Measure Free Hippie Cook

Are You a Grabber? As in Paper Towels?

There’s been more traffic than usual around the hacienda lately. One thing I’ve noticed is that I can almost tell how hip a person is to eating in a savvy manner by how non-grabby they are with the paper towels.

Case in point: this roll of towels has been on the spindle for a couple years now. Yes. It’s true. I save the paper towel genuflecting for rare occurrences. Instead, see that stack of cloth towels? Those tattered bits of fabric do yeoman service in my kitchen and get washed so they can get up and do it again–amen.

So yah, it’s about our disposal culture: diapers, pens, razors, bottles, bags, and paper towels. The point is, of course, that if we’re willing to wash our own, fill our own, and generally change our own–we’ll need less cash at the store–and leave a lighter footprint on Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Besides, the last woman I saw reach for the paper towels was only eating a heart-shaped section of polenta waffle with some fresh end of the garden salsa on it. I noticed, though, that because the roll of towels was sticky and did not release easily (these towels are the tougher almost cloth-like kind) she changed her mind and simply held her spare hand under her tidbit as she ate. Seemed to work okay as far as I could tell–although I forgot to watch whether she licked her fingers or just wiped them on her jeans like the rest of us–chuckle.

Anyhow, I can’t say I do it perfectly, but I’m definitely not a paper towel grabber. How about you? Do you use kitchen towels and cloths made of fabric that can get up and do it again, amen?

Posted in Food Politics, Rock & Roll, Sixties Critique, The Pretender-Jackson Browne
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Skip the Vegetarian-Vegan-Carnivore Distinctions–Just Get More Fresh Vegs & Fruits

Tofu Rocker, Hippie Kitchen, 139

With the glow of the meditation hall in my heart, I queued up at the dinner buffet table. It may have been a silent retreat but my mind was in full gear. Especially when I saw the fresh vegetable de jour looking limp, gray-green, and more tired than those who’d risen for the first sit at 5:30.

Tangled Up Foccacia, Hippie Kitchen, 152

“They killed the broccoli,” I thought before heading off into a mind trance about why something as simple as not using a lid and not over-cooking should be that difficult to grasp–even as I remembered my friend Carole admonishing me years back for boiling the ever living soul out of some green beans–and Garrison Keillor’s monologue on Lake Wobegon in which he observed that the vegetables were cooked beyond the point they could do no one no harm–and could I stand to try the broc–and there I was caught up again in my own head and not present–my breath, yes that was present–same with the clatter of someone’s fork–which might have been some passive-aggressive response to the broccoli….

Baled Pears, Cooking Beyond Measure, 190.

Broccoli. Yes. Flash cooked so it’s green and lovely–or whatever way you do it in order to get it to the table strutting its stuff. Because that’s the operative philosophy here: getting more fresh seasonal vegetables and fruits on our plates. Never mind whether you eat them with beans, tofu, cheese, fish, or meat. Just do like grandma always said and eat your vegetables–hopefully ones that some thoughtful cook has not steamed the life out of.

So yes, the next time someone asks me if I’m a vegetarian, I think, on behalf of dead broccoli everywhere, just say I’m mainly into beautifully cooked vegetables and fruits.

Posted in Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, Ripple-Jerry Garcia, Rock & Roll
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Lasta-vera Frittata with Blue Corn and Hopi Memories & Music

Yes, I know the lastavera doesn’t quite work since vera means spring in Italian. But hey, it’s close, and it conveys so well the idea of using vegetables the fall harvest brings through the door. A few posts ago I was lastavering with a grain salad. This time it’s with eggs in a frittata.

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

Posted in Bioethics & Sustainability, Culti-Multi Food, Fall, Food Thoughts, Fresh, Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, Health and Wellness, Kitchen Tips, Organic GMO Free Corn, Ratios, Recipes, Scratch Cooking, Seasonal, Seasons, The Cook Counts To, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Video
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Measurefree: Pie in the Sky or the Cat’s Meow?

A facebook friend who owns both Hippie Kitchen and Beyond Measure was teasing me about my “sorta cookbooks.” And it’s true that I’ll often explain that the measure free cooking series is more kitchen companion than typical paint-by-number recipe books. That said, I contend that translating the art of cooking by explaining it–rather than reducing it to the equivalent of a small chemistry experiment–is entirely legitimate–and empowering in a revolutionary manner.

Think about it. Before we got measuring cups and formulaic cookbooks a century ago in the 1890s, cooking was a art. And just ask any artist–it’s the creativity they love. The decision making power. The joy of producing something that conveys a glimpse of who they are and what they can offer to the world.

Yes, yes. I know. You’re thinking all that pie-in-sky talk is fine for starving artists, but when the family wants dinner, there’s no time for nonsense.

Rhubarb Pie

I’m hip. But I submit that measure free cooking is a fast track to first rate, ultrafast, easy-healthy-thrifty-delish food. More, and here’s the key: it’s fun because you get to be boss. Indeed, I think one of the reasons we all grab more product and take out food than our health and wealth can afford is that we’ve got it in our heads that cooking is a tedious, even boring exercise in following rote directions.

In a measure free kitchen, you leave behind your low status of technician–one who merely carries out the ideas that others have conjured up. Instead you get to be boss. You get to be the one who makes the decisions. Surely in our over-regulated lives from the alarm to the traffic lights to the time clock, in the privacy of our own kitchens we deserve that much…

Intrigued? If so, poke around the site and see if any of the samples I’ve shared from the books seem do-able to you. We’ve also tucked in vids of me rocking & rolling here and there to help the cause. As you do you’ll find a whole new kitchen world opening up before your eyes. Not a gourmet one. Not a silly one. Just a down to earth kitchen scene that women around the world have known for centuries. Indeed, no need to go to Tuscany to have a sexy food life…just spend some authentic time your very own kitchen!

Posted in Food Thoughts, Iris the Cat, Measurefree Cooking
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Not Primavera But Lastavera–Harvest Bounty Lush With White Beans and Walnuts

There’s one like this in Hippie Kitchen on page 75, but that was made with summer savory one sunny day in June. Now the days are more golden than sunny, but harvest is plentiful as this Lastavera shows. Broccoli, tomatillos, green chiles, leeks, tomatoes, and garlic–all from the garden–all flash cooked in brief minutes–all dressed up with olive oil and red wine vinegar. In go the white beans. On goes the salt and pepper.

A quick swab of the cutting board. And the deal’s done–plenty of time still to listen to Pure Prairie League’s Amie, isn’t that right Sandy?

Posted in Amie-Pure Prairie League, Appetizers, Beans, Fall, Food Thoughts, Lunches, Recipes, Rock & Roll, Scratch Cooking, Seasonal, Seasons, The Cook Counts To, Thrift
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Why Hippie Cook?

On a recent Facebook thread, someone said, “if what you do–cooking from scratch with garden produce–means being a hippie, I’m all for it.” The writer had apparently dismissed the counterculture of the Sixties–hippies–as a group of free loaders mainly interested in drugs, sex, and rock & roll. And why wouldn’t he? It’s what the mainstream news has spooned up for us–over and over again.

Absent from the sensationalized reporting, however, has been that the current food movement started with the hippies in the Sixties. Ditto the contemporary interest in yoga and meditation and other Eastern meditative arts. So yes, the counterculture may have had its excesses and walked down more than one counterproductive blind alley–although I certainly wouldn’t consider rock & roll one of them. But hippies also had their moments of genius. Moments of understanding at a fundamental level that plastic fantastic corporate America was a big nightmare of a bust.

The mainstream news also likes to talk about how the hippies sold out and turned into stock traders and such. Perhaps a few. Perhaps many even, maybe. But certainly not all. And not me and many others I know. We might have taken off our long skirts and trimmed our hair a bit so we could earn a living…but we really never returned. We’ve carried the banner all these years. We’re about local. About community. About most anything that frees us from the grip of mind-numbing corporate control–which not only robs us of our money and health, but also renders our lives so hideously boring that even television seems like a relief.

So there. There’s my soapbox hippie stuff. I use the hippie cook moniker as an homage to the Sixties and what was great and good about the counterculture. All that business of relying less on services and products that turn us into passive consumers and more on one’s own actively engaged initiative. In terms of food, for me, that’s meant cooking from scratch and growing my own garden–clearly activities that have offered up the friendly gifts of creativity, empowerment, and joy.

Posted in Food Politics, History, Scratch Cooking, Seasonal, Sixties Critique
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Freezing French Cut Green Beans & Happy Birthday to John Lennon

I don’t have a cake to offer on behalf of John Lennon’s 70th birthday. But I think if the man were here he’d welcome my French cut green beans with knowing look through his blue tinted granny glasses.

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?

Posted in Come Together-Lennon, Fall, Flash Cooking, Food Politics, Instant Karma, John Lennon, Preserving, Putting Up Food, Seasonal, Sixties Critique, Video
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From Polenta to Peach Cobbler

The polenta I talked about in the preceding post had some long legs. In addition to the green bean toss, it became the topping for a cobbler. Here’s how it all came down.

First I roasted some plums and peaches. Balsamic on the plums, red wine over the peaches and sugar sprinkled over all. Why the same pan? I was lazy.

Then I ate the plums. Scarfed them right up. So the project became the peaches. These got sliced and stirred around in their winey goop. Then I used the leftover polenta like flour and oats for a cobbler crust. All it took was some butter and sugar worked in for a nice spready hit that covered the peaches. Into the oven and then under the broiler at the very end to brown it up a bit more.

Voila! A lovely offering that comes from being thrifty, working in season, and not being afraid to be your own boss in the kitchen.

Posted in Desserts, Food Thoughts, Fruit, Kitchen Tips, Peeling Garlic, Roasting Fruits and Vegetables, Scratch Cooking, Seasonal, Summer, Thrift
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Reflections on a Refrigerator

An inside peek at my mind would never do–chuckle–but the interior of my fridge and freezer is something that never fails to give people wandering through my hippie kitchen pause.

“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.

Posted in Equipment, Food Thoughts, Getting on a Roll, Kitchen Tips, Leftovers, Technology
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Turned On Eggplant Pizza

Not too much longer to revel in the world of harvest, so I hope you can score on some eggplants for this great spin on pizza pie. It’s a great way to use the last of the coals after you’ve grilled, and the next day it’s a breeze for the cook–who as those of you who’ve read my books know–counts too!

Posted in Recipes, Seasonal, Summer, The Cook Counts To, Vegetables
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