Quick Tomato Sauce

I always have a couple of cans of Muir Glen organic diced tomatoes on hand to throw into soups, bean dishes, stews, and this great tomato sauce.

You could make the sauce with fresh tomatoes, but using canned ones makes this a quick meal from the pantry. And it tastes better than any spaghetti sauce out of a jar.

This is not the traditional tomato sauce cooked for hours over a hot stove. It takes under 15 minutes to make, and has a fresh zestiness that perks up any meal.

Don't limit it to pasta. Stir it into cooked cannellini beans or brown rice or barley for a great main dish. Pour it over cooked spaghetti squash or baked potatoes. It is a natural with any kind of cooked greens like chard or mustard greens. On toasted baguette. Poured over polenta. Your imagination is the limit.

When I made this last week I used a roasted red pepper in place of the orange bell pepper. You could use any kind of pepper, or you could use a diced carrot instead for the color and sweetness. I also added a hungarian hot pepper from our garden that gave the sauce a little kick.

If you don't have shallots, use four spring onions or a quarter cup of diced sweet Maui or Walla Walla onions. You could even use regular onion - whatever you have. The white wine adds a depth of flavor (I used a pinot gris) but you can leave it out if you prefer. If you have fresh basil, chop a handful to add near the end of cooking.

This recipe makes a little under 2 cups of sauce, enough for 1/2 lb of pasta.

Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, minced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1 orange bell pepper, diced small
14 oz can diced tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and cook one minute. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add wine and bell pepper and cook until wine evaporates, about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes with their juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced in half, about 10 minutes.

I know, it's too simple. But give it a try, using good ingredients. You'll be surprised.

Beans with Fresh Sage

When we moved into our house a few years ago, I planted a small English sage plant next to the orange tree. It has thrived, turning into a thicket that is covered in purple flower spikes every spring. The hummingbirds love it, as do the honeybees. It cascades out over our steps, creating a mass of buzzing purple for a couple of months each year.

Sage has a wonderful warm smell, and is a good base note in cooking.

Medicinally, it is antiseptic and boosts the immune system. So if you have a sore throat, pick a few leaves (or use some dried ones), pour boiling water over them, and let steep 10-15 minutes. Strain and then gargle with the warm liquid. Or drink it as a tea during cold season to boost your immune system. It's a natural estrogen promoter, so it is useful during and after menopause. And it's traditionally used by nursing mothers who want to stop their milk production after their baby is weaned.

This is an example of the many health-promoting properties that can exist in one plant -- yet another reason to eat lots of plants.

My favorite recipe using sage is this Italian one for beans. If you've been waiting for an opportunity to try cooking dried beans, this is the recipe to make the leap with. Because the beans are cooked in the sauce, they absorb the flavors and become delicious. They don't taste of sage, but it adds a depth to the flavor. If your family likes baked beans, they'll like these tomato-y ones.

This is a great Sunday-night bean dish. I cook it in the morning, and then reheat it in the evening. It's also good at room temperature on these warm summer evenings. Serve it with bread to soak up the sauce, and some wilted greens to add color and nutrients.

I use large white lima beans in this recipe, but you can use cannellini or whatever white bean you can find. Soaking the beans eliminates the need to cook them in a large pot of boiling water. Instead, the beans are cooked in a small amount of water, and you get all the nutrients as well as the flavor.

I adapted the recipe from Contorni by Susan Simon, a lovely book of Italian side dishes.

Beans with Fresh Sage
1/2 lb dried white beans
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, smashed then peeled
6 fresh sage leaves
2 cups water
14-oz can diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put the beans in a large bowl with 4 inches of water to cover. Let soak 8 hours or overnight. Drain and rinse the beans.

Warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the smashed garlic and whole sage leaves and cook, stirring occasionally, 2-3 minutes to flavor the oil. Add the drained beans and stir to coat them with the oil. Add the water, lower the heat, and simmer partially-covered for 45 minutes. Add the drained tomatoes and simmer until the beans are cooked but still hold their shape, about 45 minutes more. They will be tender and slightly saucy. Stir in the salt and serve hot, or let cool and serve at room temperature.

The finished dish can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 4 days and reheated as needed.

Blackberries

Gloomy June mornings find me dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, edging into our fruit cage to pick blackberries. There is nothing like fresh berries on our morning fruit.

These berry bushes were given to me by a friend who calls them black raspberries. I don't know if they're olallieberries or boysenberries or blackberries -- but I do know they are delicious. And prickly.

They fruit on second-year canes (as do all blackberries), so while I'm picking berries off the canes tied up to the trellis, new canes are surging around my feet (hence the jeans). When this year's berries are finished, I will cut back the canes that fruited and tie the new canes up to the trellis.

It's a labor of love and prickles, made even more challenging by the netting we have to set up so the mockingbirds, orioles, bulbuls and squirrels don't get my precious berries. (They feast on the loquats hanging overhead instead.)

I first remember picking blackberries at the bottom of our garden in a London suburb (this was before we moved to Canada when I was five). The key was to tug gently on a berry - if it didn't come away it wasn't ripe yet. We fingered and tugged and ate, juice staining our fingers. I'm not sure if any berries ever made it to the kitchen.

When I visited my brother in Vancouver years ago, he fed me a crumble made from wild blackberries he picked along the local railway tracks. Denis Cotter writes of picking blackberries on rambles through the Cork countryside, although he bemoans the excess development that is taking away the country lanes.

This is the first year our bushes have produced an abundance of berries, enough that I can consider baking with them. I sat this morning browsing my English cookbooks with a bowl of blackberries by my side -- crumbles, pies, tarts -- and then I noticed there were no berries left in the bowl. They are so delicious raw, why bother baking with them at all?

So I made vanilla ice cream and sprinkled some berries over the top. I'm considering making a blackberry ripple ice cream - pressing some berries through a sieve and layering them with the ice cream in a pan. But I'm not sure the berries will make it into the sieve.

This is the recipe I use for vanilla ice cream. It came with the Donvier hand-cranked ice cream maker my mother gave me years ago. My Snoopy ice cream maker only holds a pint, which is more than enough for two people. You can double the recipe if your ice cream maker holds a quart.

Remember that dairy products should be organic to minimize exposure to hormones. I use organic vanilla essence from Watkins.

Ice cream is a wonderful summer treat, not a daily indulgence. So when you're going to eat it, make sure it is the best. And make it into almost health food by sprinkling fresh berries on top.

Vanilla Ice Cream
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla

Beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thick and cream-colored. Stir in milk, cream and vanilla until well-mixed. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Makes 1 pint

Lemonade

Sitting in the shade of a tree with a good book and a glass of home-made lemonade is one of the pleasures of summer Sunday afternoons.

Usually I drink water, sometimes with a squirt of lemon. It's thirst-quenching, healthful and natural.

I find most bottled beverages -- sodas, iced teas, fruit juices -- are overly sweet and taste of the chemicals they're made from. I bet if you avoided them for a month and then tasted one, you would notice the chemical flavor front and center.

So water it is.

But as a summer treat, it's hard to beat lemonade. It's too sweet to drink with a meal, but as a break on a hot afternoon, poured over ice, garnished with a sprig of lemon verbena, it makes a wonderful drink.

This recipe is from an old library book: Family Circle's Recipes America Loves Best. It's quite strong so when it's poured over a full glass of ice, it will still taste good as the ice melts. (I tend to fill my glass with ice, then half water and the rest lemonade.)

The birds like to preen in our lemon tree after bathing, so I wash our lemons well before I use them. If your lemons come from a store, scrub them with a little dish soap before using the peel.

I make a few batches of lemonade at a time and freeze them after adding the lemon juice. When I want to serve lemonade, I defrost a batch and stir in the 4 cups cold water. I probably lose a few nutrients in the freezer, but it's healthier, more delicious, and just as quick to make as any of the frozen juices you can find in the store. And it's real food.

Freshly made, it will last a week in the fridge, if you can hide it from your thirsty family.

Real Lemonade
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water
thin rind of 2 lemons (use a potato peeler, and just get the yellow, not the white)
1 cup lemon juice (from 3-5 lemons)
4 cups ice water

Combine sugar, one cup water and lemon rind in a saucepan over medium heat. Gently bring to a boil and cook until sugar is dissolved and mixture is syrupy. This will take 8-10 minutes. Remove the lemon rind and let the syrup cool to room temperature.

Add the lemon juice. (It can be frozen at this point.)

Pour into a pitcher and add 4 cups of cold water. Stir well.

Serve over ice cubes in tall glasses. Garnish with a sprig of lemon balm or mint, and a slice of lemon.

Makes 6 3/4 cups lemonade.

Bloomsday

Before we went to Ireland last year, Larry read James Joyce’s Ulysses; it was a multi-month project. He then arranged our trip so we would be in Dublin a year ago today, June 16th, Bloomsday, the day on which the story of Ulysses takes place.

The lead character in the book, Leopold Bloom, stopped at Davy Byrne’s pub for lunch that day in 1904. He had a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy. It helped take his mind off the fact that his wife was having an affair with Blazes Boylan.

Bloomsday is quite the celebration in Dublin, the city which Joyce so accurately described in Ulysses. People dressed in turn-of-the-century outfits and pubs throughout the city sold gorgonzola sandwiches. We took a tour with a young actor (a student at Trinity College) who led us along part of the route Leopold Bloom had taken through Dublin that day, and read to us from the book at each stop.

We went to readings in Temple Bar, and immersed ourselves in the Bloomsday spirit, yet somehow I managed not to have a gorgonzola sandwich for lunch. I think the idea of it intimidated me somehow. How good can a gorgonzola sandwich be?

Well, I made one recently as an experiment, and I have to say it was awfully good.

The sandwich started with home-made Irish bread. The best bread I had in Ireland was made by the innkeeper at Iskeroon, a bed-and-breakfast we stayed at on the Ring of Kerry. He added pin oats (finely ground oats sold here as Scottish oatmeal by Bob’s Red Mill) for extra taste and texture.

I adapted this recipe from Coming Home to Cook by Mary Sheehan, an Irish American who moved to the west of Ireland to live near her kin. I bought the book in the west coast fishing village of Dingle, south of The Burren where Sheehan now lives.

It is a quick bread that tastes more like a yeast bread than a soda bread, probably because of the yogurt that helps the rising. I have made it in a 10-inch round cake pan, but for sandwiches I used a regular loaf pan. The bread makes wonderful sandwiches and toast, and it freezes well.

I bought some gorgonzola at Trader Joe's, and I'll make sandwiches for our dinner tonight, with a small salad and a glass of red wine. We'll cut our sandwiches into slender strips, and toast James Joyce, who brought early 20th century Dublin to life.


Irish Brown Bread
1 1/2 cups white flour
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup pin oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the yogurt and milk. Add to dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into a well-greased pan - either a 10" round cake pan or 9x4 loaf pan. (Mound the dough in the center of the loaf pan - it will seem like it will overflow the loaf pan, but it won't.)

Bake the round pan for at least 40 minutes and the loaf for 1-3/4 hours. You will know it's cooked when a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out with just a few crumbs on it.

Let the loaf cool for a few minutes before removing it from the pan. Set it on a rack to cool to room temperature before slicing.

Famous Vegetarians

Over the course of our marriage, I’ve gotten to observe the daily challenges (and benefits) of Joy’s vegetarian diet. It seems easy when the food is prepared at home. Not so easy when you’re traveling or trying out new restaurants with your vegetarian wife.

In looking for something entirely unrelated, I stumbled upon this list of famous vegetarians on Wikipedia.

Vegetarians always get the rap that they’re weak and sickly from improper nutrition. But Superman was a vegetarian. Hah!

Here are some golden oldie vegetarians: Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Issac Newton, and Albert Einstein. I guess the veggies are good for the brain.

And here are some other people on the list: Gustav Mahler, Franz Kafka, Bob Marley, Leo Tolstoy, three out of four Beatles, Johnny Appleseed, John Coltrane.

Not bad company at all.

Granola

On these bright summer mornings, who wants to linger over breakfast? There are places to go, gardens to play in. A quick but nourishing bowl of cold cereal fits the bill, especially if you can take it outside and sprinkle it with fresh-picked berries.

But don't waste your time and money on packaged cereals from the grocery store. Instead, make your own with inexpensive wholesome ingredients from the health food store.

Nuts and seeds keep your heart healthy because they’re rich in unsaturated fats, including monounsaturated fats, as well as Vitamin E, fiber, folic acid, and other B vitamins. Buy raw nuts and toast them yourself - the pre-roasted kind may contain trans fats.

Oats contribute fiber, both soluble and insoluble, which lowers cholesterol, among other health benefits.

Add dried fruit to taste, but avoid the sweetened kinds like cranberries and blueberries (why they have to add sugar to dried blueberries I do not know). You don't want to have a sugar spike then crash in your morning. Instead use unsweetened dried fruit - plenty sweet but with a complex sugar that burns more slowly in the body, providing fuel for the whole morning.

This cereal is dense, so a half to three-quarters cup will be enough. Chew it well - carbohydrates are broken down by enzymes in your saliva, and you want to get maximum nutrition from this delicious breakfast. Eat it with soy, rice, oat or almond milk. Add berries or chopped fresh fruit to your bowl if you like. A sprinkling of ground flaxseed. Some yogurt. Variations are only limited by your imagination.

This is a good basic recipe from John Robbins’ classic book May All Be Fed. You can vary the grains, nuts and fruit to taste. You could add 1/2 cup soy flour before baking for extra protein. I can rarely find organic wheat germ, so I use wheat bran or oat bran instead, or sometimes just omit it entirely.

Nutty Sunny Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped dates
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup maple syrup.

Combine oats, wheat germ, walnuts, and seeds. Spread on 2 baking sheets and cook at 275°F for 15 minutes. Stir and bake another 15 min.

Pour into a bowl. Stir in dates, raisins and cinnamon. Slowly stir in maple syrup.

Let cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Makes 6 cups. This will stay fresh in the cupboard for 3-4 weeks.

Black Beans

We had a great cook-out on Memorial Day weekend. Larry cooked my portobello mushroom to perfection, the potato salad was delicious, and the black beans were out of this world.

It was Larry who introduced me to the idea of beans with hamburgers. When we first moved to Pasadena I headed to the library to find a good recipe for this bizarre use of beans. The one I've used ever since is from the Williams Sonoma Vegetarian cookbook.

The beans cook in an afternoon, and taste even better the next day. They store in the fridge for a week, and they freeze well, so I can make sure to always have some on hand. They are great in burritos, or with rice and vegetables. Or you can serve them as soup - add extra stock, purée some to get the texture you like, and serve with hot sauce on the side.

Best of all, these black beans are delicious.

The key to the good flavor is the sofrito added to the beans after they are cooked. So while cooking the dried beans with pepper and onions enhances their flavor, you could make this recipe with canned black beans and it would still be great. Drain 4 14-oz cans of black beans and rinse them thoroughly. Put them in a saucepan with 2 cups of water or stock. Bring to a boil and then continue the recipe with the frying of the cilantro and garlic.

I used one of my homegrown poblano peppers in place of the green pepper. The white wine is a little better than Two Buck Chuck, but nothing too expensive or oaky. A sauvignon blanc or a fruity gewurtztraminer would be good. All the alcohol burns off but the flavor is left. If you prefer not to use alcohol, use an equal amount of vegetable stock.

Black Beans
2 cups dried black beans, picked over and rinsed
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large green pepper, seeded, deribbed, and cut into 1/2 inch dice
1/4 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled but not chopped
3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsps dried oregano
salt
pepper
1/2 cup white wine

Soak beans for 3 hours in water to cover by at least 3 inches. They'll expand a lot and you don't want the top ones to get dry.

Drain the beans and place in a saucepan with the onion, bell pepper, and water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until the beans are tender, about 1 hour. Add hot water from the kettle as needed so the beans are always covered by water. Remove from the heat. Do not pour off the liquid.

Warm the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed frypan over medium heat. Add the garlic, cilantro, brown sugar, cumin, oregano, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and ground pepper to taste. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is golden, about 10 minutes.

Add the white wine. Simmer over high heat until the wine is reduced by one-fourth, about 5 minutes. Add to the beans and simmer, uncovered, about 15 minutes until the beans are hot and most of the liquid is evaporated.

Serves 6

Fresh Peas

A few weeks ago I told you that the white-crowned sparrows ate my tiny pea plants down to the ground. I was unamused, and invested in many yards of bird netting.

And last Sunday, we ate peas. Fresh from the garden.

So fresh, in fact, that I didn't even cook them. I picked them (all six pods) and arranged them artfully in the middle of the dinner table. We shelled them and popped the raw fresh-picked peas right into our mouths. Wow. Even Larry, not a pea-lover, admitted to really enjoying these peas.

Why were they so good? Because they were freshly picked, unlike any we will find at a market or a farm stand. Barely an hour went by between picking and eating, so the sugar content was still high. Plus more nutrients than I can think of.

Anything eaten fresh from the garden tastes better, as all home gardeners know.

And goodness knows I wasn't going to destroy that fresh pea taste and crunch by cooking them. When I want cooked peas, I buy frozen organic peas at Trader Joe's. Cheaper, less work, and a satisfactory taste and texture.

It reminded me of a question a friend asked me recently. She knows that blueberries are highly nutritious, and wondered if it was better to feed her family a small amount of the expensive organic fresh blueberries or a larger (and more affordable) amount of the cheaper pesticided blueberries.

My answer is to buy fresh organic blueberries to eat straight-up -- raw, out of your hand or with other fruit or yogurt or ice cream. If you want blueberries for smoothies or for baking, buy organic frozen berries. They are less expensive and in those uses you won't benefit from the fresh flavor, nutrients and enzymes of the organic raw berries. Pesticides are never beneficial.

Of course, ideally we would all be able to pick our own blueberries from our own backyard bushes. And then we'd appreciate that blueberries, like peas, have a short but delicious season.

Bowl of cherries

I loved cherries as a child growing up in the suburbs of Montreal. We ate them on the back deck, seeing who could spit the pits farthest into the flowerbeds, hoping a cherry tree would magically grow. The firm skin and juicy insides with that subtle cherry flavor were made to be popped raw and whole into the mouth.

Dexterity was required to chew the cherries without cracking teeth on the pits and to suck them clean before spitting -- no, really blowing -- them out across the lawn. Cherries and watermelon are the original foods as entertainment -- no chemicals required.

I couldn't figure out why the candies labelled cherry-flavored tasted nothing like cherries. Even cherry pastries and cherry pie left me cold.

But fresh cherries straight up - I loved them.

Part of the fun was probably their short season - 2-3 weeks, then no more until next year. Isn't it true that we have more appreciation when the anticipation lasts longer than the reward?

As a young adult with multiple-chemical sensitivities, I avoided cherries because of their high level of pesticides. Even now, cherries are among the most heavily-sprayed fruits and should be avoided.

Every June I walk through the farmers market looking at the piles of pesticided cherries and thinking wistfully of the cherries of my childhood. Sure I'm strong enough now that I could eat a few toxic cherries with little ill effect, but how could I explain to the ladybugs and bees that were killed by the sprays that I gave money to the farmer who poisoned them?

So my memories of cherries have been just that, memories, until last week when I found a stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market selling organic cherries. Delicious deep black and ruby red organic cherries. I bought a pound, took them home, and ate them outside (although I did not spit the seeds into the flowerbeds). They were just as good as I remembered, and I sent thanks to the farmer who had the foresight to stop spraying the trees and instead let nature do its work.

Corn Muffins

Corn muffins are great with chili, scrambled eggs, vegetable stews, black beans. Whenever you don't feel like brown rice with your main dish, corn muffins are a great alternative, and they're quick to make.

Some corn muffins are fluffy, suitable as a substitute for a dinner roll.

These muffins are dense and a little dry, which I find a good companion for chili. I serve them with chili for dinner and then the next morning for breakfast with scrambled eggs.

Last time I baked a batch I turned half of it into Spicy Cheese Corn Muffins. I followed the recipe below and poured half the batter into muffin tins for plain corn muffins. I then added a scant quarter cup of grated Mike's Firehouse Cheddar to the batter left in the bowl, stirred as little as possible to distribute the cheese while not overmixing, and then poured it into muffin tins. I topped the spicy cheese muffins with a slice of pickled jalapeno so I could tell which were which.

You could make the whole batch into Spicy Cheese Corn Muffins by stirring a half cup of your favorite spicy cheese into the batter before putting it in the muffin tins. (I buy Mike's Firehouse Cheddar at the Spring Hill Cheese stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market. It's made from organic milk from Jersey Cows, and it has a kick! You could use jalapeño jack instead.)

This recipe makes 7-9 muffins. Pour a little water into the empty muffin cups before you put the pan in the oven.

Corn Muffins
1 egg
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup water
6 tbsp whole wheat flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425°. Stir together the egg, oil, honey and water.

Separately, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.

Pour egg mixture into flour mixture and stir just until combined.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake about 15 minutes until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out with a few small crumbs attached.

Makes 7-9 muffins.