Pizza (with millet !?!)

We make a lot of pizza - without the slightest amount of guilt.  Well okay, every once in a while we order pizza and I do perhaps have a little guilt about that.  But most of time it's homemade pizza.  Interesting vegetables, less cheese, and homemade crust with whole grains.  I actually feel good about the amount of pizza we eat! 

Fiddlehead fern pizza with feta bombs

You can ferment that!

Fermenting your own foods to make sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt, or kimchi probably sounds kind of crazy. The type of thing that only a person living in the middle of nowhere or someone who is unemployed would even consider attempting.  I can assure you that nothing is easier.  It will take you less time to make a jar of your own pickles then it would to select a jar from the wall 'o pickles probably available at your supermarket.

From left to right:  Red cabbage sauerkraut, bok choy kimchi, sauerkraut with jalapeno, sauerkraut.

Embrace Summer with Pasta Salads

I have been craving pasta salad for the last couple of weeks.  A summery, crisp, and bright pasta salad of some kind. At the same time I read an NPR blog post that basically read my mine (http://www.npr.org/2013/06/26/195311156/helping-pasta-salad-dress-for-success).

Think differently about your pasta salad - ditch your jar of mayonnaise and think of it as a salad or a complete meal (whole grains [e.g,, pasta], vegetables, protein [e.g. nuts, beans, tofu, shrimp], and fat [e.g., olive oil]) not just a starchy/fatty side dish.  Look around you at all of the fresh summer tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, chards, asparagus, and leafy greens for inspiration.

Step 2: Start Simple - Whatcha got?

Sometimes I'm inspired to prepare something involved, but we do an awful lot of  "whatchagot"  meals (soups, stews, rice dishes).

With very little time, planning or inspiration you can whip up easy whatchagot dinners if you keep some basics in your kitchen like: rice or couscous, bouillon, garlic, and carrots.

Brown and wild rice, carrots and red pepper

Asian-inspired Cold (or Hot) Noodle Salad

What I love about this salad is how versatile it is. You can make as a light dish or as a main course, you can cook your vegetables or include them raw, you can make it spicy, savory, or even a little sweet.  You can tailor the recipe easily to what is in season and readily available.  

Also it saves and travels well (hello, picnic!)  Keeping this is the house or whipping up for a pot-luck can save you from grabbing take-out or stopping off to pick-up preprepared potato salad from the grocery store.

Basic Idea:

• A noodle/pasta (buckwheat, wheat or regular pasta, whatever you choose)
• Vegetables
• Simple Asian Peanut Sauce (see below)
• Protein (Tofu or chicken) optional

The basic idea is that you make a simple sauce and toss it over cooked noodles and raw or cooked vegetables of your choice [you can add a chicken or tofu if desired] and serve.  I usually serve this chilled but could also be served warm. Very easy and very very tasty.

Adjust the amount of sauce, vegetables and noodles to your liking.

Step 1: Find your kitchen.

Cooking has really changed in our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents.  It used to be something that wasn't really thought about very much. Our grandparents mostly just prepared something for dinner that was based on what they had eaten as children, usually culturally influenced "standard" dishes.  Since the 1960s, what it meant to cook has changed dramatically.  At times it had been such a chore and women felt that they had to bear the responsibility of all of the shopping and cooking.  This burden, in a time when woman were also working, led to the idea that the quicker and the easier the meal the better.  

The dawn of the prepared foods.

Come on in and have a seat!

My name is Julie and I invite you into my kitchen (and a corner of my life)  because food is really important to me.  Growing, buying, preparing and eating of food is fundamentally gratifying to me.  It is intrinsically linked to our cultural identity and life itself. And for some reason we seem to have become distanced from all of it.

I hope that others can discover (or rediscover) the pure pleasure and satisfaction that home cooked food can bring.