I have been trying to figure ways to eat pinole without having to resort to the most basic, and least pleasant methods: eating handfuls of it or washing it down in a glass of water. While effective, neither is appetizing. I want the nutrition and energy benefits of pinole, but I want it to be enjoyable. The trouble is, there are not many recipes out there for pinole.

What is pinole anyway? It's simple: fine-ground cornmeal lightly toasted. That's it. But it's apparently sufficient to fuel the Tarahumara, the legendary ultra-long distance runners of Mexico's Copper Canyon, as they run 150 to 300 miles or more — non-stop. If pinole helps them run, then by golly, I'm going to figure out how to get it into my diet. But I refuse to eat handfuls of the stuff, and I prefer not to swill it in water. Hence the experimentation.

Toasting the cornmeal is easy; I have a cast iron pan that is perfect to toast 1-2 cups at a time. Heat the pan, toss regularly for 5 minutes or so, and that's that. Pinole. You can then add water and make a simple cracker or tortilla, depending how you cook it (crispy or soft). Today I tried this:

1 small apple, shredded
1 knob ginger, shredded
1 egg
splash of half-and-half (I don't have milk)
1 cup pinole
1/2 cup flour (I used whole wheat)

Mix & fry up on griddle.

I had one, about 5-inches big, with maple syrup (I'm going running shortly so will save the other 2 for after). It was dense and a bit chewy, but not unpleasantly. Had I added an entire cup of milk & made them more like griddle cakes (or Johnnycakes, which they closely resemble), they may have been lighter. The ginger was a great touch; a bit of bite and fire. Will this fuel me for a 200 miles? No, but I'm only running 5 miles this morning. I needed something other than an empty stomach. I think between the fresh fruit, the egg and the pinole, I'll be in good shape when I take off in about 30 minutes.

But I have more experimenting in front of me. Something I am looking forward to.

I love brunch. I love baked goods, and adding fresh, seasonal fruit is an absolute win. Unless it’s done wrong, and then it can be any manner of disaster. Yesterday it was a gutbomb, and it wasn’t the good kind. Today, I think I made a better choice.

I had made the shortcake a few days earlier, to have with fresh strawberries (a bit of half-and-half poured on top rather than whipped cream). But the strawberries were gone, and so I thought I’d use the remainder of the shortcake for Saturday brekkies. The big mistake, I think, was using as much shortcake as I did. Using up all the leftovers is not always a good idea.

i split the remaining wedge of shortcake horizontally, buttered it and put it on the griddle to toast. It was over a quarter of the entire glass pie-pan’s worth I’d made several days earlier. I chopped up two fresh peaches and cooked them about 10 minutes with a bit-too-much maple syrup. (You have have deduced the theme here.) And then I dumped the peach-syrup mix on the shortcake and ate it all with another cup of tea.

At the time, it seemed fine. I did not feel over-filled; I was sitting at my computer, watching an episode of GlobeTrekker and not doing much of anything. But about an hour later, when I thought I’d start getting ready to go for a run, I found my body was not going to be part of that plan. My gut felt heavy, and my mind felt heavier still. I wanted to go for a run, but I had no energy. The lack of mental energy was far more distressing than how dull my body felt, but the two went together. I had no doubt about that. The breakfast was yummy, but it was very bad nutrition. It was, of course, dessert, not breakfast, and not the kind of breakfast needed to physical activity. Hours later, after I’d bicycled to the library and generally just slugged my way through most of the afternoon, I just got up and went for my run — and did fine. Getting up and moving was the fix I needed, but the pile of non-nutritional food sitting in my belling told my body to stay still and not move.

I did not enjoy that at all.

This morning I took a different route. I made a stir-fry: left over pasta (chopped up) and chicken, fresh garlic and ginger, beet greens from the garden, a green tomato chopped, some fresh basil, and an egg stirred in at the end to bind it. Oh, and a few nasturtium flowers for color and redundant zestiness. Quickly stir-fried, and — this is key — not too much. It’s now 20 minutes since I’ve eaten, and I don’t feel heavy and lethargic. (I do feel tired but that’s because I was woken in the middle of the night and lost two hours of sleep.) My body feels ready to go. I know the ginger and garlic will give me energy, the chicken and egg strength, the pasta endurance, and the lovely flavors, aroma and looks of the food — well, that’s just for the joy and goodness of the food.

Lesson learned. Save dessert for dessert; don’t expect to build an active day with a load of crap in my belly. Keep the larder stocked with basics and fresh supplies alike. Don’t wait too long in the morning before having breakfast. And make it delicious. I can still taste the fresh flavors, and I know my body, and my mind, will be more willing to cooperate with me today than when I pounded them into submission yesterday with a bad, sweet choice.

I do not know what a “buckle” is. A type of coffee cake, as far as I can tell. Probably has its roots in folk lore of some kind; it’s a very folksy name, the kind of thing Grandma or Great-Aunt Bea would make. “Blueberry buckle” has a more down-home sound than plain old “coffee cake”. And maybe there are more buckle-y recipes but this is just plain old coffee cake: cream butter-sugar-egg, mix in flour-baking powder & milk, bake.

What makes this so good, and the reason to right about yet another morning baked good, is that I was able to use fresh organic blueberries. Big fat ones. Any chance you have to use fresh season fruit, you grab it. And few things are as gorgeous as blueberries cooked hot and juicy, in pancakes or muffins or buckle. Who cares what the word means? Blueberry buckle with fresh berries?

Yowzer. Good.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I love breakfast. More accurately, I love brunch: mid-to-late morning is when I love to stop and go have something warm, fresh and filling. If I had the money and time (and gym membership) I would eat breakfast out everyday: pancakes, waffles, pastries, omelets, hash and whatever else I ended up discovering.

As it is, I almost never get to do that. I went to Broder Cafe on Easter Sunday and had wonderful pancakes with blueberry-lemon sauce; that was a total wow. But usually, if I want to enjoy a good breakfast, I have to make it myself. Which means it’s usually not a meal but something baked: muffins, coffee cake, scones or a quick bread.

This morning, I made a coffee cake with apple-strudely topping. In a small fit of uber-healthy madness, I added a handful of toasted sunflower seeds; that’s not an ingredient I think I’ll be using again like this. Thankfully the sunflower seeds do not distract from the overall flavor of the cake — much. I used a recipe from a book I’ve had so long it’s in tatters, stained with muffin and quick bread batters left by my fingers over the years. A simple recipe: cream butter and sugar, add an egg, add flour and liquid alternately, top the sucker with fruit und strudel then bake. 20 minutes prep plus another 5 to wash up. That’s easy work any morning.

I’m a day late here, but the reason for the tardiness is the same for the meal: hot summer sunshine.

One of the difficulties hot summer days present for those of who love to cook is that a kitchen is not a fun place to be on a hot summer day. Also, many people find their appetite suppressed by heat. I am not one of those; I am as hungry in summer as in winter. I simply want different foods. So to minimize the time I spend with the stove or oven running, I have to come up with something that is a meal but isn’t lots of cooking.

Pasta salad is a win on almost every level.

Actual stovetop time is under 15 minutes, and the pasta can be cooked ahead of time: in the cool of morning or late in the evening. If necessary, you can run the stove to cook the pasta at a time when you can be elsewhere in the house and avoid the kitchen’s temporary spike in heat and humidity.

No other cooked ingredients are necessary. Mayo (or yogurt), fruit, greens, etc: none of these need more than clean ing and a quick bit of prep work. I like chicken in my pasta salad, so that can be a problem at times. This is a good reason to keep cooked and cut-up chicken meat in the freezer, and, if you are desperate or remember at 7am when it’s still cool in the house, you can do a quick cook of a package of thighs. You can simplify further by microwaving them; in a salad, they don’t need the missing flavor of roasting probably won’t be noticed. Today, I’m going with tuna, not quite the same as chicken but still something I enjoy.

I love pie; I mean, who doesn't? The biggest trouble with pie, once you get the hang of making good crust (and dealing with the problem of wet fillings that soggify that crust), is the time it takes to make one. Preparation of even a simple pie can take an hour, and if the filling has to sit and wait before baking (as with the apple pie I made last week), that time grows ever longer. Pie is not something you whip up on the spur of the moment.

Anyone who loves baking pies and reads books, watches cooking tv shows and checks the foodie blogs is familiar with “The Pie and Baking Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I don’t remember what show I first saw her apple pie method demonstrated, but her method was a great solution to the second-most difficult part of making a good apple pie (the most difficult problem, of course, being making a decent crust). The solution — remove as much moisture from the apples as possible before baking and convert it to a flavor-laden syrup — is simple and brilliant.

It just requires starting a few hours earlier than you might normally do. If you can remember to do so, you will be rewarded with a pie that is flavorful and not soggy.

The method is very simple. Peel and slice the apples as you normally would. Douse them in fresh lemon juice (never for the love all that is holy that crap in a plastic lemon or a bottle), toss with white and brown sugar, spices and salt. Place it the apples in a colander set in a bowl (if necessary, place a small cup on the bottom so the colander is elevated at least an inch.

Now, go away for two or three hours. As the apples sit there, the sugars will draw the liquid out from the slices, and the liquid will collect in the bowl. One hour will be ok, but if you can get the full three hours, so much the better.

In the meantime, make your pie dough.

Once the slices are done draining (once you have reached the end of the time you are willing to waiting for the slices to drain), pour the liquid into a small saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of butter and boil down to a thick syrup. Don’t stir; swirl the pan occasionally. This will help you judge the syrupiness of the liquid.

Put the slices back in the bowl; toss with cornstarch.

Line the bottom of the pie pan with dough as normal. Add the apples. Drizzle the syrup over the slices. Cover with dough as you prefer (lattice, full top, crumble). Bake at 425 for about 30 minutes; if necessary, cover the edges of the crust with a strip of foil to prevent from burning.

The two great outcomes of this method, apart from having apple pie, is that you eliminate the sogginess factor that plagues too many pies (especially if the only apples you have available are moisture-laden; some apples are better suited for baking, but you may not have those on hand). Additionally, the syrup you make adds a more intense flavor, not just of apple but of the butter. That’s never a bad thing.

If wet apple pies have plagued you, give this a try. The extra steps are minimal; you just can’t wait til the last minute. If you can get the apples draining by late afternoon, you’ll be good for dessert. And the leftover pie, if anything, won’t turn the crust into a nasty sludge overnight.

In 2006, NY Times food writer Mark Bittman (“The Minimalist”) wrote about “no-knead” bread, the first great bread-making innovation, as he put it, in over 6,000 years. He did not invent the process — Manhattan baker Jim Lahey did — but Bittman simplified the recipe for home bakers, and it’s been a massive success. Understandably, with the growing desire to do gourmet at home, people’s love of rustic breads, and, on top of everything else, the incredible pace of life so many of us face. To reduce what many people see as a complex and time-consuming “task” into a series of steps that can be done between tv shows is nigh unto a miracle.

It is also the loss of a joy that cannot be replaced by an innovation.

I have no objection to the Lahey-Bittman method; if I had a pan to cook the bread in, I’d make it myself frequently. I love rustic breads, but at $3.50 a loaf, I never buy it. And traditional recipes are a lot of work, spread over two days (either way, traditional or nouveau, requires a lavain to ferment overnight). If I knew I was having guests over for dinner tomorrow, damn right I’d be making no-knead bread tonight.

But I will never stop making “real” bread. Cooking from scratch must take some amount of effort; there must be a cost in time and energy, however slight, for a cook, and those who eat the food, to appreciate what a gift the meal is. I may enjoy a loaf of no-knead bread, but will I appreciate it as much as the loaves I made today? No-knead is a great way to get excellent rustic bread, but kneading my own loaves gives me much more than a few slices of bread.

I really am trying to cut back on the sweets. Now that I’m in training for a marathon, running four times a week, stretching, cross-training on the bike, I need food that provides real energy, not useless calories that will turn into blobbiness. Learning to make my own snackage, baking bread and such will give me something other than sweets to turn to when my will grows weak. But one thing I know: trying to be tyrannical about such things only leads to failure.
Better to make some cookies and eat a few a day than to tell myself No! No! NO! for days and then… well, you know how that goes.

But last night, I had no ingredients (now that I think of it, I had everything I needed for oatmeal-raisin cookies, my favorite; weird I did not realize that at the time). I had butter and brown sugar (and oats, and raisins!) but nothing else. Turns out you can make a variant of sugar cookie with brown sugar. I found an interesting recipe that turned out pretty well, especially since I did not over-bake them. Softer cookies need to be under-baked; I got these just right.

A unique feature of the recipe I used was that it has you cook part of the butter until it browns slightly; that adds a slight nuttiness you normally do not get. The dough is a soft and, I guess because my egg was so dang big, a bit wet: I had to add some extra flour. The dough is scooped into balls, rolled into sugar and then baked. The cookies are chewy, with a slight stickiness, but the flavor is just a bit odd. As if they were missing something — but I have no idea what that might be. Ice cream? Coffee? (I gotta get some decaf for evenings.)

More than anything, I guess, these are like soft, chewie Blondies. I’m thinking that sticking a chocolate kiss in the middle of the cookie and letting it melt while baking could be a very groovy thing to try.

It was a quick recipe, fun to make, and, as it turns out, three cookies were more than enough. Oatmeal-raisin? I’m lucky if I don’t eat the whole batch from the bowl before baking.

Pancakes have a will of their own; that is, I think, the only way to explain their contrary nature. I know I made my pancakes perfectly this morning: fresh buttermilk, flour, baking powder & baking soda; I even got the griddle to the perfect heat. And yet the frickin’ things refused to puff, lay as flat as if I had made them with wallpaper paste. Why? Was it the rain? Did I get a bum carton of buttermilk? What the hell had gone wrong?

No, it was the pancakes themselves. The willfully and maliciously refused to obey the laws of physics, ignoring the chemical demand of the buttermilk and baking soda & powder; they pretended they were under no obligation to do what all properly made buttermilk pancakes do: cook into fat, thick, puffy pillows of pancakey goodness.

Bastards.

Anyway, I made a concoction of banana (sauteed briefly in butter and a bit of brown sugar), blueberries and (real) maple syrup to have on top. My older son, Alex, was never a maple syrup fan (huh?), so I used to make a fruit syrup of this sort for him, with a bit more brown sugar and no maple syrup, of course. One advantage of this method is that, for me, it uses less maple syrup, a good thing in several ways (more fruit, less sugar, save money on syrup). It’s very yummy.

Would have been even better if the fracking pancakes had done what they were supposed to. Bastards.