The deep freeze of  ’10, O’ Ten or whatever we’re calling it, has left me committed to learning how to make delicious casseroles. Any excuse to keep the oven on while standing nearby.

I am a recipe rebel. I got the basic premise for this one from a one-pot cookbook I snagged at a sale, but I took many liberties. Fortunately, it turned out amazingly well, as evidenced by everyone getting thirds.

Here’s the lowdown on my version. Let me know if you try it.  Bon appetit.

Inventory

1 large onion

3 small zucchini

Generous number of garlic cloves

½ Cauliflower

½ cup Broccoli

1 yellow and 1 orange pepper

3 turnips

1 cup roasted carnival or butternut squash

½ package soft tofu

1 cup cooked black eyed peas or 1 can

Fresh thyme

Teaspoon sage

Teaspoon oregano

1 ½ cup all purpose flour

1 egg

¾ cup rice milk

Sea salt

Butter or butter substitute

Olive oil

Fresh pepper

Teaspoon White wine vinegar

Tabasco sauce

1/3 cup Vegetable broth

Execution

1. Roast squash —- rub it in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover in aluminum foil and stick in oven at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes (until soft)
2. Roast veggies—- chop em to around the same size ( ½-1 square inch-ish),  mix together  and stick them in a 1-2 inch deep glass dish. Mix 4 tablespoons of olive oil with a teaspoon of vinegar, salt, pepper, fresh thyme, sage, Tabasco sauce, and pinch of cayenne pepper. Coat the veggies with the mixture. Let them roast in the over uncovered for about ten minutes. Remove from oven, cover, return to oven for ten more minutes.
3. Blend tofu, seeded and peeled squash, veggie broth, tablespoon of butter, ¼ cup rice milk, salt and pepper (use a blender or beater).
4. Remove veggies from oven. Mix with tofu blend and black eyed peas.

Sift flour with teaspoon of salt. Rub Four tablespoons of butter into flour. Add oregano, salt, pepper. Beat egg with ½ cup milk. Add enough to flour mixture to knead into malleable dough. Roll out dough. Cut out biscuits (I used a little star-shaped cookie cutter). Arrange biscuits on top of the veggies. Return to oven and bake until the biscuits brown. Serve with aged parmesan cheese sprinkled on top (optional).

Generations ago, housewives envied glamorous career women. Now career women envy glamorous housewives. What gives?

Traditional housework is a demanding job. A good deal of it has been outsourced by manufacturing and commercial consumption. Now we have “light” home responsibilities.

Like lots of other people, these days I find myself wanting to be as environmentally responsible and healthy as possible. I’m learning the value of things like growing my own food, using alternative medicine, having a less toxic home, buying less, reusing more, cooking nourishing homemade meals… This is a lot to do.

Many of the things we think of now as “green” living were part of someone’s job. That person was also largely responsible for everything from childrearing to making soap. Clearly, this role is nothing like the lives of “Real/Desperate Housewives,” who make it seem luxurious and spoiled to be a housewife. This is real work.

Wage-earning spouses made out pretty well. In exchange for their financial contributions, they got a gardener, nanny, chef, tailor, housekeeper, barber, nutritionist, interior designer, events planner, etc.

Now I feel like women are trying to be superstars in outside careers and domestic goddesses at home. Even when we try to share responsibilities, in a male/female household, when your place and your kids are looking a mess, who usually ends up with the blame? The woman.

Women should have equal opportunities and never be forced to stay at home. But what is so bad about a single income household, where there is a wage-earner and someone else responsible for domestic responsibilities? I know that you’re probably thinking, “This is just a woman who envies glamorous housewives and is trying to legitimize that envy.” Maybe.

Living with a bit more nature in my life (granted, Atlanta is a city but compared to New York, I’m in nature), I feel a bit closer to the cycles of life. Spring and summer mean work, yard work. Lots of it. Its feels sometimes like you are relentlessly working to tame nature into something you can use. Feverishly trying to exert control over a rambling chaos of growth and destruction. (Mind you, I’m just talking about my backyard.)

Then along comes autumn. The wind down. The moments of thought, transformation, planting seeds in preparation for dormancy and rebirth in warmer seasons to come. It’s time for reflection, taking stock, reserving your strength, praying for mercy in the colder days, and dreaming of the next opportunity to shine in the sun.

My loved ones who have passed on always seem to log off of planet earth in the fall. So this season also means mourning. Autumn is when I have gotten my deepest personal challenges. I get a bit shook and spit out again into winter and spring. It’s a love/hate relationship that I have with this season.

I was born in autumn. Two major shake-ups in my country’s recent history happened as fall emerged in the background. Hurricane Katrina and the September 11th attack. Both of them cut deep into my consciousness as a U.S. citizen, and left me feeling like I was staring into a familiar face that was horribly scarred.

Often I find myself walking out of autumn older, wiser, and unfortunately, sadder and a bit more cynical. There it is. In an effort to channel this energy into good, I have promised myself to focus some of my writing in the coming weeks on reflecting on autumns of the past and their lasting impact. Change is painful and this season brings uncertainty but change is life.

I just planted carolina jessamine in front of the house, hoping that it will climb up the side of the porch and frame our view with beautiful yellow, floral trails of fragrance. Can’t wait. But looking up info on how to take care of it, I learned that parts of the plant are poisonous if ingested. If plants that are deemed bad for human consumption become contraband, should the lovely South Carolina state flower in my yard also be illegal? Just something to think about.

I am really into human progress (social, technological, environmental, spiritual) and I am an enthusiastic advocate for hedonism. Maybe the two impulses are related. In the spirit of hedonism, let’s celebrate one of the greatest grown-up joys of summer holidays: drinking.

My choices generally involve a good high gravity beer, wine, or bourbon. The basics. However, I can be persuaded to try a mixed cocktail. My current favorites for the season are:

Wine
==>Vinho Verde (It also fits my budget nicely and you can find some good, reasonable choices at Trader Joe’s) and Gruner Veltliner (a knowledgeable friend has put me on to this fresh, grassy Austrian grape)

Beer
==> It’s all about quadrupels for me lately, a bold Belgian style ale, especially Weyerbacher from Pennsylvania.

Bourbon
==> Moving to the South has brought bourbon in my life. I’ve always had an affinity for brown liquors but in New York they were mostly of the Irish and Scottish persuasion. A good Southern bourbon enthusiast put me on to Kentucky’s Single Barrel Elijah Craig. Neat, please.

Other suggestions for how to stay breezy in Summer 09 that I got from my bacchanalian friends:

Pabst Blue Ribbon
==> aka “hipster juice.” No recipe needed. Bucket, optional.

Pink Sangria
==> Sounds like such a genteel way to get ugly. Slice orange, lemon, lime, peaches, add strawberries, raspberries–whatever you like and muddle lightly in a pitcher. Can add a little herb to the muddling, if you’re feeling creative–mint or basil are good. Add 1 bottle Prosecco (sparkling white wine), 1/4 cup peach schnapps, 1/4 cup grand marnier, 1/4 cup red liqueur (like pama liqueur or chambourd), squeeze 1 lemon, add up to 1/2 cup sugar and up to 1/2 cup orange juice for sweetness (taste as you add to see how you like it). Stir well and check color. Add splashes of light cranberry juice and/or more red liqueur to color and flavor. Serve in hurricane or tall glass by adding ice, ladling some of the fruit and liqueur from the concentrate in the pitcher and topping with some soda water.

Aperol fizz
==> (Thanks, Kat. I’d never heard of Aperol.) This involves Aperol, seltzer and a little prosecco. Aperol is like Campari but made from artichokes, is pink, and less bitter.

Bushwhacker
==> Vanilla ice cream, light rum, kahlua (more rum than kahlua; 2:1 or just over equal amounts, to your taste) combine with enough ice cream so it’s just a little brown in the end), and then blend it all up. Sounds like heaven

Redneck Margarita
==> I absolutely love that the ingredients are measured in cans. 1 can frozen limeade, 1 can tequila, 1/2 can triple sec, put it all in the blender, fill it with ice, and blend until slushy. Smooth & deceptively strong.

Enjoy, stay safe, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

A library in Manchester, England has uploaded an authentic 15th century cookbook. Now people can learn how to cook porpoise and other unusual renaissance festival fare. “It’s very much suck it and see, but great for experimenting,” says John Hodgson, keeper of the library manuscripts upon which the cookbook is based. Be cautious of whose themed dinner party invitation you accept.

I am a native New Yorker currently living in Atlanta, GA. It’s definitely a different kind of urban experience. While I live only minutes away from downtown, I’m in a house with a big backyard and lots of critters on the loose in the wild. There are squirrels, possums, raccoons, and even a few deer spotted around the way. The backyard habitat and I have become “frenemies.”

I am willing to admit that I don’t really know jack about yards, gardens, and nature. Keeping a potted plant alive was a big accomplishment for me. Now I have this big, intimidating but wonderfully tempting space. I have images of myself all geared up as a gardener and digging in to produce various soil-fresh bounties. All of it free from pesticides and much cheaper than Whole Foods. I have a long way to go but why am I so opposed to pesticides? It’s kind of a long story but has to do with months I spent interviewing people injured from overexposure to chemicals.

Taming a big yard with no pesticides is a challenge. I know that there will be ups and downs. Here’s an up. I had a nasty tangle with marauding ants, and I won! We’d dug up a bunch of weeds and aggressively growing mint. This might have disrupted the ants. I found out later on that they don’t like mint. So even though the mint was starting to become a nuisance as it encircled the house, it was likely serving a purpose.

Unfettered ants marched up the deck and into our kitchen. I came home to find them having an ant festival in the dishwasher. The nasty little feckers had an efficient little highway formed all along our sink. People said we should spray them and surround the exterior of the house in a pesticide circle. I didn’t like that idea but I also wanted to avoid sharing the kitchen with the ants.

I had to wage a multi-pronged attack. I armed myself with knowledge from an internet scavenge. Among the things that ants don’t like:

• Mint (see above)
• Cayenne pepper
• Garlic
• Talcum powder
• Vinegar (a friend tipped me on this and I got them out of my bathroom with this trick once before)
• Cucumber (especially the peels)

Plus, if you find the anthill (this works for fire ants but probably other varieties as well), and have a good series of dry days, I have heard that you should get your hands on some instant grits. Sprinkle the grits near the ant mound. The ants will munch on the grits and take them back to the queen. The grits expand in ants bellies and will make them go pop. When the queen gets whacked, the whole community dissipates. I have not tried this. It sounds kind of sad, but this is war. And no, before you ask, apparently grits don’t just work on Georgia ants.

Also, make a mixture of equal parts (about a teaspoon each) of honey, aspartame (that sugar substitute stuff that I always thought was kind of questionable) and borax (Not to be confused with Borat, Borax is an old school cleaning detergent. I found it in the laundry detergent section at the supermarket) This will jack up ant invaders good. Make the stuff into a paste and put it into small bottle. Put the bottle on its side somewhere along the ant path. The ants will enjoy the concoction but just cause it tastes good don’t make it good for you. It’s harmless compared to those industrial strength pesticides (although you should probably not eat it either and keep it away from children and pets, like any cleaning product).

I also learned that ants are very territorial and can sniff the pheromones of other members of their colony. That’s why they’re so great at following each other and forming a rapid trail with an almost unstoppable persistence. The strategy is to disrupt the path while attacking the source.

I used a combination of remedies and it seems to be working. It’s been over a month, and still no ants. Ojalá, they’re done. I looked a little ritualistic and witchy doing all of this but it did the trick. I washed away the ants. Removed anything they might be tempted to eat. Sprayed a mixture of cheap white vinegar and cayenne pepper on their trail (this was hard because the cayenne gets stuck in the spray bottle tubes and ruins the damn things).

Then, and here’s where it gets funny. I sliced cucumbers and put them along the sink and at the backdoor where ants were coming in. I also used mint from the garden but that didn’t seem to be very effective (ants sashayed right by the mint). I also rubbed fresh garlic all around the backdoor (this was the most effective deterrent). Finally, I used the borax concoction, placing away from the house along the ant path on the deck. As the ants gathered in the borax bottle, I cleaned and vinegar sprayed to push back the path. Whenever I refilled the bottle with the borax mixture, I would put it out further on the path, gradually pushing them back and discouraging them from coming further with the vinegar, cayenne, garlic and cucumber.

Yes, I know this all might sound a little nutty but I was determined to minimize use of chemicals. So far, it’s worked. Ants are nowhere to be seen and I’m done with the vinegar, mint, cayenne, cucumber and garlic antics, so our kitchen doesn’t smell like the vinaigrette from hell anymore. And I am very grateful for this victory because now I am getting my butt kicked by flies on the deck and what seems to be nest of underground bees lurking underneath the deck. Bees? I might have to get professional help for things that sting.