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

Honest food from my no chem garden. A celebration of harvest. Putting up for a rainy day. Selling out less and less to factory farms and the corporate food industry. Buying into the delicious revolution.

So come on and rock & roll in your best measure free hippie cook fashion. In your best John Lennon fashion.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you’re everywhere
Come and get your share.

…so on getting our share, this first vid shows me flashing (or blanching, wok-style) the beans for the freezer:

…in this second part takes a look at how easy it is to use freezer paper and wean ourselves off the plastic bag train. So come on and get your share. Then we’ll all shine on like the moon and stars and the sun.

One last for the the old daze. Sixties. Penny Lane. Cherry Street. Whatever….Yes, SF?

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…

Yes, indeed. A good twenty fledgling and not so fledgling pie makers took home creations to bake–and all organic too from the apples to the butter to the 100 percent whole wheat pastry flour used for the crust. Thank you Friends of the Library for helping to make it all possible.

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Little Aunties (and  a Little Pardner) ushered into the world of homemade pie making by the Big Aunties of the family.

The Little Uncles came too.

And we even did a video!

We call this one: Pie St. Helens.

And the Big Aunties sure weren’t going to miss out the action even.

Thanks all you nice people at Stevenson. Linda and Eldie and me loved coming up to make pies with you. If you get on line to see the pictures let us know how your pies turned out–and especially, if like me, you find pie tastes even better the second day. All best, Jean

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.

If you’re still buying canned beans, here’s a vid to inspire you to keep your money and take back your kitchen. After all a big pot of beans freezes up in to small containers beautifully and you’re set for a week or two.

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.

We’re expecting it to get scooped by all the society pages–and for book sales to be brisk.

Just remember, you saw it here first!

PS–If you’re wondering why the frog stuff on a cooking blog, it’s about lightening up and having fun. About leaving our measuring cups behind and taking back our kitchens for our health and our wealth. So you decide. Are you up for a subversive hurrah?!?

Also a variation on the theme in a video at the bottom of this post. “Tostadas: So Easy an Old Stoner Can Make Them”

Here’s a take on a taco salad that goes light years beyond iceberg and draws on the bounty of an early season garden. If you’re like me and want lotsa veggies, just pile the mount way high and grab your chopsticks or fork. Then once you graze off the main heap, you’ll have a nice warm bundle of food to pick up and eat.

On A Fresh Herbaceous Kind of Spring—

The thing with spring is that oftentimes there’s not much to eat in the garden. Lettuces are young yet and peas just beginning to grow. But no problem, the grand seasonal cycle seems to tell us, there’s plenty of herbs.

So, what better time of year to graze on fresh herbs. To turn them into your vegetables. Their pungent mystique powerful enough to gaily chase winter mugglies away.

So especially in spring, consider using herbs as vegetables. Perhaps not exclusively, but still in significant green proportions. They skinny up to lovely advantage things like cabbage in a Tostada Salad or Levantine-style with whole grains in what we call Red Quinoa Tabbouleh.

Why the combination of parsley, summer savory, thyme, mint, tarragon, and chives? That’s what was looking good in the garden when these two recipes came together. A lovely combo I thought, although one sure to change with the seasons.

So grab you basket and go gathering—keeping an eye out for the occasional flower. Once back in the kitchen, snip the chives into bits with your scissors. Strip the summer savory and thyme off the stems in one fell swoop of your pinched fingers. Give your parsley and mint as much chop as you have the patience for.

You’ll wind up with a fabulous heap of herbaceous green. A beautiful spring green that will hold its color as long as it doesn’t spend too long under the spell of much heat.

The fabulous aroma of thyme, mint, and parsley makes this approach to working with fresh herbs so worth it. They remain innocent until the leaves begin to bruise when you strip the thyme off their woody stems and chop the parsley and mint with your knife. A rather lovely treat for the cook. No need to go out and buy aroma therapy when you’ve got this kind of action going in your very own kitchen.

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.