waffles

This slaw is out of Beyond Measure (page 139). I patterned it after a green papaya salad I learned to make when I was in Bangkok. It’s easy, affordable, healthy, and delicious–so much so that I’m featuring it in cooking classes this spring along with a hot and spicy shrimp soup, Thai-style.

Green papayas, of course, are plentiful in Thailand. But here, you have to go to an Asian market to get this exotic fruit. So what I’ve done is acted like a Thai would and substitute the ubiquitous, cheap cabbage for the papaya.

A couple caveats: when you use dates for the sweet instead of sugar, eaters have to get a nibble of date with each bite to make it work. My rule of thumb: when serving people who like to steer clear of sugar, use the dates–otherwise the sugar melts in with the lime juice more evenly.

Another couple tips from talking with Eldie recently. Do use a box grater to shred things. It makes the fine translucent bits that make this slaw a happening thing. Also, use plenty of lime juice–as in fresh. Like 4-6 for a head of cabbage wouldn’t be too much at all.I did this slaw with young girls 8-12. Without measurements, they started out very timid and slowly with just a tiny bit of this and that.

Then we’d taste and everyone would look at each other and say, “I don’t get anything yet, do you?” Then they’d go back at yet. We’d taste again. Etc. Etc. It didn’t take long, though, before the girls were proudly offering their well dressed, zingy slaw to people in the audience.

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’m doing the photos for Cooking Beyond Measure, of course, and while I was getting my camera gear ready for this shot, my cat Iris, was quick on the draw. I won’t print this one in the cookbook, but you can say you saw it here first.

The dish is an ending for dinner. Just Brie and toasted coconut. Your call on whether you want to tote some ripe fruit out to go with or not. If you do, you’ll definitely have an innocent sweet for dessert.

SAD, the Standard American Diet, relies almost exclusively on low calorie salad veggies like lettuce, tomatoes, and cukes–relegating things like winter squash for pumpkin pies and roots like turnips for jokes.

As this image shows, though, once you’ve oiled up some wedges of stick-to-your-ribs winter squash and a quartered rutabaga, rubbing them with a little paprika and oregano is all it takes to ready them for a roast in the oven.

(I go slow roast at 200 when I’ve got a couple hours before a meal which turns out sweet, caramelized vegs. But if I’m in the kitchen on the make for dinner, 350 or even up over 400 gives me crispy critters in a flash.)

If you get this quick fix together even once, I wager you’ll be roasting vegetables fairly often through the season. After all, what’s not to like. Warm. Sweet. Filling. Healthy. Thrifty.