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Tomatoes. In soups, casseroles.

Spaghetti sauce. In pasta dishes, as topping for bean croquettes, eggplant platters.

Tuna fish. In casseroles, sandwiches, salads, rice fritters.

Minced clams. In chowder, spaghetti sauce, dips, spreads, fritters.

Beets. Add beautiful color and interest to vegetable, tuna, lettuce, or spinach salads.

Corn. In casseroles, fritters, soups, stews, pancakes.

FREEZER FOODS

Leftover beans. Always cook at least twice what the recipe calls for and store the rest for instant meals.

Middle Eastern flatbread (pita) and tortillas. Use for authentic foreign dishes and for instant sandwiches with all types of fillings. (Cheese melted on tortillas makes a quick and delicious snack—and kids love it.)

Frozen peas. Add color, taste, and nutrition to soups, stew, salads, etc.

SEASONINGS (“SEASONED STOCK”)

Powdered vegetable seasoning. Use in just about anything. Look around and you can find vegetable seasonings that are made from natural ingredients, without preservatives or salt. Use with water whenever the recipe calls for Seasoned Stock, or sprinkle on whenever you think extra flavor might be needed.

You can make your own seasoning to sprinkle on a little extra flavor. Here’s a suggestion from Alice Green of San Francisco: take 3 sheets of nori (pressed seaweed, available in Asian or natural foods stores) and toast one side of each sheet over a gas burner (to enhance the flavor). Then roast ¼ cup of sesame seeds in a dry skillet until golden. Crumble the nori and combine with seeds in a small jar with a tight lid. Shake well. (I would add that you might want to put the seeds in a blender or grind them to release flavor and aid their digestibility.) This is good on all grain and vegetable dishes, Alice says.

Herbs. You can substitute fresh herbs for dried herbs, or vice versa, by using the following rule of thumb in the recipes that follow: for every teaspoon of dried herbs, use roughly one tablespoon of fresh. But be careful to taste as you go: herbs vary greatly in strength. Unless otherwise indicated, the recipes call for dried herbs.

Intentional Leftovers

Prepared foods are popular because it is nice, when you are exhausted after a long day, to just take a delicious dish out of the refrigerator, heat, and serve.

But why not make your own TV dinners? Again, it is a question of habit. If we get into the habit of preparing more than we will eat in one meal and freezing the rest (in containers that can go right into the oven, if appropriate), then we can have our favorite foods there ready for us when we are too tired to cook.

Cook extra beans for the freezer—to be added later to soups, casseroles, or salads. Also, cooked grain keeps well for about four days in the refrigerator. My children like to add milk or buttermilk and a touch of brown sugar (and sometimes some nuts) to leftover brown rice or bulgur for instant cereal. Cooked potatoes also keep well in the refrigerator for at least that long. They can become a quick salad (delicious with other vegetables and a vinaigrette dressing), hash browns, or dozens of other delicious potato dishes.

Shopping

One of the most effective ways to change how you eat is to change how you shop. In a giant supermarket that offers (or should I say bombards us with) 15,000 items, finding healthy foods seems like a struggle. If we shop in a smaller, whole foods cooperative store, we are surrounded by foods that not only tempt our palates but are good for us. A second argument for shifting to a whole foods store is time. Even though I measure out the quantities myself, it takes me less time to shop at the Noe Valley Community Store than at the supermarket. Maybe this is because I know exactly where everything is and I don’t have to walk down long aisles of items I would never buy. In addition, shopping in my community whole foods store probably seems even quicker than it is, because I enjoy it. A supermarket trip seems like an ordeal to endure. A trip to the community store is a totally different experience. Everyone there seems to want to be there,