The Last Tastes Of Summer

Intuitve cooking involves using whatever fresh ingredients you've already got on hand. Or perhaps you've just gone to the farmer's market with your Little Red Riding Hood basket and picked up fruits and veggies that are so vibrant, beautiful, and sweet smelling that they cry out to you "Take me home!" Using your senses of sight, touch, and smell and your good common sense as a guide is a surefire approach to creating a deliciously honest and remarkable meal. Its sheer simplicity and freshness is the wonder and the magic of such cooking. Of course your own loving energy is the most important ingredient of all.

A Tisket-a-Tasket, a pretty brimming basket, and a skip-along-back to the kitchen. Let's play!

I have on hand the last tastes of summer. Organic cute little plum tomatoes, green beans, cauliflower, fresh corn, scallions, onions, and blueberries. Oh yes and a wrapped soft oval blob of fresh mozzarella cheese. Yum!

My menu is improvised as I go along. Very Zen, wouldn't you say?...Tomato and fresh mozzarella salad, green beans almondine, oven roasted cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice, steamed corn on the cob, and jasmine fried rice with onions, scallions, and peas. By the way, the rice was left over from yesterday and with me being thrifty and economical, I just had to transform it into a new tasty dish. Also a little sweetness, a lemon blueberry cornbread. I made it gluten and casein free* but it can be modified any which way you please. In fact, experiment and invent to your heart's content.

I've been toying (again) with different gluten free flours and have come up with this mix which I use for cakes, pancakes and more.


Gluten Free Flour Mix #2

1 cup white rice flour
!/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup millet flour
2/3 cup potato starch
3 T cornstarch
2 T teff flour
3 tsp. xanthan gum

Mix ingredients with a spoon in a container that has a tight fitting lid to incorporate the flours. Then put the lid on the container and shake vigorously to ensure that all ingredients are well combined. Use as you would regular wheat flour in recipes.


Lemon Blueberry Cornbread

4 T ghee* or melted butter, melted and slightly cooled (or oil of your choice, I would try melted coconut oil)

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup gluten free flour (or regular wheat flour)
1 cup organic brown sugar
1 T polenta
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup Silk Vanilla soy milk (or milk of your choice)
1 T lemon juice
The zest of two lemons
2 large eggs

1 pint of fresh blueberries, washed, drained and stems removed (or two cups frozen blueberries, defrosted)

Adjust the oven rack to the center. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Grease and flour a large round pie plate or a 9 inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl mix all dry ingredients: cornmeal, flour, brown sugar, polenta, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a glass liquid measuring cup add one cup of milk (of your choice), lemon juice, lemon zest, and two eggs, lightly beaten. Sir with a spoon to mix. It will curdle and that's good! Stir in the melted ghee or butter (or oil of your choice).

Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients in the bowl until just combined. Gently fold in the blueberries.

Pour the mixture into the greased and floured pan and bake for about 35 minutes. The top will become cracked and golden. If the top is still soft to touch and mushy, bake for another five minutes or until slightly firm to the touch. Careful not to burn yourself!

Cut the cornbread right in the pan after it has cooled a bit. It is delicious served warm. Some people, inclined towards decadence, slather it with butter.

*Let me mention that ghee is casein free (or low in casein). It is essentially clarified butter, with its whey (or most of its whey) removed. Ghee is not dairy free. I make my own ghee which is not really that difficult, and that is a topic for another entry.


My tasters act as if they have just won the lottery. Smiles from ear to ear. Second helpings all around. Some inner glowing and eye twinkling going on. And many thank yous.

"Would you like me to pack some food up for you to take home?" I ask.

And so it goes, that now, with the end of summer taste cravings satisfied, we can skip along and rightfully experience the wonders and delights of the approaching, blustery autumn. Yea!