EcoSalon’s favorite quotes about the simple pleasures of cooking and eating.

If we’re not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn’t settle for junk food. -Sally Edwards

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. -Voltaire

Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. -Jim Davis

Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn. -Garrison Keillor

I have long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime “associates,” food, for me, has always been an adventure. -Anthony Bourdain

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives. -Oscar Wilde

It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato. -Lewis Grizzard

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. -Luciano Pavarotti

When baking, follow directions. When cooking, go by your own taste. -Laiko Bahrs

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. -John Gunther

We plan, we toil, we suffer – in the hope of what?  A camel-load of idol’s eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. -J.B. Priestly

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. -George Bernard Shaw

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. -Calvin Trillin

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. -Federico Fellini

Soup is just a way of screwing you out of a meal. -Jay Leno

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn’t waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it. -Mario Batali

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. -Harriet van Horne

A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe. -Thomas Keller

It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it. -Julia Child

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts! -James Beard

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. -Doug Larson

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. -Virginia Woolf

Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements. -Marcel Boulestin

I’ll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal. -Martha Harrison

Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea. -Pythagoras

I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts. -Graham Kerr

Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want. -Gael Greene

The belly rules the mind. -Spanish Proverb

For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way… I want to bite into life and to be torn by it. -Anaïs Nin

Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks. -Marilyn Wann

ALSO CHECK OUT:

50 Quotes About Meditation And Yoga

40 Quotes About Feminism

30 Best Quotes on Living Small

40 Inspirational Quotes on New Beginnings

30 Best Quotes About Travel

50 Best Quotes About Love

40 Best Quotes About Solitude

30 Best Quotes About Being Present

30 Best Quotes About Nature

Classic Quotes from Hollywood’s Original Leading Ladies

All Creatures Great and Small: 30 Best Quotes About Animals

Images: kate hiscock, Poppy Thomas-Hill, Alpha

A healthier version of a classic batch of cookies.

It’s January. You’re cold, you need comfort food, and wouldn’t it be nice if the kitchen smelled good, too?

If you have been finding yourself in the mood to hunker down with a plate of something sweet and fatty, you’re not alone. As Evelyn Tribole, RD says, “It’s a survival mechanism. You don’t want to kill for a piece of broccoli, but you’d kill for a piece of bread.”

But the better part of you really wants to be craving broccoli, because you know better than to succumb to the urge of eating an entire chocolate cake. Tempting, but there are better options. Like gluten free Buckwheat Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies.

No, you cannot eat an entire plate of them – and you will be tempted – but the sugar content is minimal, they have healthy flours and your kitchen will smell good. Winter problems solved. Start baking.

Buckwheat Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

• 1 cup rice flour
• 1 cup buckwheat flour
• 2 cups rolled oats (certified GF if you need them to be)
• 1 teaspoon xantham gum
• 1 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (organic of course!)
• 1/4 cup currants
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cream butter and sugar. Add in egg and pumpkin.

Mix together flour, xantham gum, baking soda, baking powder and spices.

Combine with pumpkin batter then stir in oats, currants and chocolate chips.

Roll into small balls and place on greased baking sheets.

Bake for 12-15 minutes.

You can always eat broccoli tomorrow.

Image: Anna Brones

A beautiful short video that explores the process of baking bread. 

There is an artistic process in baking. That process is beautifully captured in this video by Kinfolk, which is a simple exploration on making Dutch Oven Bread. Taking the necessary time to slow down, the process of bread making ends up being a process in much more.

In learning how to make bread for this film we had to get used to how the process drove our day, leaving us only increments of time to do other things. After a few batches we embraced it, getting those little things done that never seemed to find their way into our schedule. Books were read, letters written, house tidied. All which felt just as much a part of the recipe as adding water and kneading dough.

Dutch Oven Bread from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

A spice that’s the perfect fit for sweet and savory dishes. 

Cardamom, as you may have noticed, is making its way into everything. It’s in tea, in tart crusts, in fruity drinks, in fig jam, in curries and if you haven’t tried it in a cup of coffee, you’re missing out. But cardamom is not only for food; it can also be used to treat a variety of ailments, from congestion to depression.

Cardamom pods retain the aroma and flavor better than already ground cardamom, ensuring a fresher flavor when cooking with it. These organic green pods from Le Sanctuaire come in a sleek reusable container with a screw top, meaning you can buy bulk the next time around.

Available for $11.95 from Gilt Taste.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Fun ways to ensure a waste-free harvest season.

It’s a sad fact that nearly 50% of the food we grow goes to waste. Some of that is wasted in the fields, after harvest, and some in distribution. Out of the food that actually makes it to the store, we, as consumers, throw away nearly 1/3 of the food we buy and take home.

Clearly we need to work on using what we have on hand. Even if you routinely use up your produce before it turns to mush in the crisper, if you’re a gardener, or a farmer’s market deal shopper, you’ve probably ended up with a bumper crop of vegetables and a shortage of ideas.

In honor of the harvest season, here are some tips for dealing with large quantities of produce.

Puree it—Pureeing produce can whittle large amounts of produce down to more manageable quantities. Take a large winter squash for instance. You can roast it and puree the pulp and use it in soups, risottos, pancakes, muffins, cookies, quick breads, and even oatmeal. Pureed squash also freezes well. You can roast and puree small quantities of odds and ends like summer squash, eggplant, peppers, and even greens like spinach and mix and match them to make a variety of delicious dips like Ajvar, spinach dip, and more.

Soup it—Of course you can puree anything (broccoli, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, greens, squash, tomatoes) and turn it into soup but you can also make a chunky, brothy, minestrone like soup with many different types of vegetables. Mix in some cooked beans for added protein. Green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, shredded greens, summer squash, and sweet potatoes all lend themselves well to this method. It’s fine to focus too. If you have a lot of leeks, onions, and garlic, and not much else, simply sauté in butter, add broth, and puree for an elegant allium soup.

Salad it—Anything can become a salad. Lettuce not required. Roast a bunch of beets, potatoes, squash, or sweet potatoes and combine with a tasty, full flavored dressing. Add protein if you like, herbs, green onions, cheese, toasted nuts. Anything goes. Some of these vegetables lend themselves to mixing with grains. Beet and farro salad anyone?

Dip it—If you have an abundance of peppers, carrots, fennel, and other sweet and crunchy vegetables, you may consider cutting them into sticks and making crudités. There’s no better excuse for making Bagna Cauda, a warm anchovy and garlic dip from the Piedmont region of Italy; a luxurious French brandade, or baba ghanoush.

Stock it—Lots of odds and ends, especially aromatics? Make up a big batch of vegetable broth and freeze it for soups later on. Or freeze the scraps from prepping over several weeks and make a big pot of stock once you have a good stash. Carrots, celery, leeks, onions, potatoes, mushrooms (including stems), garlic, chard stems, lettuce, and corn cobs, really just about any other vegetable that’s not too bitter is fair game for vegetable stock. Just make sure you include a balanced assortment.

Freeze it—We talked above about freezing pureed vegetables. Skip the potatoes, as they don’t freeze well. Fruits like berries and stonefruit are also great for freezing. Sliced plums and peaches will serve you well all winter in pies, cakes, and crisps. Too many tomatoes? Make a big batch of salsa and freeze it. The texture will suffer slightly but it will still taste better than store bought salsa come January. Cut corn kernels off the cob and freeze them in bags to add to casseroles and soups all winter long.

Shred it—Summer squash is easy to shred. Freeze it or use it right away to make savory cakes,  quick breads, and salads. Shred potatoes or sweet potatoes for potato pancakes.

Dry it—Make your own “sundried” tomatoes by cutting them in half (or slices), salting them, and putting them in a very low oven for several hours. This process concentrates their flavor and makes for a very versatile ingredient in soups, stews, pastas, and on pizzas. And then, of course, there’s the ubiquitous kale chip, which, when you get right down to it is dried kale, and an excellent way to use up a lot of kale in one fell swoop.

Can it—Saving the obvious solution for last…don’t forget canning, a method of preservation used by our foremothers (because they had to or risk starvation) and by plenty of current cooks (for pleasure and fun). Order a book and go to town. Or visit one of the many great websites focusing on canning and preserving. Two of my favorites are Punk Domestics and Food in Jars.

Happy Harvest! Use it or lose it!

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate,  on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images: Vanessa Barrington

Eggs from a coworker and bacon from a local ranch makes the simplest brunch recipe.

It’s Saturday morning. On Friday a coworker handed off a carton of eggs from her own chickens, and later that day you broke down and bought a package of local bacon from Niman Ranch. What do you do? Make bacon cups, of course.

Or at least that’s how it went in the EcoSalon kitchen a few weekends back when we were brainstorming brunch ideas.

To be perfectly honest, we’re (almost) over the bacon internet meme, and we really don’t want to be one of those people, but these bacon cups are kind of amazing. And simple!

So if you want to impress your bacon-and-egg-loving friends – we make plenty of vegan fare, too, honest! – give these a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

These are also ideal for large breakfast or brunch parties because you can pop in several muffin tins into the oven at once, solving the perennial “How to fry eggs for 10 people and all sit down to eat at the same time” conundrum.

EcoSalon’s Bacon Cups

Ingredients:

• 6 strips of local, organic bacon
• 6 organic eggs, preferably from chickens you know
• Some type of crumbly cheese: goat, blue cheese, parmesan, etc.
• Green onion, chopped

Directions:

• Line each tin hole of a muffin tin with bacon. If you like your bacon a little crispy, put tin in the oven at 350F for 10 or so.
• Crack one egg into each hole.
• Sprinkle with green onions and cheese.
• Bake for 20 minutes.
• Pop the bacon cups out of pan onto a plate and serve immediately.

See, easy. And the best thing about this recipe is that you can vary it however you want. Add in some sundried tomatoes? Why not. Sprinkle in a pinch of Herbes de Provence? Sure.

Enjoy!

Images: Anna Brones, Natalie Dee, Anna Brones

10 creative ways to get a handle on your fridge.

So, about those billions of dollars of wasted food. While there’s some good advice out there, far too many of us still end up with the same sad, limp things lurking at the back of the fridge, out of date and out of mind. It’s time to get a handle on food waste in the fridge. (You know that stalk of celery deserves it.)

1. PLASTER YOUR FOOD WITH DATE LABELS

Here’s an ideal scenario: you open your fridge, and in one glance you can see how fresh its contents are. What’s the easiest way to do this? Stick a label on: either a big one with the “Use By” date written large, or use color-coded sticky notes, one color for every day of the week. Then it’s a cinch to shuffle the soonest-gone food to the front. Hang your labels from a piece of string attached to the fridge door, and you’ll never forget to stick them on when you’re loading it up.

2. INVENTORY YOUR STOCK BEFORE YOU SHOP

Spending loads of money at the supermarket is easy if you can’t remember what food you have at home. It’s also a great way to buy things you don’t have time to eat. The solution to this quandary is the humble yet totally brilliant shopping list. If you’re the forgetful type, keep your shopping list in your bag instead of hanging it somewhere in your kitchen.

3. MEAL-PLANNING EMPTIES YOUR FRIDGE

Monday: I really have to use those onions up. So, dinner is Spanish omelet. Tuesday? That lemon sole has until Tuesday, I see from my date label. I wonder if there’s a good recipe somewhere? Wednesday: Sausages. If I leave them until Thursday, they’ll walk away themselves. How about a big casserole? Thursday: My balcony-grown veggies are picked and perfect, and I’d hate myself if they went mushy. Thursday is officially salad day. Friday: I’ve run out of stuff to use up. Success!

4. SHOP MORE OFTEN, BUY LESS

One of my favorite shopping challenges is working out when supermarkets mark up their special offers for food about to go out of date. Pick your moment and you can make a killing at the checkout. This kind of research goes hand in hand with another good habit – buying only what you need that day, or for the next 48 hours. The more you’re relying on just-bought food, the less likely it is to get lost at the back of the fridge.

5. USE YOUR FREEZER LIKE A PRO

Sometimes, the smart thing to do is cook too much food – if you have a freezer, that is. Grab your plastic containers, fill them with excess dinner, leave them to cool and then throw them in the freezer. The result is the healthy version of a TV dinner: something that requires little time to prepare (apart from the thawing), and is perfect for those evenings after bad days at work where the idea of cooking something feels like the last straw for your sanity.

6. UNDERSTAND YOUR FRIDGE’S TEMPERATURE ZONES

Fridges are anything but even-temperatured. Why is lettuce fine near the door but deep-frozen onto the back wall? Because there can be a 5-degree difference between regions of your fridge. Watch this video to learn more (including why it’s a bad idea to put your milk cartons in the fridge door).

7. LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “USE BY/SELL BY” AND “BEST BEFORE”

They’re far from interchangeable. And if you’re a resident of the UK, it’s a muddlesome issue. “Use By” is the one you’d be truly foolhardy to ignore – but “Best Before” is all to do with food quality. It’s the manufacturers protecting their standards, and in many cases it has little to do with how edible the food still is. It’s so confusing a situation that the British government is scrapping it, but if you see something similar in your neck of the woods – beware of becoming as muddled as we have.

8. CLEAN AND DE-ICE YOUR FRIDGE REGULARLY

My most disturbing memory of de-icing a fridge was from my student days, when I returned from a lecture to find the strangest guy on my floor attacking the fridge with a cleaver. He explained the ice made him angry, and we were all relieved when he moved out shortly afterward. Nevertheless, some days I see his point. Once that ice builds up, you can’t shift it easily. Yet you need to: it’s blocking air circulation and constricting your precious storage space. Immerse a paint-scraper in boiling water and gently chip away – or empty it of food and turn it off for 24 hours (with a plastic sheet under it). Anything but a cleaver. Please.

9. DIVIDE INTO PORTIONS WHEN YOU’RE HOME, OR BUY IN PORTIONS WHEN YOU SHOP

Shops with food bins that allow you to weigh out your own are a boon. Aside from the fun of it, it’s also practical for the option-conscious shopper. Want to get exactly two meals’ worth? Weigh it out exactly. But if you do decide to buy in bulk (say, if it’s more cost-effective to do so), weigh your ingredients after you unpack and see if there’s anything extra that can go in the freezer for when you truly need it.

10. LEARN SOME EMERGENCY “USE ‘EM UP QUICK” RECIPES

When all your waste-prevention plans have gone awry and your refrigerated food is on the verge of going off, you need a backup plan – a set of recipes that use up the widest range of on-the-turn ingredients in one go. We’re talking stews, soups, pot pie, casserole – in other words, things you can whip up in bulk and then keep cool or freeze for a lazy food day.

Images: Rameshng, BruceTurner, ilovebutter, Mr T in DC, Ian B-M, kanshiketsu, EvelynGiggles, qmnonic, Marko Milosevic, Lars Ploughmann and YannGarrPhoto, Sarah G

After two decades of making dinner, I am finally ready to cook like a man.

The day my father died was the day my mother officially stopped cooking. From that point on, she might scramble an egg or make a tuna fish sandwich, but she would never again prepare what could be considered a proper meal, one with a protein, a starch and a vegetable. This was not a protest or a manifestation of extreme grief, it was merely her way of declaring a formal and definitive end to an era. She had put dinner on the table every night during the forty-one years of her marriage, and my father’s death provided a natural stopping point. She was, quite simply, done.

I am considerably younger than my mother was then, and my husband, thankfully, is very much alive. But I am feeling the first rebellious stirrings that I suspect will eventually lead me to hang up the pots and pans. After 25 years, I have been rendered sad and stupid by the grindingly repetitive nature of dinner, by the never-ending need to plan the evening meal, then shop for it and prepare it, night after night, year after year – a mind-numbing rotation of meat and side dishes that my family greets, more often than not, with an obnoxious chorus of  ”chicken…again?” I am tired of having to remember who likes fish and who won’t eat red sauce, who will be home on Tuesday nights and who won’t. I am bone weary from it all, which is unfortunate, because I would actually enjoy cooking if I could do it as a lark, once in a while, with no pressure or expectations – which is exactly the way my husband cooks.

It may be a gross generalization, but I firmly believe that men and women approach dinner in entirely different ways. My husband cooks for fun – he tinkers with exotic and savory ingredients until he comes up with something novel and delectable. I, on the other hand, have cooked all these years in order to stave off starvation in the next generation of humans. I cook because otherwise children will die. This difference in approach leads to vastly different types of dinners: my husband’s meals are creative and beautiful while mine are grim and workmanlike. To put it in artistic terms, my husband’s cooking is like painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; mine is like slapping a coat of primer on the backyard shed.

To be fair, it’s not like my husband and I have a level playing field. Since I work at home, with flexible hours, I am the one who cooks on weekdays, when there is limited time to shop or study a recipe. I will very often throw something together using whatever is on hand – my default meal is slathering some Dijon mustard on a chicken breast and calling it a night. My husband, on the other hand, only cooks on weekends and holidays, when he can spend hours going over recipes, planning his menu, going to gourmet shops to find the perfect crimini mushrooms or his favorite brand of Asian fish sauce. He takes great care with his ingredients – when he makes chicken, he will rinse it thoroughly in cold water, then pat it gently dry before painstakingly plucking each individual bit of feather, and massaging tenderness into the meat. For a chicken, being prepared by my husband is like spending the day at Canyon Ranch.

My husband can afford to be meticulous, since the whole family is around on weekends, and he views us as a small and resentful staff of sous chefs. He will not hesitate to bellow for me or one of the kids to come and put up a pot of water or get him a paper towel, or find the butter. When I prepare the weekday meals I do it alone, cooking all the courses, making the salad, setting the table and cleaning as I go.

And despite the drudgery, the effort has been worth it, because all of those meals, prepared by a grumpy and indifferent cook, were eaten by a family that enjoyed sitting down together to talk about their day and bond over an overcooked piece of poultry. But my kids are grown now, and when my youngest child goes off to college next year, I plan to stop cooking, cold turkey (which is what we’ll have for dinner some nights, on rye bread with mayonnaise). I may cook for fun once in a while, but I am looking forward to following the matriarchal tradition of turning my kitchen into the appendix of the house: a useless, vestigial organ that I may have to get rid of if it starts to rot. Except for the oven, which I will continue to use the way my mom did – to store sweaters out of season.

Image: Kevindooley

ColumnWhere we’re going, little lady, you won’t need this.

Edward Abbey had his dust and rocks from which to cry; I have my HTML. Today I hone my hypertext on Hammacher Schlemmer, proud purveyor of uselessly clever objects and distraction of last resort from the pressure earaches I always get when the plane’s about to land. One word: Skymall.

Allow me to introduce for posterity the self stirring pot. This is, of course, making the rather bold assumption that we will have posterity springing forth from the kind of stupid sires who invent things like self-stirring pots.

I discovered this marvel of ingenuity not seen since Billy the singing bass by way of Roger Ebert on Twitter. EcoSalon retweeted Ebert, helpfully adding @hammacher. (Only on Twitter will you find a movie critic, a green publication and a manufacturer of wasteful gadgets keeping company.)

The nonstick self-stirring electric pot, with its built-in autonomous spatula and virgin ore, will set you back $99.95 and civilization back a bit more, as noted by perennially snarky Jezebel and Calorie Lab. (Year ago, the latter’s publisher sagely advised a much younger me to pick up the phone before embarking on a product rant, but Scrimscher, you’ll have to forgive me this one. My hands are both too busy stirring.)

Meanwhile on the tweet, one reader, @abbesol, declared it “Lazy!” while another, @rufola, staked out the gray area: “At first glance: bad. But my Mum loves to cook and has bad arthritis, maybe this would help.”

Hammacher’s own defense was charmingly no-means-yes:

Upon further grilling (but not stirring), Hammacher explained that the product is great for those who are busy doing other things when preparing the meal. I thought stirring was part of preparing the meal, or at least a boring chore to entrust to a fourth grader. Once again, I am out of touch with what’s going on in hands.

I’m unfamiliar with the Hammacher demographic but I’m duly impressed by its cohort’s apparent adherence to cooking so many courses simultaneously at least one pot is left to a tragic fate of sink or swirl. Too many cooks in the kitchen? Try too many hands. The EcoSalon audience, by contrast, prefers to stumble along in the beleaguered darkness of doing more than one thing at the same time. And I, your fearless leader, shall stumble, as well as possibly burn, clump, stick and scald right along with you, most likely because I didn’t get off the phone. On the multitasking brink of the twentieth century, and also every century before that since the invention of cookery, we stand firm.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and anything else. Cheers and spellcheck!

Image: ginnerobot

How the crockpot resurgence contributes to the American slow down.

My crockpot - the SUV space hog of the kitchen counter – is my new enabler in the quest to take time to smell the roses, not to mention the aromatic free-range bird melding with organic onions and homegrown herbs in a lethargic, six-hour simmer. Toss them in the pot, come back for the gold six hours later. A meal that drove itself home. It’s what’s for dinner.

The process of slow-cooking tasty comfort food without constantly stirring the pot helps me and countless others to heed Michael Pollan’s directive to focus on “real food” and connect with life – especially during a time when spare minutes to hover is chronically elusive.

“It opens up a space to do other things and this is huge when it comes to reducing stress,” observes Thea Singer, Ph.D. – author of Stress Less: The New Science That Shows Women How to Rejuvenate The Body and The Mind. “We know the benefits of mindful eating, and you could say that another synonym of the slow food movement is mindful cooking.”

Yes, time is what fuels the resurgence, at least on the ceramic surface. Like a lover who gives generously without demanding constant hugs and feedback, the plug-in grub tub frees us up to do our thing – only to come together in the evening and share what we bring to the table as a unit.

Unless you’re a Top Chef contender or former professional stuck at home with too much time on your hands,  neediness in food prep can be a major turn off, especially during hectic week days when a lofty goal might be schlepping to the taco stand to get burritos on the table before seven.

“Braising is what I would usually do on a Saturday or Sunday if it’s raining and I can walk over to the stove and stir every half hour, and the slow cooker lets you do that on a week day before you go to work,” says Jill Santopietro (above), the senior food editor of Chow.com, who vlogs recipes.  “But you have to choose the right recipes that need eight hours of cooking. A lot f them, like a veggie stew I made in our test kitchen, cooks in three hours. You still have to be there, so it’s not full proof.”

Still, it’s a step in the right direction, agrees Santopietro. But the consummate foodie adds that true mindful cooking results from mindful planning, something our society greatly lacks.

“As a kid, my grandmother would plan in the morning for dinner, and that is what is missing from our culture,” says the chef and writer. “People  in this country don’t think about what they are going to cook for dinner.  If you don’t think and go to the store and plan, you will end up going to a fast food joint to get dinner when you are starving.”

Despite the clever advertising, the fast food we reach for when starving contributes to obesity, diabetes, breakouts and other undesirable side effects, while slow cooked turkey chili, veggie stew and lentil soup sans the corn syrup and trans fats is typically the antithesis to all of that. Of course, you have to eat it slow, too, to reverse the national epidemics rushing us to early deaths.

Researchers on the cutting edge of linking cooler jets to happier cells find listening to our bodies is the key to thriving, according to UCSF Dept. of  Psychiatry professor, Elissa Epel, who specializes in identifying mind-body behavior that promotes stress resilience.

Five steps Epel cites in achieving well being: Breathing and awareness, staying present and minimizing time traveling, expressing gratitude and savoring, carving out a time allowance and daily exercise (the big E). Add the antioxidants and vitamins, handfuls of pistachio nuts, blueberries and purified Omega -3, and you might add years to your life. Of course, eliminating the stinking thinking goes a long way, too.

“Our brains are set up to focus on the negative,” says Epel, “But we can choose to reinterpret any negative experience and restore cells that deteriorate when we age or experience stress.” Take the example of not getting an ideal parking space at the store. When you tell yourself you are doing something great for cell regeneration by walking further, you create a positive spin that boosts your health.

Health science has witnessed a greater emphasis on cellular aging and the telomere maintenance system, an area led by Epel and several colleagues who form the Psychoneuroendocrinology Laboratory Group – which runs studies on issues such as stress – induced cortisol and overeating.

“Cortisol kicks off dopamine, and the reward system stimulates wanting to get what we need,” Epel explains. “We go in search of fatty and sweet food because we think we are exerting ourselves and this leads to a cycle similar to addiction,” she has found.

Which leads me back to the crockpot, and the question, could this help break that cycle of addiction and other bad behavior which shortens our lives?

Santopietro, who doesn’t own a crockpot, says it can help you relax, but isn’t a cure-all.

“A slow cooker won’t cure people of not going for that quick fat option,” she finds. “A better method is thinking more about food in advance. I’m an anomaly because I think of food more than the average person – I’m obsessed with it. There are great recipes you can make in 30 minutes without a cooker.”

Guess it boils down to the old adage: failing to plan is planning to fail. Can thinking ahead help us carve out that time to hover on a rainy Sunday or even sunny Monday the way foodies do to feed their souls along with those they love?

Maybe so. Until then, I’m sticking to my crockpot. As I said, it’s my enabler.

Images: Christine Leiser, Busbeytheelder, Chow, Amazon