Background info point 1: The association of feeling empty and/or hungry with feeling clean and good is a disturbing vestigial emotional/thought process that lingers long after the eating disorder diagnosis is lifted.

Background info point 2: Until fairly recently I had formidable anxiety about being mindful of and fully present in my body.

What I said last night: As I settle into my body more and more and pay attention to the subtle feelings within, I’m learning that some foods just feel clean and good inside, while others make me feel kind of gross and grimy.

What I just realized this means: Clean/good food-related sensations do not require emptiness and hunger. They just require paying attention. A door has appeared, allowing escape from a bad habit.

What we ate: Salad of field greens, red onion, red bell pepper, tons of avocado, Parmigiano-Reggiano, tomato so ripe it almost looked like a bruise, and toasted walnuts. I made a simple red wine vinaigrette. On the side we had some chips and tomatillo salsa, and a bit of my new creation: Fire Salad.

Fire Salad is so named because it includes only fire-colored ingredients. And because I think it is funny to put “fire” in the name of a raw dish.

Fire Salad
Put the following into a large bowl:

• 1 sweet potato, raw, unpeeled, well-scrubbed, grated
• 1 beet, raw, unpeeled, well-scrubbed, grated
• 3 carrots, raw, unpeeled, well-scrubbed, grated
• pint of grape tomatoes, halved

Add to taste:

• salt
• pepper
• lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic, peeled, minced

Mix well.

It is better after it sits in the fridge for a few hours at least. The salt extracts some of the vegetables’ water, which blends with the simple seasonings to create a light dressing. The acids in the lemon juice work gently on the structure of the vegetable flesh, slightly softening its texture and taste.

Until I ate Fire Salad, I did not know that something could taste like earth and water and light.

Tonight I made a delicious juice that glows green such that I may call it Krank.

I packed the following in the big container:

• grapes, green, a little over a cup
• lacinato kale, two leaves, stems included, torn into several pieces
• celery stalks, 2, washed and broken into thirds
• cucumber, 1/2, cut into 4 thick rounds
• apple, Gala, past its prime, cut into 8ths
• ice, 1 cup

Blend for 2 minutes or so and drink the glow. Yum.

When I was a kid, my mom would split open piping hot biscuits on a plate and pour this gravy on top. Some people apparently tear up biscuits into a bowl and eat this on top.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 TBSP butter
• 2 TBSP flour (I use 1 TBSP all purpose, 1 TBSP whole wheat)
• 2 TBSP unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 TBSP sweetened cocoa powder
• 2 cups milk

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt butter over medium heat until bubbly.

Whisk flour into the butter and whisk constantly until nicely browned and giving off a nice, rich roux smell.

Whisk in about 1/2 C of the milk and continue whisking rapidly. This will quickly thicken.

Dump in the cocoa powder (sweet and unsweet). Whisk to mix.

Add another 1/2 C of milk. Mix completely and continue whisking almost constantly to avoid lumps. When this starts to simmer, add another 1/2 C of milk.

Repeat the above step until all milk has been added.

Lower heat, bring to a simmer, whisk very frequently until it thickens to desired consistency.

Add 2-3 pinches of kosher salt (to taste) to brighten the flavor.

• Cheap
• Easy
• Quick, in the sense that it requires almost no hands-on time
• comfort food
• Voluminous. Yay for not having to cook for a few days when I’m trying to write my dissertation proposal.

I just ate a bowl almost as big as my head full of it. Here are the steps:

• Make a pot of brown rice. Let it cool off a bit and put it in the fridge.

This takes about a minute to throw rice and water in a pot, and a few minutes waiting for boilage. Those few minutes may be spent doing some dishes or wiping off the counters or something else useful. And then you turn the heat down and leave it alone for 45 min to an hour. It’s forgiving. Then there’s nothing else to do to it.

Then, make a pot of pinto beans. I guess other beans would work too, but I like pintos best. My recipe is as follows:

• Before going to bed one night, dump the beans in a big bowl and cover them by a couple of inches with water. Put a plate on top so the cats don’t drink the water. (1-2 minutes)
• The next morning, dump out the water, rinse off the beans, and do a cursory look for any rocks. They will not have expanded any in the water, so they will be easy to see. (1-2 minutes)
• Preheat oven to 250°F.
• Put the beans in a pot that can go in the oven at low temperatures and cover them by an inch or so with water. Put on the stove and bring to a boil.
• While it is coming to a boil, I usually add a few things: salt, a pinch of asafetida, a generous teaspoon of ground cumin. If I’m feeling ambitious I peel two or three garlic cloves and toss them in whole. And plop in some dried whole Indian chilli peppers. (5 or so minutes, depending on bean and water temp)
• I usually also dice half an onion while waiting for the beans to boil. Put the cut up onion in a small container in the fridge.
• When the pot boils, put on the lid and pop it in the oven. In an hour, check a few beans. If they aren’t soft, put back in the oven for another half hour. Again, forgiving. It doesn’t matter if the beans get quite soft. Try not to drop the pot when returning it to the oven, splattering your cat with bean juice. (2-4 minutes hands on time)
• When done, let the beans cool a bit, fish out the dried peppers if you have used them, and then put the beans and cooking liquid in a container in the fridge

Now you have a bunch of rice and a bunch of beans. Yawn. But! The beauty comes at each time you need a meal for the next few days.

First, put rice and beans in your favored proportions in a microwave safe bowl.

Then, dress them up and heat them up.

I don’t know what you keep on hand, so these might not work for you, but with my general staples, I choose from the following options or make something new up on the fly.

• Probably my favorite, and what I just finished eating: Dump in a generous amount of frozen collard or turnip greens. After you heat the whole thing up in the microwave, stir in some of those diced onions and a good dollop of mango pickle.
• Heat up with some salsa, cheese, and diced onions. If you are being extravagant and have an extra few minutes, cut up an avocado and stir it in after heating. If you dip your beans out with a slotted spoon on this one, you can then wrap this mush up in some tortillas.
• Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, some sun-dried tomato slivers, and some sliced kalamatas. Some feta cheese makes it even better.

You now have a hearty, yummy, not unhealthy meal.

This usually takes me 5-6 minutes to put together and heat. Almost as good: the dirty dish count is (in my house anyway): a bowl, a spoon, a fork, and a serving spoon.

Now get back to work.

Notes:

• After soaking, you can put the beans in the fridge if you want to cook them later that day. You can freeze the soaked beans so that you won’t need so much lead time to make beans at some point in the future. You can dump the frozen beans in a pot, cover with water and cook as usual. It just takes a little longer for them to come to an initial boil.
• YES, put salt in your beans! You are cooking them in the oven where they are getting heat from all sides, instead of on the top of the stove where the beans near the bottom are really hot and the ones at the top are not. You will find the unevenly cooked, hard beans are not the salt’s fault. And the beans soak up the salt as they are cooking and taste better than they ever could if you just added salt after.

Given that:
it is summer and I’m a grad student
my car might be dead dead dead
my shot tomorrow might not be covered by insurance
i just bought a plane ticket to Denver for a cousin’s wedding…

…The above link is just my speed about now…

So, I’m the queen of multitasking in the kitchen. I turn around to stir something in the middle of measuring out ingredients for something else, and…. oh crap, was I on the third or the fourth half cup of flour?? Argh.

My solution:

• Get a very small container. I use a stainless steel dipping bowl.
• Put some popcorn kernels (unpopped!!) in it. Beans or many other things could also work. I just spied popcorn first.
• Put it in a convenient place.
• When you get to one of these repeated measuring tasks, figure out how many times you are going to need to do the measuring to get to the full amount. For example, the Joy of Cooking Fast White Bread recipe I make calls for 1.25 cups of flour added in .25 cup increments, so I lay out 5 kernels.
• Every time you measure, move a kernel back into the container.

Now, as long as I’m sure I remember to move a kernel every time, I cannot lose count while measuring.

I make myself move a kernel before I’m allowed to put down the measuring implement. Otherwise, I’d just have another problem on my hands.

And a new way to try doing popcorn in the microwave.

Tamarind Popcorn

Here is the recipe. I constructed this whole thing on a foil-lined pan, so clean up of the baked on cheese was nothing.

I cooked it in my toaster oven.

• cut thick slices of eggplant
• drizzled then with olive oil
• broil in toaster oven on one side, then the other, until each side just starts to brown a little
• top each eggplant slice with several fresh basil leaves
• top those with thick tomato slices
• broil until the tomatoes start to look like they are actually cooking (not too long)
• sprinkle with shredded mozzarella and or other good cheese. Feta would be nice, too.
• broil until the cheese is all melty, bubbling, and brown.

God knows I didn’t this evening. I was very busy in the kitchen. I made:

• coconut-cabbage curry with paneer (I made it up as I went along. It’s a bit spicier than I prefer. It’s ok, but I don’t think I’ll make it again.)
• another made up thing, this one rather divine: a broiled-in-multiple layers eggplant, basil, tomato thingy. Recipe to follow in another post.
• bread (Joy of Cooking Fast White Bread, made with part whole wheat flour)
• pizza dough, 2 to freeze
• pesto with walnuts instead of pinenuts
• yogurt

Whew. I just time out to eat some of the eggplant/tomato stuff and some curry. And now… the dreaded cleanup.

The temperature in the house is finally starting to drop. Just in time to preheat the oven to 450°F!