Lulu LaMer comes from two long lines of exceptional cooks. While she used to be a picky eater, she has managed to add a few new foods to her repertoire each year. Last year it was raw tomatoes, seeded rye bread, and avocados (now favorites), and this year she is trying for winter squash and nutmeg. Food plays a prominent role in her comics-blog, Bitter Greens .

Focus of this journal

The focus of this journal is whole foods – those that have been processed and refined minimally or not at all. Using Paul Pitchford's Healing With Whole Foods as a jumping-off point, I will discuss the healing properties of foods and their characteristics in terms of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), as well as how they actually taste. I'll use recipes from books specifically focused around whole foods, modifications of recipes from other cookbooks, and my own recipes. The unrefined-foods lifestyle (and in particular Pitchford's approach) is ridiculously hard-core, but I try to take a more moderate approach: indeed I am that reprehensible creature who tries to eat as well as possible 75% of the time to make up for pizza, burritos, and heavy drinking the rest of the time.

Favorite cookbooks

Joy of Cooking by Rombauer-Becker, 1980-ish edition. I got my copy for Christmas when I was 10. I use the section on conversions & substitutions frequently. I've recently rediscovered the book and found it has a strong emphasis on intuition, experimentation, and high-quality ingredients.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. One of my two everyday cookbooks. I've cooked more recipes out of this book than any other I own.

Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. My other everyday book. I have made a LOT of friends at potlucks with these recipes.

Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford. The book is primarily a reference text explaining the basics of Traditional Chinese Medicine and specifics of how the classifications can be applied to food, and food used be used as medicine. As the title suggests, the author deals exclusively with minimally-processed foods. This has completely changed the way I think about food.

The Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith. This book opened me up to experimentation and improvisational substitution. It's very meat-focused, so I haven't used it much in many years.

Indispensable kitchen items

Microplane grater

Handmade maple wood stirring/scraping stick

Kitchen Aid 5-quart stockpot, especially good for risotto

Henckels 5-Star santoku knife

Oster blender with a half-pint jar screwed on top (the poor man's Cuisinart)

Signature recipe