I was in Trader Joe's frozen food aisle when I remembered the HuffPo"Week of Eating In" challenge. Did I really want to do this? I wondered. More to the point, could I? It seemed disconcertingly likely to expose me as a great green hypocrite.

I work for the Center for Ecoliteracy, which, for nearly 20 years, has advocated for improving school lunches; using gardens as a way to encourage kids to eat healthy foods; and teaching young people about the connections between food, health, and the environment.

This past year, we also developed a teacher's guide to the Academy Award nominee, Food, Inc., which, as the promotion says, will make you never look at dinner the same way again.

Professionally, in short, I understand food as a green issue. But personally, I find that living it is a very different story.

As the working mother of a 5- and 10-year-old, I often absentmindedly pull something together for dinner while helping my oldest with his homework and trying to keep my youngest from filling up on crackers. My boys are hungry, tired, and cranky at the end of the day, and this does not always lend itself to fine dining -- or, for that matter, even healthy cooking. So, in addition to roasted chicken and homemade burritos, there's a Trader Joe's lasagna or some other prepared food on the table at least once or twice a week.

Realizing this didn't even make my family particularly happy, I decided to take on the Eating In challenge to see if I couldn't adopt at least a few good new habits.

Things started out a little tougher than they should have; having been away the weekend before, I never got to the weekly food shopping. So on day one, I resorted to eggs and potatoes, with a few sliced apples and cheese. Lame, but the kids liked it.

On day two, I decided to stop in a new neighborhood produce market to pick up the ingredients for a stir-fry. Owned by a family that came to California by way of Yemen, it had a good selection and surprisingly reasonable prices. I found that I liked shopping there more than the usual places I frequent; I also enjoyed cooking and eating that night's meal more than usual. The challenge made me feel just a bit more mindful of what I was doing.

It also inspired me to get a little more ambitious. Thinking ahead about rice and lentils for day three, I soaked a cup of lentils for an hour after dinner before planning to simmer them for several more. Then I got distracted by baths, books, and bedtime -- and forgot the lentils entirely until the next morning, when I found my now-mushy beans still soaking.

That's when I realized that to truly match my actions to my principles and my intentions, I would have to get smarter about this. I'd have to really plan ahead. Cook on the weekend. Get a pressure cooker. Find recipes that are quick, easy, and healthy. Aim for leftovers. Involve the kids. And, most important, I'd have to take this on not as yet another thing to do, but because it felt good in and of itself.

As Michael Pollan wrote in the Center for Ecoliteracy's Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment: "If we all understood that how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world and what is to become of it, we would eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake."

Living according to that fuller consciousness -- not only about the implications of our food choices but also about the pleasures of the process -- is what inspires me now.

Lisa Bennett is the communications director of the Center for Ecoliteracy and a former fellow at Harvard University's Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is a contributor to the Center's book, Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (Watershed Media/University of California Press, 2009).

Have you ever thought about growing a pizza? You may not be able to grow a plant with pizzas ready to pluck from the vines, but you can grow a family friendly garden with pizza ingredients.

I've lived in a lot of places and what separates New York City from all other cities and towns are two constant opposing forces -- one that pulls you out of your small apartment and toward an Eden of restaurants, theatre, work events and all manner of cocktail parties, and another intense magnetic pull that makes you want to nest, bake your own bread and generally shield yourself from the aggression outside your windows. The former is the temptation, the latter is the control.

To get yourself to choose control, one of three things has to happen: you bear children and babysitting costs make nesting at home seem incredibly urgent and appealing. Two, you get a nice assignment from HuffPost to write about eating in. Or three, you're Cathy Erway and you make cooking at home a thoughtful challenge and write a great book about it.

Luckily, I have the first two excuses. This doesn't mean I don't go out -- I've been out twice this week, but it does mean that I tend not to stay out for dinner after the work event/panel/cocktail party. Take-out places have created an industry by preying on this group of tired and occasionally tipsy people who are vulnerable to easy solutions.

On Monday night, after a few hours at a gathering of start-up founders -- where, to be honest, I did cheat a little and have a Perrier and a bag of pretzels -- I came home to a quiet apartment. My kids were asleep and my husband was in California for work. Takeout was tempting. But having made a one-week pledge to cook at home, I turned to one of my favorite meals, a dish I learned when I was cooking at a restaurant in Italy.

It's called rice salad, which sounds unbearably boring, but is not. The recipe I learned to make was simply boiled Arborio rice tossed with capers, olives, herbs and a river of oil. The version I made on Monday was more of a hybrid of rice salad and tuna salad. Into the boiled Arborio (which you want to retain a little bite), I folded good oil-packed jarred tuna from Italy, capers, chopped green olives, piquillo peppers, lemon zest, lemon juice and olive oil. The oil should round out the sharp flavors and there should be enough of it to pool a little in the bottom of the bowl. You can mix in more tuna or less pepper. You can add herbs or use vinegar rather than lemon juice. It's the kind of salad that's impossible not to make your own. It's bright yet soothing, the ideal made-at-home dinner after a long day on the mean streets of Eden.

Italian Rice Salad

Serves 2 to 3

Sea salt
1 cup Arborio rice
¼ cup chopped piquillo peppers (from a jar)
¼ cup chopped green olives
1 tablespoon capers
4 ounces oil-packed tuna
Pinch of red pepper flakes, to taste
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
Lemon juice, to taste
3 to 4 tablespoons best quality extra virgin olive oil
Coarsely ground black pepper

1. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the rice and cook until al dente. Drain.

2. Add the rice to a large bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Toss until the rice is thoroughly coated. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

cross-posted from Not Eating Out in New York:

I just love peeking into other people's kitchens, see how they chop and dice and scurry about. This time my voyeurism has a very particular angle: to see how they cope with a Week of Eating In. And what I've seen from other folks doing that, at the blogs The Eaten Path, No Recipes, Relish Austin, Goldilocks Finds Manhattan and Eating-SF, makes me want to come pounding at their door.

When I asked these five other food bloggers to take the Week of Eating In challenge with me, I had a pretty good idea that they'd each have interesting tips and recipes to share. Not only that, but through their food, and thoughts, and in one case so far, failure (don't take that the wrong way, James) I've come to understand the meaning of eating in so much more. And I'm totally inspired by what they've put on their plates.

Here's a quick look at who they are, and what they've been up to this week, as we cross into the home stretch:

At Relish Austin, working mom Addie has recreated the Parisian treat, croissants, in her Austin, Texas apartment. Though she spent a whole Saturday doing it, the way they turned out makes a compelling case against one major reason for eating out: to enjoy a delicacy, crafted with a certain skill and artistry that's seldom found in the home kitchen. Plus, she made a whole rack of them, at what could not have cost too much more than the average $3 price of just one from a bonafide bakery. She goes on to make shrimp and grits with her toddler, weighing the pros and cons of both going out to eat and cooking at home with grabby, antsy kids around. And while cooking may not be for everyone (like the young Julian, who seems more intent on disturbing Addie's mis en place than pitching in), once the beautiful meal is set on the table, it's family time for everyone.

At Goldilocks Finds Manhattan, Ulla has been making a lot of tasty meat! And lemon pistachio linguine (pictured above), the kind of dish that's probably oh so simple to prepare, but takes just a little know-how to make its few ingredients really soar. My kind of food. She also reflects on bonding with family over food, and since her family operates a livestock farm, touts adventurous cooks as a farmer's allies: "It's easy to sell rib eye but beef shin?" Check out all her tips on how to cook it, cooks and would-be small family farm allies! (They don't look like the dog's dinner that's for sure.)

In San Francisco, Kasey of eating-sf has found a new place for matzo ball soup: in front of the TV, watching the Olympics, staying in from the cold and rain. Sounds way too cozy for words. She also gives tips on easy and easier ways to make chicken stock, good to note this time of year, and shows how seasonal eating in the dead of winter doesn't have to be boring with this tahini butternut squash and chickpea salad.

Onto the menfolk, Marc at No Recipes shows us how to make a spice-crusted roast lamb with mint sauce in forty minutes, start to finish. This meal is the definition of date caliber eating, only Marc had simply made it because he'd been slammed with work, exhausted, and the hunk of grass-fed lamb in his fridge seemed to beg to be eaten each time he opened it. His vibrant mint sauce is far from the conventional version, too. No Recipes is about the philosophy of cooking creatively, rather than following instructions word by word, and here Marc proves you can do it deliciously on a busy weeknight.

James at The Eaten Path has chosen to take (or eat) a path of his own this week. Alright, I won't come down on him too hard, after all, he's always game for eating anything, it seems from his blog, and that includes eating everything in for a week. But with every intention set on continuing his fast, on Day Four, while waiting for a bus in Brooklyn, James got struck with a very New York City-centric disease: the uncontrollable lust for "an edible token of whatever neighborhood I happen to be in." So, he ate a babka. And through photos and prose about the artistry of this particular bakery's babkas, it's clear that he enjoyed it more fully than anything I've probably eaten this week. Maybe anything I've eaten. And that's saying something... FOR eating out.

Yeah, I know, I know, you've been good all week. Making dinner every night, bringing your lunch to work; no donut stops (well, almost none). So now it's Friday, the last weekday in The Week of Eating In, and you're probably thinking, well, I kind of deserve to go out. Plus, it's nice to be kind of social on a Friday night. If you're tempted, maybe if you read this Huff Post on all the waste we generate when we eat out, you might hedge back towards staying home tonight. But flipping over to the positive, I have an even better reason for eating in tonight--home made pizza.

Because our eat-out options are limited in the winter on Martha's Vineyard, and because my boyfriend and I often have his 7-year-old daughter on a Friday night, we've gotten in the habit of making Friday night Pizza Night, at home. It's a totally fun activity; I put out a lot of toppings and everyone makes his or her own. I usually have a few different types of cheeses, both grated (parmesan, mozz, fontina) and crumbled (goat cheese is a favorite--I like white pizzas.) I saute some mushrooms and some onions, dice up sundried tomatoes and olives, cook a little bit of local sausage for the meaty eaters, and have some fresh herbs, sea salt, and good olive oil on hand for finishing. (If you've got time or the inclination to make some other toppings--maybe this weekend for next week's Pizza Night--you can find great recipes for roasted garlic, basil pesto, caramelized onions, and roasted tomatoes on www.finecooking.com.) As for sauce, you can make a quick tomato sauce from canned tomatoes, or you can buy (inexpensively and it doesn't have many additives) a jar of pizza sauce (kids like this).

Best of all, pizza dough is way easier to make at home than you think. During my years as an editor at Fine Cooking magazine, one of my very favorite stories was this one on Make and Freeze Pizza Dough by Evan Kleiman. This super-easy dough is made in the food processor, and takes about two seconds. (You'll have the flour, salt, and olive oil on hand. The only challenge for you snow-bound kids today will be finding a package of yeast.) There's very little kneading involved (also kid-friendly, if a bit kitchen-messy), and the dough divides nicely into 6 or 8 "individual" pizzas so everyone can customize his or her own. You can easily make a second batch if you want to have more friends in. The dough balls rise in a little less than an hour in a warm kitchen--just the right amount of time to have some drinks with friends in the kitchen while you put together your toppings.

Ideally, you'd bake your pizza on a pizza (or baking) stone (at 500 degrees), but if you don't have one, try baking your pizza on the back of a heavy duty sheet pan that's been pre-warmed in the oven. (Some folks also improvise a baking stone with unglazed terra cotta tiles bought at home stores. I've been told that imported tiles can contain lead, so do be aware of this.) You can also use a sheet pan (sprinkled with corn meal) to improvise a pizza peel (usually the easiest way to get a pizza in and out of the oven.)

Any way you do this, it's impossible not to have fun. Once you try it with a few friends or your family, I think you'll find yourself looking forward to Eating In on Friday nights.

The Week Of Eating In is a time to make conscious decisions about your food, which is as much about what you don't eat as it is about what you do. That is to say, all the packaging and food that is wasted when you choose to eat out. From the restaurant food you decided wasn't worth taking home down to the unused plastic fork that got tossed out with the take-out, the amount of waste involved in eating out can border on the absurd.

This doesn't mean eating at home exempts you from contributing to waste. It is, however, within your control. Here are some tips to manage your waste at home. In the meantime, take a look at our journey through the dark side of eating out, with exclusive excerpts from our resident eating-in expert Cathy Erway's book,The Art of Eating In.

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cross-posted from Not Eating Out In New York:

Getting into the heat of the Week of Eating In, I figured it was time for a good gathering over (homemade) grub again. As I discussed in The Art of Eating In, everyone can use some time in the middle of their day to relax, sit down and eat. Especially with your friends, fellow workers or family. Just like we all need to sleep, this communal time is restorative and constructive in many ways, even if it's not a business or "power lunch."

And in the middle of a very busy week, I really needed this down time, too. So I headed to the Union Square Greenmarket that morning with the goal of making lunch for a big bunch. This time, I had a specific recipe idea in mind. Working Class Foodies, the online cooking show that I had the pleasure of appearing in an episode for, had just made a video that inspired me to run to the market for some mushrooms. And polenta, the coarse-grind, flavorful kind that can be found from Cayuga Organics' Greenmarket stand. Working Class Foodie Rebecca cooked a simple wild mushroom ragout in the video, and served it with this polenta, and it made my mouth water. I hope it does for you too -- check out the episode, and be sure to watch it through to the end, because the show is doing a giveaway of The Art of Eating In! See how to win a copy in the link, and the recipe, too.

I found just the mushrooms I was looking for, some gnarly clusters of oyster mushrooms at Madura Farms' stand. I grabbed a couple of portobellos there, too, just for variety, a shallot, and a bag of the polenta cornmeal. I'd also run into Annie Novak from Growing Chefs and Rooftop Farms at the market, as well as Mike Betit from Tamarack Hollow Farm, before my shopping was through.

Although I was off work Wednesday, I was making lunch for some very hard-working foodies: the brewers at Sixpoint Craft Ales, where my boyfriend is founder and president. There's a kitchen I've been tinkering around in upstairs at the brewery, and once I arrived in Red Hook, I settled my things on the counter to begin. A platter of all manner of roasted vegetables was in store, since they were flooding my fridge. Carrots, turnips, celeriac, sunchokes, parsnips, sweet potatoes, even parsley root (which I'd found at Madura Farms two weeks before), were all chopped up to equal size, with their skins on, and roasted at 375 degrees in a coating of olive oil, salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, I followed Rebecca's instructions for the mushrooms, with a slight adjustment because I didn't have any vegetable stock handy. No worries, beer was here. I slipped in some Bengali Tiger IPA to the sizzling mushroom sautee and watched its froth slowly subside. The kitchen was soon filled with a decidedly sophisticated, delicious smell, and one worker even asked, inhaling deeply over the stove, "Is that white wine in there?" So with polenta, mushroom ragout, a roasted vegetable platter, and a loaf of bread on the table, the crew came upstairs for a communal meal, followed by a birthday cake celebration for one brewer, whose thirtieth happened to be that day. You can bet I'll be doing more cooking (and with beer and other brewery stuff) here again.

My night's plans afterward found me out of the kitchen, but inside the Mind Kitchen, a new game show on Heritage Radio Network. Hosted by Matt Timms, my favorite Chili Takedown host, it's a loopy challenge of the imagination, in which three guests are asked to create a three-course menu, verbally, using only a handful of ingredients that Mr. Timms stipulates. It was the second episode for the show, and as it was on Heritage, and based at Roberta's Pizza, this would be my third night in a row where I would be taunted by readily available, really good pizza, which I was supposed to be eating with everyone else! Make it stop, please!

I managed to ward off the temptation, and we had a really fun taping. I won't tell you how the outcome of Mind Kitchen went (listen Tuesday to hear), but I will say that there was a surprise guest judge, who wandered into the station to appear on the next live show, Eat to the Beat. It was Andrew Carmellini, renowned chef of Locanda Verde, and the other contestants and I on Mind Kitchen took turns trying to sell our imaginary meals to Mr. Carmellini as he thought and nodded.

In a final convergence of the food community for the day, I headed to Barcade that night (after a quick dinner at home that wasn't pizza), for a five-year anniversary party for Sixpoint. Bumped into Rebecca Lando, from Working Class Foodies, whose recipe had just made my day.

In honor of the Week of Eating In, where we are encouraging people to cook from scratch, we decided we had to document some of the most unsavory processed and packaged foods. Processed foods often have tons of sodium, additives, preservatives and far less nutritional value than their fresh counterparts. Whether they come in a can, a jar, or a vacuum-sealed aluminum pouch, we hope these foods will leaving you yearning for fresh food and the kind of home cooking that doesn't involve a can opener. What's the most disgusting processed food you've ever eaten?

Sign up here for The Week of Eating In!

Some of you might be wondering now, why all the fuss about eating in? Is that such an escape from the ordinary? Well, in a culture in which roughly half the food we purchase is already fully prepared, 77 percent of it from fast-food restaurants, and almost a quarter of it all consumed on the road, let's take a moment to slow down, and see what these bonuses from the other persuasion might be. In 2006, I embarked on what became two years of not eating any restaurant food, in the unlikeliest city for that (New York). I documented my favorite homespun recipes, ones that I thought would be practical and encouraging for the busy-but-thrifty (and still do) on my blog, Not Eating Out in New York. I also posted discussions on home cooking in the form of tips and announcements or summaries of local events related to home cookery in my blog. One constant among the posts was a new monthly essay pontificating on one particular reason for not eating out.

So I thought I'd go through them and offer the best-of for the Week of Eating In. Dig in.

1. It's Easier Being Green

For anyone who would like to support sustainable farms, or would prefer to drink only organic milk, eat free-range meat and pesticide-free plants, buying the ingredients raw will stretch your dollar by leaps and bounds compared to searching for this only in restaurants. Not only is it less expensive than dining at a restaurant that touts its farm-to-table philosophy, but it's more manageable. There are more options set before you, at a store. You can be more certain about the ethos behind what you're eating, because you've seen it, touched it, cooked it. And, if those restaurants in your neighborhood are as hot as they are around here, you can be sure to get a seat in your own kitchen.

2. Wasting Not

One-third of America's garbage is comprised of packaging: bags, boxes and other things that come with purchases that are not meant to be kept. This includes all the accoutrements that come with your take-out dinner. Compare a home-cooked meal to an average meal that you might order in, for delivery: there's a plate, utensils and maybe a couple napkins for the former, and there's bags, cartons, packets, disposable cutlery and stacks of napkins often as fat as a burrito for the latter. All this makes a huge addition to the waste stream, and much of it (like dirty food containers), are never recycled.

3. Your Health

It's no coincidence that both the rise in obesity and the rise of eating out, particularly at fast-food restaurants, have shot up in recent decades. Cheap eats all too often means unhealthy eats -- pizza, deep-fried food, frozen hamburgers tossed on a grill -- so if you're trying to spend less, you could do some serious damage to your health if you're not careful. Cooking can be empowering in this aspect, you can be sure of how much fat, salt, sugar you put in your food. Since restaurant food has different priorities than your home kitchen (they want to make something irresistibly tasty before considering how healthy it is, most of the time), you can reclaim a pretty significant part of your health by being in control of your food hands-on.

4. Dinner Parties Are Contagious

Eating in is a habit that breeds upon itself, just like eating out is. For instance, if you don't have any leftovers or remaining half-bunches of food in your fridge from the night before, you're less likely to want to cook that day. Just as cooking for yourself can have a domino effect, so does throwing the occasional dinner party. After making the effort of having one, your friends may decide they want to invite you over for dinner, too, to repay the favor, or just because they found it to be such fun. Then the next couple will, and so on. Potlucks have a way of repeating themselves, too. So long as the mood is light and casual -- not stuffy, formal, and put-upon, as in the fanciest restaurant outing -- it's much less intimidating for folks to want to repeat the fun.

5. Feeling Like You Deserved It

Seldom do you feel a sense of accomplishment after stuffing down a take-out sandwich wrapped twice in butcher paper and cellophane, in the middle of a busy day. But, if you brought that sandwich, expertly layered with beefsteak tomatoes, roasted red peppers, your own leftover roast chicken, or whatever you like, wrapped it and brought it with you on your busy day, and it was delicious, there's a surge of pride that's sure to come as you gobble the last bite, and move on with your day. And that's a great feeling. It can change your whole attitude that day, even.

6. Tapping Your Creativity

There are those who say they just can't cook, but everyone should be capable of making something edible. Whether or not that looks like something from Julia Child is another thing, but hear me out -- you do not have to make a known or familiar entree. It can be improv, kitchen-style, a little bit of leftover rice with some extra greens and a poached egg. It can be your painting, on a plate. As time goes by, your creativity will surely liken itself to your palate better, and you'll figure out ways to satisfy yourself that even a restaurant wouldn't know.

7. Taking Charge of What Goes Down Your Mouth

In a system in which our food passes through so many hands, travels however far, by whatever means, from how they were harvested, and often, fully prepared before eating, it's a small act of empowerment to take charge of the final step, cooking it. And for something as vital as food, this is nothing to sneeze at. You'll be more aware of what it is, where it came from, and how it was seasoned (or whether it was fully cooked), whereas not knowing any of these things are what leads to mystery illnesses and disease. You can't change everything about the food system, but you can take more action, and be a little more in control of your everyday diet, when you cook it from scratch.

8. To Preserve A Dying Art

Many of my friends who say they don't know how to cook never cooked much at home, nor saw their parents do. It's a generational difference, as a half-century ago this was seldom the case, never cooking at home. It's even more prevalent now today, and with home economics crash courses in cooking out the window for a lot of public schools, many children simply do not have the experience in eating in. Which will be surely passed on to future generations. Keep it up, even if it seems archaic, and start cooking early on. It's a skill that'll be easier then, like learning to read.

9. It's Expensive

I hear it lamented so often that eating in can be more expensive than eating out -- "Whole Paycheck" is the pet name for a certain large grocery chain that many perceive to have pricey food. But if you shop frugally, and keep a kitchen stocked with essentials like dry goods in bulk, remember to use up leftovers in creative ways, eating in should never exceed the cost of prepared food. Fresh produce like cabbage, carrots and other winter root vegetables have a way of being some of the cheapest purchases per pound around (around $1, even at the farmers' markets), and they're hardy, and should last in your fridge for a while. After three years of adding the cost of each recipe I've posted on Not Eating Out in New York, the total cost of each dish for one serving rarely exceeds five dollars, looking nothing like the prices on a restaurant menu.

Sign up here for The Week of Eating In!

In these uncertain economic times we really need to look at our food costs and start to spend more wisely. Here are seven recipes that will cover your dinners for a week, with some leftovers for your lunch. They are as quick as takeout, as easy as many processed dinners, and more economical and nutritious than both.

One of the best things I have done in the last few years is order a Community Supported Agriculture box (CSA). It arrives full of fresh, plausibly local (read: no bananas) produce every other week, and it does the thinking for me.

I write down what I have on a whiteboard that is stuck to my fridge, wiping off items as they are used up.  Right now it says "chard, yams, celery, onion, carrots, broccoli, spinach." So when it is time to work out the dinner plan, I first look at perishables. Great motivator -- eat it before the bacteria do. 

I start to imagine my favorite ways of preparing these things, and first on my list is high heat (475-525 degrees) roasted cubed yams and slivered onions tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, garlic and rosemary (taken with permission from my neighbor's yard). Then I realize I haven't made noodles in a while, and run some dough through the pasta machine. Boil it up, butter it, add a little goat cheese and my roasted veggies, and maybe shred some spinach to be tossed and wilted in it at the last minute. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice on top and then nom nom nom.
 
I don't always get that elaborate. Sometimes dinner prep gets a little funky.  Just two nights ago, I soaked and cooked beans without a goal in mind. I cast about for some way to season them, actually picked up my keys and walked half way to the car to just go to buy something, anything, but I couldn't do it.

I was not going to go and purchase something quick, throw away money and health and, most importantly, points for my ego which somehow, bizarrely, gets stroked by my being able to whip up something out of nothing. I put down my keys -- I'm admitting this right out there on the Internet -- added a left over half packet of taco seasoning to those beans, a paper cup of instant chipotle black bean soup, a few spices from the cabinet and a can of tomato paste. Voila: Sloppy Joes! The really funny thing was that the family ate it. And liked it. And told me to write down what I did so I can do it again. So much for all that fancy pants homemade pasta.

I know why people order takeout and eat out.

How on earth can you have kids and a job and not rely heavily on prefab? Since my work hours are flexible, I sneak off and get my kids from school and stop at the store during the work day. When do people with inflexible hours do this? They don't. They eat take out. 

Because I have a family of five and everyone packs a lunch, I probably spend 20 hours a week just dealing with food. I feel pretty lucky that I get to join the group who is committed to eating in. For many people, this is pie in the sky. I would hope that children and eating could once again be part of the plan for most of us, but until then, my family and I live in relative luxury, even if our means are modest. 

"Keep it simple" is my culinary mantra. Originally, it was because I have no cooking skills (I didn't grow up with any real role models, sorry mom), but in the past few years I've been learning that simplicity often tastes better.

I credit my husband for helping to sensitize my tastebuds by showing me that the best spaghetti sauce is a simple mix of olive oil, onion, garlic and one or two basic spices (am still working on getting the timing right; it partly relies on the order you add them).

Learning to simplify your food

Simple isn't always easily found. Some of the most obvious recipes are things we would never consider without help, like rice balls.

As a mom - and as a snacker - I'm always looking for more finger foods (especially anything vegetarian). Lately the only carbohydrate my daughter will eat is rice, which triggered a memory for me of a snack I'd seen eaten by my friend Yuko (orginally from Tokyo, but an expat here in Barcelona like me. For more on her simple life here see video Downshifting from Tokyo to Barcelona).

A couple weeks ago, I happened to be having lunch with Yuko and I asked her how she made them. "It's simple", she said. "I just put warm water on my hands with a bit of salt and shape the rice into a ball." She's a very understated type and tends to make everything appear easy. "You don't put anything inside?"

"You don't have to, but you can add meat or tuna."

We're mostly vegetarian and tuna is too big a fish for me these days (see my video The end of fish?: a guide to help turn the tide). "What about vegetables?"

"Just make sure you steam them first."

A healthy comfort food

Just to be sure she wasn't oversimplying things for my benefit, I did a bit of research. It turns out that rice and water (and salt) is the simplest form of onigiri (the most common name for Japanese rice balls, also known as Japanese comfort food, or Japanese soul food), but it can be filled with just about anything: fish or meat, but also veggie options, like tofu, seitan, chopped pickles or vegetables (I'm going to try steamed broccoli soon).

It is most often made with white rice, but can be made with brown. The more important element is that the rice is of a stickier variety: so not jasmine or basmati, but a medium, or short, grain rice (look for "sushi" or "risotto" rices).

In this video, I took advantage of some of the brown rice leftover from lunch, wet my hands, shaped a few balls and let my 2-year-old add a bit of salt and taste-test my first rice balls. It took all of 30 seconds. She ate 5 in less than 5 minutes.

See video on faircompanies - A healthy, homemade fast food: rice balls.

[Note: For a to go version, you can pack these in tupperware, bamboo leaves or plastic wrap (recycled of course].

As The Week of Eating In hits hump day, I thought I would share an easy to prepare vegetable, one I've loved since the day I was first introduced to it: the artichoke. In this video, Michele Knaus shares some great tips how to prepare an artichoke for simple (and delightful) eating.

After steaming, just peel a leaf and lightly dip the meaty end in a side of melted butter with garlic or lemon and enjoy. Don't stop when you get to the heart - for that's the best part! And, if you're feeling adventurous, watch Michele make a favorite of hers: Artichoke Pesto. Either one celebrates this wonderful green globe!

Originally posted on Cooking Up a Story.

So you've conquered Meatless Monday? Awesome! What's next? Well, why not add a few more animal-free days to your week?

I'm participating in the Huffington Post's Week of Eating In. This makes me happy because I'm vegan, and as such I'm very familiar with the pleasures of eating in. More and more restaurants are offering vegan options every day, but still, for variety and accessibility, nothing is quite as fabulous as eating at my house. My restaurant (read: couch) has a zero tolerance policy for meat, dairy and jerkwads. However, we provide every diner with an adorable puppy to hang out with during the meal. Seriously, it's the best place in town/possibly on Earth.

For me, being vegan is a celebration of all life. Like most Americans, I grew up eating hamburgers and scrambled eggs. I loved them, too, because hamburgers and scrambled eggs are delicious. It wasn't the taste of meat that drove me to avoid it; it was learning about the atrocities of factory farms. I just couldn't give a single dime to anyone who caused that kind of suffering. It's especially unjustifiable now, looking at all the amazing vegan food that's available. Man, vegans today have it so good, it's almost criminal. I've never eaten so well in my life, and because of my veganism I've tried countless cuisines that may have gone unexplored. Who knew that Ethiopians have the corner on the tastiest bread around (injera), or that Lebanese lentils can make a grown woman cry with joy? I do, folks. To put it plainly, veganism is the shit. Also, I'm more regular than I've ever been in my life, but I'll stop right here because I don't want to repulse you.

Instead, I'm going to give you an easy, delicious recipe made with one of my favorite vegan products: Field Roast Sausages. These animal-free sausages are low in fat, high in protein, and last about ten minutes in my house. They're widely available at Whole Foods and natural grocery stores across the country, and praise the lord, these things taste like meat. I hear a lot of complaints about how unnatural and processed a lot of veggie meats are, so I asked Field Roast founder and Head Chef David Lee how it's made.

It turns out the process is surprisingly similar to the production of meat sausage, just without the billions of dead animals. In fact, Lee says that they see themselves as a meat company, using the same Butcher Boy Grinder and a sausage linker that are industry standards. The difference is that their meat is created from vital wheat flour. Using the flour, they mix in other natural ingredients, including fresh fruits and vegetables. After that, it's linked in casing and steamed in an oven.

The whole process is very open; they even give tours to kids and teach them how to make it! Lee believes that people are sometimes turned off fake meats because they don't understand where it comes from, so it's important to show them. When you bite into a hamburger, you picture a happy cow in a field, even though that's far from the reality. Cows that are raised for meat live in overcrowded, dirty environments and are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. After being slaughtered and divided into standard cuts, the scraps (fat, guts, and blood) that are turned into sausage go through a process that often includes washing in ammonia to attempt to kill bacteria like E. coli and salmonella. Seriously, washed in ammonia. I found just educating myself in the process made the decision to move from meat sausage to vegan sausage a simple one -- especially when you consider that Field Roast Sausages deliver so highly in the taste department; there's no reason for the other stuff.

This recipe is one of my favorite ways to enjoy vegan sausages.The chard and sausage combine to make the perfect accompaniment to pasta, and the wonderful flavor of Field Roast really shines here.

· 1/2 tablespoon salt
· 2 tablespoons olive oil
· 1 lb Field Roast Smoked Apple Sage Sausage, crumbled
· 1/2 lb chard, tough stems and center ribs discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
· 1/2 lb spaghetti (or your favorite pasta)
· 2/3 cup vegetable broth
· 1/4 cup water

1. Heat salt in skillet over high heat for 2 minutes. Turn to low and add oil and sausage, cooking until browned.

2. Meanwhile, steam chard for 5 minutes, or until bright green. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add pasta. Cook pasta until al dente and drain. While pasta cooks, add chard to sausage in skillet and sauté, stirring frequently, until greens are tender. Add broth, stirring and scraping up any brown bits from bottom of skillet, and then add pasta and water, tossing until combined. Serve immediately. This is best enjoyed with a glass of red wine and perhaps a little dance around the kitchen.