(Kim O'Donnel)

A bluesy/gospel concert on the grounds of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo last week was the inspiration to dust off my vintage picnic basket and actually put it to good use (please don't tell my mother it's been hiding in the basement). Unfortunately, last week’s last-minute event left little time to plan a menu, which means said basket did little but look pretty on the lawn.

I love the idea of a picnic but never can seem to get my al fresco act together. That’s where you -- -- the savvy bunch that you are -- can lend a hand as we gear up for the long holiday weekend. Should I keep things simple and make cheese sandwiches on artisan bread, pack a few pieces of summer fruit and call it lunch-for-dinner or should I get more elaborate, with a three-course feast of cold fried chicken, a couscous salad and Szechuan-style green beans?

And then I fret about keeping things cold -- and safe to eat. In that case, should all dairy items (including cheese) stay at home? Maybe raw food is better than cooked? ( And more importantly: Have I gone completely bonkers?)

But humor me, if you don't mind; If you were the owner of a vintage picnic basket that was crying for an edible outing, what would you pack this weekend? Is there one go-to nibble or nosh that makes all the picnicking worthwhile (or should I take a chill pill and let Mister MA take over)? Help this damsel in distress, pretty please.

P.S. Have a delicious and safe Fourth of July weekend!

It’s rare of me to make generalizations, but doesn’t everyone in America make potato (pronounced ‘puh-tate-uh” if you’re from Philly) salad for the Fourth of July? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve got a hunch that no matter where you live or how you celebrate Independence Day, there’ll be a bowl of boiled spuds on this weekend’s picnic table. It’s kind of like Thanksgiving stuffing that way; Fourth of July wouldn’t be the same otherwise.

From a cook’s point of view, boiled potatoes are like a blank canvas, an open invitation to play with color, texture and creativity. The possibilities are endless-- curry, anchovies, scallions, bacon, capers, yogurt, rosemary, roasted garlic, cider vinegar, hard-boiled eggs -- and yes, even mayonnaise. And as long as you season the spuds with plenty of salt, potato salad is difficult to screw up.

As many of you already know, I live a mayo-free life, which means my potato salad is usually vinaigrette based, with lots of herbs, a bit of Dijon mustard and a member of the allium family. (My trick -- season while potatoes are still warm and add 1 teaspoon salt to the cooking water for every 1.25 pounds.)

But enough about me and my mayo issues; I want to know how you do your potato salad. Let’s pretend we’re at the county fair and you’ve entered the potato salad-off. I want to know the kinds of spuds, the technique, the flavor profiles, the secret ingredients-- anything and everything that makes your potato salad a zinger and a keeper. Come on; gimme your best spud stylistics!

I’m hardly a matchy-match kind of cook or party hostess; in fact, I prefer a motley assortment of colors and styles on my table than a uniform set of dishes and cutlery (after all, I did grow up with a pink piano in the dining room).

(Kim O'Donnel)

That said, when it comes to Fourth of July, I’m all about a red, white and blue menu. Not only is it a kick in the pants to put together a color-coordinated Fourth feast, there’s a ton of seasonal options in all the right shades.

Today, we’ll start planning backwards, with dessert. Is there anyone else who thinks there’s something wrong about eating chocolate on the Fourth of July? I dug up a bunch of red, white and blue sweet endings from the recipe vault that kick chocolate to the curb -- at least until the fifth. Taste the possibilities:

In the buckle department, we’ve got blueberry and rhubarb with candied ginger rockin' the ramparts.

In Mister MA’s opinion, you can never go wrong with cobbler; my favorite version gets topped with cream biscuits, which are a breeze to make by hand (seriously, no machinery required).

Who’s up for a homemade Pop-Tart? This is the best one you’ll ever have -- a freelance fruit tart, made with a sweet pastry dough, folded over and stuffed with berries of your choice. I’m a sucker for blackberry filling here, but shucks, blueberries are a superb stand-in.

Not quite a cake or a pudding but a delightful platform for cherries is clafoutis, a homey French treat baked in a cast-iron skillet. You also get to run around talking about your cla-foo-tee.

But if it’s cake that you must have, how about a one-layer upside down cake? Over the years, I’ve become fond of the rhubarb-strawberry combo, but there’s no reason to stop the creative juices from getting into the cake batter. Ooh. What about plums and blackberries?

Fourth of July wouldn’t be the same without some kind of frozen component. Don’t forget about that purty-in-pink strawberry frozen yogurt that I made earlier this month. Dairy-free, I see? Try on this blueberry sorbet for size. If it were up to Mister MA, bourbon vanilla ice cream would be on the menu (and served at breakfast, lunch and dinner), which of course would be a stellar companion for cobbler, grown-up Pop-Tart or with a few antioxidant-rich berries on top.

What’s your color-coordinated pleasure this Fourth? Share with the class. Thursday, we'll talk sides and salads with color-coded potential.

Last September, I wrote about Roger Doiron’s grassroots campaign for a White House garden. Now Doiron, who’s based in Scarborough, Maine, is taking his home-grown ideas to another level -- one of stars, stripes and all things patriotic.

(Photo courtesy of Foodindependenceday.org)

Founder of Kitchen Gardeners International, Doiron has launched (in partnership with IATP Food and Society Fellows and the Mother Nature Network) Food Independence Day, a campaign to make your Fourth of July cookout local and sustainable.

Remember last summer’s Eat Local Challenge? The same idea applies: Try sourcing as many of your feast fixins within 100 or 200 miles of where you work or live. In doing so, you’re doing your part to stimulate the local economy, a highly patriotic act, says Doiron.

It’s not just the voting public Doiron’s after; he’s circulating an online petition asking for participation from America’s 50 governors, “to lead and eat by example this July 4th by sourcing the ingredients of your Independence Day meal as locally and sustainably as possible.” The petition, available here and on Facebook, has garnered nearly 6,000 signatures, Doiron told me on the phone yesterday. He’s also requesting holiday menus from First Families around the country; so far, he’s heard from just seven states, including Maryland (Governor Malley and family will be feasting on crab cakes and a mixed green salad from the first lady’s vegetable garden). Doiron promises to send updates as menus from additional states trickle in. The word on Fourth Fixins remains mum from the White House; we'll keep you posted.

As for Doiron, here's how his menu his shaping up: “We’ll look to our garden for lunch that day," he said. "Strawberries, salad greens and baby red-skinned potatoes. We’ll boil 'em up and serve them with butter and dill from the garden. I live on the coast of Maine, and I’ve got a recreational clamming license, so I’ll probably take my boys out that morning and get us a peck of clams.”

What’s local on your Independence Day menu this year?

Moo shu veg fixins. (Kim O'Donnel)

I’ve become a regular at Real Food Has Curves, the latest Web venture for cookbook duo Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein. Last week, the guys threw something together that I knew would be perfect for this meatless space, something they’re calling Moo Shu Vegetables, a slimmed down version of the Mandarin pork, egg & pancakes classic, but with no less flavor or zing.

What makes this dish a league beyond the same-ole stir fry are a few key components: the sauce, the aromatics and the crunch. Hoisin sauce, often referred to as Chinese barbecue sauce, gets an extra boost with sesame oil and black pepper, plus an aromatics trio of scallions, garlic and fresh ginger. Nothing fancy here, but the combination is truly tongue popping.

The vegetables in question are all crispers -- stuff that doesn’t wilt easily and needs just a short stint in the hot wok to soften and sweeten but without losing their crunchy personalities. The list of veggies below is a guideline, but I highly recommend the cabbage, which bulks up the dish and makes it feel quite substantial, even without rice.

Total cooking time is 25-30 minutes, most of which is spent chopping, which means this dish is a no-brainer for last-minute supper at the end of a crazy day. It is totally delicious – and oh, by the way, you’re getting those five-a-day servings of vegetables right in one bowl. Score!

P.S. The add-on possibilities are many – diced tofu, toasted cashews, a scoop of rice or quinoa, cellophane noodles. Add what you like, keep me posted on what you create.

Moo Shu Vegetables
Adapted from Mark Scarborough and Bruce Weinstein

Ingredients
4 scallions, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh, peeled ginger, minced
3 medium carrots, cut into matchsticks
½ pound green beans (I substituted sugar snap peas), sliced into ¼-inch pieces
1 small bell pepper, diced
½ Napa or Chinese cabbage, shredded

Sauce
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon Asian chile oil (optional, in my opinion; you could substitute vegetable oil or chili garlic paste)
½ teaspoon ground black pepper

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Method
Get everything together in advance -- this means all chopping, measuring and grouping into bowls. Place aromatics -- scallions, garlic and ginger -- in one bowl; veggies in the second bowl; and all sauce ingredients in a third, smaller bowl.

Heat a wok over high heat. When it begins to smoke, add oil and aromatics. With a wooden spoon, stir fry for a quick 20 seconds. Then add veggies and stir frequently, cooking for about 2 minutes. You want to reduce moisture (you’ll begin to see some shrinkage) but you also want to maintain a certain degree of crunch. Add sauce and stir quickly to thoroughly coat veggies, cooking for an additional 30 seconds or so.

Eat immediately, by itself, with rice or another side companion.

Jill Nussinow is a northern California-based cookbook author, cooking teacher and recipe developer who teaches people about the joys of buying and eating fresh farmer’s market and homegrown produce. She is the author of "The Veggie Queen: Vegetables Get the Royal Treatment" cookbook and the DVD, "Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes." Her companion Web sites are Pressure Cooking Online and The Veggie Queen, which includes a lively blog.

(Jill Nussinow)

I head into this week with unusual trepidation and anxiety. My stock-in-trade is food, and making sure there's plenty of it. How will I manage without shopping?

It’s one of my major activities: I run into “real” people versus my "virtual" buddies. My twice weekly jaunts to the farmer’s market and occasional stops to the natural food store fulfill my “face time”. Will I survive?

I discover that there’s more to this challenge than I thought, and most of it is psychological. The what-ifs take hold but my mood changes as I head to the fridge. Cleaning out the vegetable drawer to put in the new crop of farmer’s market vegetables (yes, I did shop in anticipation), produced enough detritus (OK, veggie scraps) to add to my stock bag. I cooked my weekly half-gallon of my 5-minute pressure-cooked stock.

The more usable vegetable odds-and-ends produced an uninspired but perfectly edible lentil vegetable soup with onions, leeks, green garlic stalks and scapes, garlic, carrots, potato, sugar snap peas and sunburst squash. I added herb seasoning the first day and then Mexican spice the second go round. One of my best tips: make it simple to start.
When I asked about the soup, my husband gave me a flat-line grunt and then added, “It’s OK.” No "wow" there. I am discovering, though, that the creative challenge fuels me. Fears, what fears?

As the week progresses, my chef, foodie and recipe development chops kick in. I rummage in the freezer and discover that it’s possible to have far too many resealable bags of frozen berries with far too little in them to be usable, until they're combined with last year’s cherries and peaches to make a fabulous crisp.

I learn that my advice to students to label frozen items with the date and name of dish works. With labels, you can distinguish the applesauce from the curried sweet potato soup and know when a bag was shoved to the back of the freezer. Did I roast those peppers last year or the year before? Note to self: Do as I say…

This challenge is my husband’s dream come true: he’ll finally know what lurks in the freezer. Hubby considers a full freezer excessive. One night while I was teaching childcare providers about fresh food, my husband rooted around and ended up eating green beans, peas, a twice-stuffed baked potato and pizza rolls for dinner.

Arriving later that night, I gussied up one of my pantry fall backs: Thai Kitchen rice noodle soup in a package. It cooks in less than 5 minutes and when I added tromboncino squash, onion, tofu, lots of cilantro and hot sauce, it was delicious.

The toughest part of the week was figuring out how to make salad greens last. My husband likes the same green salad nightly while I willingly turn to other vegetables (they don’t call me The Veggie Queen™ for nothing) such as cucumbers, summer squash, bok choy (from my neighbor’s beautiful raised beds) or my homegrown sprouts. (Thanks Katie for the sprout suggestion.) I ate fewer greens so my husband got his fill.

I’ve heard that a well-stocked freezer uses less energy and performs better, and that sounds great to me. My freezer is my insurance policy or security blanket. When my husband says, “Do you think that we can keep doing this for awhile?” I look at him and smile, and think, “Not on your life.”

Lessons learned:
* A well stocked pantry can do wonders (but I already knew that).
* Being vegetarian may be an advantage since I eat many dried legumes.
* Soups and grains easily accommodate miscellaneous items, and reuse forces creativity.
* With my neighbor’s garden as back up, I may actually be able to do EDF for weeks on end with my new awareness.
* Taking inventory is important, as assessment is the first step to making changes. I am ready to let go of shopping so often.

My most successful meal was freezer tidbits combined with fresh vegetables fondly called Match Crab with Spicy Green Vegetables (see recipe below).

My husband really liked this and said that the Match crab (a soy-based vegan product) is good enough that meat eaters would like it. If you don’t happen to have Match crab on hand, you can use tofu or pieces of cooked chicken or shrimp. I made this in the pressure cooker but it's easily cooked in a sauté pan. It will take longer to cook and likely need more broth.

Ingredients
2 teaspoons sunflower or Canola oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1-2 stalks green garlic, chopped or 2 cloves garlic, minced
4- 6 ounces Match vegan crab, tofu or chicken
¼ cup vegetable broth
1-2 cups frozen thin green beans
½ cup frozen peas
1 small zucchini or other summer squash, chopped
2-3 tablespoons teriyaki sauce
¼ to ½ teaspoon hot sauce, or to taste
Chopped fresh cilantro

Method
Add oil to the pressure cooker over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for a minute. Add the garlic and Match crab, and sauté for another minute. Add the broth, green beans, peas and squash. Lock on the pressure cooker lid and cook for 1 minute at high pressure. Quickly release the pressure.

Stir in the teriyaki and hot sauce. Garnish with cilantro. Serve over brown or other colored rice.

Allen Williams recently traded in his Silicon Valley dot-com career to pursue freelance food writing from Vancouver, B.C. Allen enjoys food exploration and combines childhood farm-style cooking with urban flavors at his blog, Eating Out Loud. When taking a break from cooking you’ll also find Allen sharing his vintage recipe card collection on his hobby site, Recovered Recipes.

A peek inside Allen Williams' pantry in Vancouver, B.C. (Allen Williams)

In all honesty, I’ve feared Kim’s Eating Down the Fridge challenge ever since signing up. I found myself lured in by the prospect of making creative MacGyver-like meals but grew concerned about our 520 square-foot condo which we had just moved to a few months ago. The pantry is petite and the refrigerator narrow and not very deep. It’s the smallest space I’ve ever lived in, and I wasn’t sure if it contained enough food to sustain two adults for an entire week.

Since our move, I find myself grocery shopping more often. When the work day becomes stressful, I enjoy stretching my legs by walking to the nearby market. I buy produce and meat as I need it, never going more than a couple days without a grocery trip. In an effort to be healthy and reduce wasteful packaging, I’ve banned buying most processed foods, namely canned goods. So, frequent trips for fresh goods are a necessity.

At the start of the challenge, it surprised me when I assessed my pantry and discovered what else I’ve accumulated on my many shopping trips. Preoccupied with adjusting to a world of different product brands and learning the metric system, I didn’t realize how much food I stockpiled.

I have more food on hand now than when we had a large home. It is also clear that I have a minor addiction to buying from the bulk food bins. Never before have I had such a selection of lentils, beans, rice, millet, quinoa, couscous, dried fruit and nuts. The nuts alone are staggering -- clear plastic bags filled with pistachios, roasted cashews, sliced almonds, whole almonds, peanuts and pecans. Not only am I hoarding, but quite possibly turning into a squirrel.

I took a deep breath and approached the challenge by coming up with meal ideas. The week started with using up leftover meat in basic fried rice. I then started working my way through the produce drawer, stir-frying veggies with bits of meat from the freezer.
Cornmeal and berries became sweet breakfast muffins while dried soybeans added to a pot of soup made a hearty lunch. A pack of dumpling wrappers from the freezer gave new life to a three-pound bag of carrots found on sale for 80 cents. Ground pork, grated carrot, garlic, scallions and soy sauce filled the wrappers and steamed for 15 minutes, making a quick dinner.

A package of rice cakes, those dreaded Styrofoam stunt doubles, peered down at me from an upper cupboard taunting me to be creative. Kim suggested a variation on marshmallow rice treats, but I had no marshmallows. Instead, I turned it into faux caramel corn by crumbling the cakes and smothering with a rich, buttery caramel coating. Delicious, but the recipe needs some refinement.

Although I started the challenge with fear of starvation, I’ve eaten well the entire week. It’s amazing what hides in our kitchens, whether large or small. I truly miss the grocery store and look forward to shopping this weekend. I intend to curb my bulk bin urges and shop more modestly. And with a little self-control, I can hopefully bring my nut collection under control too.

The first purchase I make this weekend will be a fresh bag of rice cakes. I am now determined to find a new use for the bland, airy pucks by creating a no-pop caramel corn recipe.

Busy mom-of-four Jessica Sirotin, a native of New Jersey, has spent the past 15 years living in Eastern Europe. Currently based in Warsaw, Poland, Sirotin has also lived in Russia and Hungary, and has enjoyed, mostly, every minute of it.

(Jessica Sorotin)

It would be wonderful to think that changing how and what my family consumes is being carried out in the measured and careful way I had planned. In execution, however, I find myself pressured by both circumstances and my four kids.

Nevertheless, I think I have a fighting chance at success. My husband’s family is of Russian/Polish extraction, and in the 15 years we have lived in Eastern Europe (Russia, Hungary and Poland) I have taken to heart many of their ideas about managing the pantry. Even though Communism ended here almost 20 years ago, many people still remember the food shortages and remain very pro-active about how to make do with what they have.

My husband’s aunt and uncle in Moscow had a wonderful apartment. It was tiny but packed with so many of the things needed in the coming year. Tucked away in ceiling cupboards and in their two refrigerators, they kept dried fish, bags of sugar and salt and endless jars of pickles, sauerkrauts, jams and kompots. (Kompot is a Russian/Polish drink - when you are inundated with fresh fruit -- strawberries, cherries, forest berries, rhubarb etc. in the summer, they will pop a few pounds of fruit in a huge pot, cover with boiling water and once it boils add sugar to taste. When it cools you can it or just pop it in the fridge.) Their winter supply of potatoes was kept in a homemade compartment on the balcony.

I am not suggesting that my kitchen looks like theirs. But I always remember that for every meal they made, whether a plain supper or a party for 10, these on-hand ingredients were the starting point. Nothing was purchased until things already on the shelf were taken into account. Nothing went to waste.

With their example in mind, I think I am doing alright even though I forgot to go to the store before Saturday when I began the EDF. I try to keep my shelves stocked with things we eat, not things we crave. There have been no real crises -- minus the lack of bread.

In honor of the region where I have spent many wonderful years, I would like to share a recipe for a classic eastern European summer soup. Through a lucky conglomeration of ingredients found in my pantry and vegetable garden last night, I was able to make chłodnik, a Polish cold barszcz. I served it with dark rye bread, and a Kompo made from a neighborly donation of sour cherries. If it’s sunny, eat it outside and pretend you’re at the dacha.

Chłodnik

Ingredients
1.5 pounds beets (small beets are best)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt, to taste
Sugar, to taste
1 cucumber, diced
4 scallions (tops and bottoms) chopped finely
6-10 radishes, grated
5 cups kefir or buttermilk (homemade kefir is wonderful here)
2-3 tablespoons fresh dill (chopped finely)
2-3 hard boiled eggs, sliced (optional)

Method
Wash and scrub beets. Place in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, until tender, approximately 25 minutes. Remove beets from water and cool. Reserve the liquid and let cool.

Skin the beets and dice. Put the beets back in the liquid and add the kefir and lemon juice. Check the seasoning, adding salt and sugar as necessary for the proper tartness/sweetness. It should have a slightly creamy tangy flavor. Add the cucumber, scallions and radishes. Refrigerate.

Check the seasoning again before serving. Place as much egg as desired in a bowl and cover with soup. Add dill as a garnish. Serve with bread.

A native of Falls Church, Va., Bren Herrerra is a freelance food and travel writer and personal chef based in Atlanta, Ga. She shares her love for Cuban and Latin fusion cuisine in her blog, Flanboyant Eats. Bren tells me she throws back five shots of Cuban espresso daily to wear her many hats. Her latest gig is a biweekly cooking segment on "Daytime" TV.

Bren's green tea ice cream cups. (Bren Herrera)

A friend once told me I should treat myself like a queen when it comes to cooking. Her bright suggestion came after my ongoing complaint that cooking for one is simply not fun. I’m single, with no real responsibility for others’ nutrition; therefore, I find myself extremely lethargic, come dinnertime. I find little interest or appeal in cooking for just me.

In Latin households, eating is as much about fellowship with friends and family and political discourse, as much as it is about actually chewing. So, cooking and eating alone is far from my idea of a relaxing and entertaining night -- and so not Latin.

When Kim invited me to eat down my fridge, I was excited because of the challenge it presented. Staying away from my favorite sushi house for an entire week, would cause emotional imbalance. It would mean not eating out and enjoying background music while slightly eavesdropping on the next conversation. It meant staying at home and cooking for just me! The flip side of what would normally be an agonizing task, gave me inspiration to be queen-like! After taking full inventory of my fridge, counter tops and cupboards, I finally convinced myself I am deserving of savory and well-thought out dinners just like I prepare for my clients.

After coming home night after night with loads of extras and partially cooked food, my refrigerator is usually overflowing with stuff. Most of it consists of cut-up vegetables, unused plantain, seasoned fish, extra sauce and a steamer with cooked rice. Usually, the food goes to waste. This past weekend is no different; after catering a bridal party, plus the regular stash from my weekly clients, I was certain to have enough meals for one, if not two weeks.

I decided I would start my week off with colorful food. Monday’s dinner was easy. Two bags of sliced and diced vegetables quickly made their way to a skillet where I made a sofrito, the foundation for flavoring Latin food. The sofrito was used to make saffron rice. I had frozen salmon, which I had already thawed out once, so it had to get cooked this week. Using once fresh -- now dried -- tarragon, I seasoned my fish, added a squeeze of lemon, injected 2 garlic cloves, added salt and let it marinate for 30 minutes.

I was happy to see some white space on the fridge shelves, but my freezer is another story. I won’t explain why I have two gallons of green tea ice cream. In my effort to avoid rendering it completely freezer burnt, I had to get creative. I scraped out three whole lemons, cut the shells in half and filled them with the ice cream! I froze them for an hour and after my main course had settled, I was spooning ice cream out of lemon cups! The unexpected citrus-y bite was a sure way to inspire fillings for later in the week. Plus, it was just different.

Tuesday night was Caribbean inspired with a red bean and coconut arroz congri (Cuban style beans and rice) I made in my pressure cooker. One zip-lock-style bag of jerk-seasoned chicken turned into kebabs loaded with chunks of carrots, mushrooms and red onions. A two-pound bag of uncooked shrimp from the bridal party made it into salad with avocado, parsley, garlic and lemon. I had sweet plantains as my side and treated my palate to another green tea lemon cup for dessert!

As for the rest of the week, I’ll be the queen’s chef and prepare food in abundance. I’ll try Kim’s cilantro pesto, make an orzo salad with the veggies and even try a green tea flan! Beans will make their way into stews and dips. The rest of the shrimp will go to making burgers. And my four-pound bag of plantains will make a variety of dishes including an awesome plantain frittata, milk shakes and plantain muffins. I guarantee that if I don’t eat all of this food on my own, I will host my friends to a Friday night royal feast with dimmed lights and Paquito D’Rivera jazz setting the mood!

Bren's Plantain Frittata

Ingredients
12 eggs
1/2 cup smoked mozzarella, thinly sliced (you can also use pepper jack or smoked gouda)
1/2 cup Asiago cheese, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh nutmeg
pinch of salt (Asiago provides salt, so be conservative)
3 garlic cloves, mashed and diced
butter for browning
2 ripe plantains, sliced diagonally or cut into smaller pieces
Canola oil or butter for cooking

Method
In a large bowl, crack and beat eggs until you get a good foam. Add cheese, nutmeg and salt . Set aside.

In small saucepan, brown garlic in butter on medium heat for 1 minute. Set aside.

In medium saucepan, heat 1/4 cup of the oil and fry plantains on both sides, until golden brown. Drain excess oil on paper towel. Let cool. Cut into smaller pieces, if desired. Add to egg mixture, plus garlic, and gently whisk together.

Using a quarter-size amount of Canola oil or butter, coat large sauce pan. Add egg mixture and cook on medium heat on one side, about 5-6 minutes. Gently flip over and cook for another 5-6 minutes or until egg is thoroughly cooked through. If you are unable to flip the frittata over, place on top of an oven-safe pan/skillet. Finish cooking in oven on 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until you know egg is thoroughly cooked, or golden. Remove from oven and invert onto serving plate. The result will be more souffle style and a bit thicker.

Makes 4 hearty servings.

In May, when I made a save-the-date announcement on the EDF Facebook Group page, I received an e-mail from west coast reader Jill Blevins, who knows a thing or two about eating down the fridge -- and not by choice.

I asked Blevins, who’s currently based in Oregon (and no longer homeless), to share her candid perspective on making do with what you’ve got on hand.

Jill Blevins. (Family photo)

Asking me to abstain from food shopping is like asking an anorexic to please cut back on the eating for a while. It’s not the shopping that keeps me from Safeway (although buying in bulk can seem like a part-time job), but it’s that whole paying for it at the end that I despise. I’m cheap, no question. I was cheap before I had four kids and I’m cheap now when they’re all grown up and moved out. Not frugal, as frugal sounds respectable. Cheap.

In the early 1990s, my first husband and I moved to Montana without jobs, knowing barely anyone, when our kids were young. He’d lost his job, so we figured we could be looking for work just as easily in Montana as in California. This was stupid on so many levels but being young, we paid no attention to the warnings of “you can’t eat the scenery.” Besides, I was a stay-at-home mom with a mean streak of stingy. I’d wash and re-use as many sandwich bags as it would take to make ends meet.

Feeding four kids can wipe out even the most careful of penny pinchers, but when mine were the hungriest, we were the poorest. Our food budget was $230 a month and food shopping was a game I couldn’t win. Going down the aisles with a running total in my head was like playing some evil video game. I couldn’t get to the finish with all my required items crossed off my list. Something I needed, something frivolous like soap, stayed behind. Even now I’ll go three weeks without stepping into a grocery store, just to avoid all that total-tallying mental math.

You learn a few things through a crisis like this, or at least I did. I got pretty good at finding the bottom of those 50-pound bags of Costco flour. I got so good that I started baking for catering companies and small downtown cafes, making not just cookies but poppy seed cakes and mashed potato cinnamon buns. I made more practical things at home, like Dutch pancakes and crepes for dinner.

My grown-up daughter called last week, asking me for those recipes. She has good food memories from the years when I wanted my kids to sleep late on the weekends, just so I could get away with feeding them two meals. Two meals are cheaper than three.

“What was in those crepes, anyway?” she asks. “I can never make them the way you do.”

Do I tell her my secret? My beautiful crepes were filled with leftovers, things she and her brothers refused to eat, chopped up fine. Wrap it up in a crepe, garnish with a little something pretty, and present it as if it’s New York sirloin. They fought over dinner those nights, eating what otherwise would have gone to waste. Attitude is everything.

Things are easier now, or they would be if my husband and I weren’t living a state apart. I moved to help with my dad’s business while my husband stayed behind, for now, in a job he loves.

Living alone isn’t heaven, but I can eat popcorn and beautiful salad for dinner if I choose and nobody knows. I can eat the same thing every day for a week and it’s my secret, until now.

Every few days, I bake a new combination of carrot/zucchini/pumpkin/apple/banana muffins out of nasty produce only a baker would love. Sometimes the combinations are so good I write them down to recreate in the future. I learn best by trial and error, and I have learned that I love my free time. If I can spend three weeks without shopping for food, eating an inordinate amount of carrot/banana/pumpkin muffins, I can spend that extra time at street fairs and free concerts within walking distance of my new home. So what if I run out of milk for my coffee and I’m forced to use ReddiWip? I’ll enjoy the excuse.

Jill Blevins' Basic Crepes

Ingredients
1 egg
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon sugar and ¼ teaspoon vanilla for sweet crepes or pinch salt for savory crepes
1 tablespoon melted butter
additional butter for pan

Method
Whisk egg with sugar and vanilla for sweet crepes, or whisk egg with salt for savory crepes. Add flour and milk alternately, adding melted butter when batter is lump-free.

Heat small skillet or crepe pan. Add a slight teaspoon of butter to pan, tip to evenly distribute. Add a couple of tablespoons of batter to hot pan. Quickly tip the pan again, swirling the batter around to evenly and completely coat the bottom of the pan. Cook crepe over medium high heat for forty-five seconds. Flip and barely cook the other side for fifteen seconds.

Makes 8 crepes. Recipe can be doubled, which I recommend.