A Chili in Every Pot!

Tis the season upon us. Hockey, football, skiing, ice skating. a brisk run and more.

The Vegetable Alchemist at your service.......

Mushroom Chili with Beans and Barley
Cook Time: 30-40 minutes
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 12
servings (1 ½ cup each)

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 pounds cremini mushroom, quartered
1 medium green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and diced
2 cups frozen corn, thawed
3 cups cooked barley
1 (16ounce) can chili beans, undrained
1 (16ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (8ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (14.5ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
3 cups vegetable broth
1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chilies
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions
1. Heat olive oil in a 1-gallon thick bottom saucepot over medium heat. Add onion and
garlic; cook 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and continue to cook 4 - 5 minutes. Stir
in peppers; cook for an additional 3 - 4 minutes or until vegetables are
tender.

2. Stir in all remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer
for 20-25 minutes or until flavors are melded, stirring after 15 minutes to
prevent sticking.

3. YUMMMMMM!

May All Your Fish Come True !

Fish: Fabulous, Interesting, Sexy with a Halo to eat, this protein is the magic ingredient to some of the finest food I have ever appreciated to cook as Chef or consumer. Forgiving to all when understanding its needs; mercilessly bland, boring, and odiferous when not. Spend a quarter for a lemon, or fifty bucks for a sauce, fish can deliver on taste, whether investment or not. Fish, a protein with opportunity so clear that dollar per dollar on growing and yield, it outperforms poultry, pork, and meat. Lean for weight watching, rich for culinary expansion, fast for the home meal dilemma, fish favors those who want to learn its secrets. Pay attention to the market source of your fish purchases and the knowledge takes you on world tour envious of all including Marco Polo. Salty cold water, inland streams or mountain rivers, each source teaches an understanding of why ' fish are what they eat' from firm to soft texture, white or darker color, strong or subtle aroma. With each fish is a self contained statement of origin that cleanly defines a preference for preparations particular and rewarding. The adventure of learning is all yours for the fishing.

With that mini salute to fish and is shellfish brethren I hereby introduce my lifetime love and ventures with ' fish'. I have enthusiastically cooked and fantasticly enjoy while supporting in full form as a true a fishionado! I bring you my favorite thoughts in a blog you will love: May All Your Fish Come True! I will take away your agony and forward you the ecstacy to love my Fabously Intersting Sexy Halo of Fish.

The Cooking Dilemma

Is this you to the left in your perfect kitchen happily being your version of Julia Child, cooking meals for you, your family and friends on a daily basis in a neat organized high end kitchen? No?

Not exactly...I hate to cook....cooking is far too hard.....I have so much stress I cannot make time to cook....my kids are too demanding.....surviving is more important!

Ancient cultures have a saying: "when you go to war, dig two graves, one for your opponents and one for you।!" As I write I see a war going on between the inherited historic kitchen and its system and our present need to cook day to day. It looks like we are digging our own graves stressing over producing daily home meals. Time for some disruptive thinking on a more efficient productive space with support right down to groceries.

Early one Sunday when I was a six year old kid I accompanied my father to a restaurant we owned so he could review the previous night's receipts. With him in the office I stationed myself in the dark kitchen. Loving food, I just had to have something to eat. But what? It was so dark in the non window kitchen I could not even see a refrigerator door! Where there is that will, there is that way, and carefully I smelled my way to chilled wrapped deliciously cooked vegetables, meats and stews, true heaven on earth for a hungry kid. Mangia I did, and in those moments I found my own first fast food. Great food I could get fast! Fabulously tasty, classical food that came from the kitchen of true gourmet cooks well verse in traditional recipes of many cultures.

Where are we today? Is that great food our food today? Do we need it, want it, crave it? Do we cook for the same results in appearance, umami, satiation and price, with the time and lifestyle that came with the recipes or the system set up to support them? For the first time in hundreds of years, no matter how media stars and food writers, manufacturers and bloggers adjust a recipe in scale and scope, changing prep time, cook and eat- in time one can rarely deliver a plate that the consumer can actually execute that way. And even if they do, there are all those recipes that do not. Low fat, low salt, gluten free, altered foods, unreal timetables.... we are trying, but we need to succeed. Time to rethink the kitchen and system just as horse transportation took on a new norm that became the car. We are underdelivering to ourselves, by overdelivering on false reality. Something that use to be such a beautiful daily effort, to cook, has become a dilemma.

Seven years ago I was on a televised international committee ideation with designers, equipment manufacturers, chef's, growers, writers, marketers, family advocates and social media folk all throwing our ideas into a kitchen design pot of the future. As we continued we consistently queried the food savvy, varied age and experienced family audience for questions adding their imput to our emerging platforms. The end result was, that everyone got what THEY wanted and the kitchen is now an audio visual cooking center almost double in size with this endless stream of equipment, pots and pans that are used infrequently, a pantry with ready food prep, canned and frozen for convenience, a refrigerator with a list of take out or order in phone numbers or links to same and a the list goes on and on and on, close to being a family center.....but the evidence is clear....the cooking dilemma stills grows and I can solve it with your help!

Let's take a step back and think. Did consumers know they needed the car, the air conditioner, computer, itunes, iphones and ipads? No, but someone thought through a real not just temporary improvement and we moved forward. New goods improve our lifestyles and become integrated into our daily lives. Just as with other technologies we are hitting a new era in the kitchen It is time to talk and rebuild/build a more practical kitchen style. While no one including cooking sites, magazines, food companies and manufacturers want a change, it has to come.

Pretty kitchen above, nice tunic and hat. However, they may demonstrate a pazzazz that is costly to buy and questionable to execute. Some say a cooking dilemma. I say, The Cooking Conundrum!@, disruptive thinking, and with your help, coming to you soon.

Farm to table meets Fish!

Vegetable Alchemy takes a focus: fun, fit food through the eyes of a chef! Attached: tilapia with baby tomatoes and Vitamin K....the onion family: garlic onion, leeks and scallions and a touch of herb. 5 minute prep, 5 minute cook, 15 minutes even with cleanup. Farm to table takes on a new norm, Vegetable Alchemy, body wise food. Salut!

Science and Food Common Sense

Spring Farmers Markets. Get out there!

One wise person once said, 'Common Sense, if it was so common, more people would have more of it.' This injected comment is not about being critical. It demonstrates that we are in a new age for body and biology and sometimes like when the computer hit the world, you just have to wise up and see the handwriting on the wall before your nose touches it.

Enter the food pyramid changes this last month. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/la-he-food-pyramid-20110602,0,3746868.story

Enter the comments and critics on the food pyramid changes. http://www.hartman-group.com/hartbeat/of-triangles-circles-and-other-children-shapes-the-food-pyramid-changes-again?utm_content=folexcchef@aol.com&utm_medium=HartBeat%3a+T. But to what end.

The most important is to redesign recipes for what science and the computer has offered the last years and start to be honest about how to educate great body care. http://www.vegetablealchemy.com/cellcuisine.html Quality care in life no matter the year. Fun, flavorful, colorful strategic recipes made from a new modern cuisine rooted in science and wise food prepartations meant for a happy diner.

More to come soon: A Fish in your Medicine Cabinet!? There is a better way. Omega 3 Fish Stories from the Deep. Meanwhile, head to the new Summer veggie markets and with a touch of seasoning, olive oil and garlic, grill those new fresh onions for burgers pastas, snacks and best of all, to enrich your body! Tasty, too!

Cell Cuisine Gets a Look

No question that the body is one amazing mass of molecules. Molecules make parts. And part by part they make us. They need nourishment. It is essential to know more on a daily basis how we work and what we need. Before you from this Vegetable Alchemist is another update for

Cell Cuisine tm .

This concept and graphics are an entirely new original take on how to focus on self care. Never underestimate the slogan ' You are what you eat.' Cell Cuisine tm is much more than just food. It is about viewing fun things that happen at the molecular level in each of us, that is part food and part body care. Recipes have flavor, color, balance and practical cost, but with a redefined central purpose. This education into self care at every age is the present new norm we all need. Viva la Cell Cuisine tm: vegetables, herbs and spices, alone or added carefully with more ingredients but for a purpose, making a better place for anti-aging, lasting cell care.

My Cellular Junk

I have been a businessman, chef and restaurateur all my life, but always wanted to be an athlete. Regardless of 50 plus, two months ago I decided to head back and become competitive learning to ride dressage or jumping at various heights on horses. It takes stamina, attentiveness, being in good shape and a sensible attitude to always be prepared like a boy scout....or girl scout! Always.

Got a trainer, started to cross train: run, swim, pilates, bike and various tai chi stretching for the mind, a little each day. Loving the horse and the fun workouts! But as they say....no pain, no gain. And until I get up to speed and even staying there, after a month my body felt like a punching bag. So... of course....one has to head to the bar, see and laugh with ladies, roust his buddies and yuk it up to remember he is still human and have some social networking fun!

Meanwhile, training mindset returns to say, 'time to see this is hard work.' To do this you have to not only change what you eat, but your life, and a lot! Even get rid of some of your CELLULAR JUNK, the stuff left over in your body and cells from day to day living as time goes on regardless of how hard you try to eat well. We all have it. And it cloaks you inside and out! Young can do, but cellular junk has to go! I made a long term plan.

Vegetable Alchemy with its vegetables, herbs and spices again to the rescue. A bevy of enzymes, minerals and vitamins to help me degrade my 'cellular junk'...best part about it..yummy too! homemade curry with a veggies quick stirfry and mussels..hmmmmm, good! I can feel the scrubbies at work. Happy Vegetable Alchemy day!