Cooking can keep you out of the doldrums in the winter, and it’s a great way to warm up your house. Soups are especially inviting; that’s what I’ve been working on lately (Check them out here on NYTimes Well).  I was in New York for most of February last year; it’s a month when it feels like winter will last forever.

I know, I know, I live in Southern California, so what do I know about cold winters? The thing is, California houses don’t have the kind of insulation and central heating that houses built to sustain winter weather have, so they tend to be cold in the winter months. Our days may be warm in Los Angeles, but our nights are chilly (“It’s a desert climate,” as my late mother liked to say) and our homes are drafty, with warm air coming out of vents that are seemingly randomly placed, at a perfect level for warming my cat but not so great for me. My sister, who lives in New York but spends a couple of weeks with me at Christmas, keeps her long underwear at my house; it’s the only place she needs it.

My inspirations for this batch of soup recipes came from far and wide. I am always ready to make a long-simmering minestrone, especially when I have gorgeous beans from Rancho Gordo to play with. The ones that I used were huge white European runner beans called Royal Coronas. They are similar to Greek gigandes but bigger, richer and sturdier. They’re downright meaty and produced a delicious broth. I added lots of winter squash to the minestrone, as well as the usual carrots and celery, onions, tomatoes and garlic. 

I learned a lot about making soup when I lived in France, where lunch can be the big meal of the day and dinner lighter, often a soup and a salad. On countless occasions friends would invite me for dinner and whip up pureed vegetable soups in no time. This week I made a winter squash soup perfumed with orange and garnished with black quinoa, and I used up chard stems in a sublime chard stem and celeriac puree. Hang on to your chard stalks! There’s plenty you can do with them.

All of you know how much I love big bowls and meals in bowls in general. I have a standard meal in a bowl soup – a subtle broth with soba noodles, whatever vegetables I have on hand, and tofu. It never fails to satisfy and it’s so easy. You can cook the noodles ahead, the broth keeps well in the refrigerator or freezer, so it can be almost as instant as instant ramen when you get home from work. 

Before I lived in France I traveled a lot in Mexico. For a while I lived and learned to weave in a small village near Oaxaca called Teotitlàn del Valle. I lived with a family who believed that the only thing Americans could digest were soups and eggs, and that is what they fed me at every meal. And every meal was delicious, because there are so many delicious soups in Mexico, like the tortilla soup (with a roasted cauliflower garnish) that was one of my soups of the week. Speaking of Mexican soups, stay tuned – I can see another set of Recipes for Health in the future focused on the subject.

Happy New Year everyone! It’s a New Year for new grains, and I’ve had a lot of inspiration since attending the Oldways/Whole Grains Council WHOLE GRAINS: BREAKING BORDERS conference last November. I’ll be posting lots of new recipes beginning the week of January 19 on Recipes for Health and New York Times Cooking. I’ve been working with everything from farro to teff to freekeh to the most amazing grits you will ever taste.

Chefs are coming up with all sorts of inspiring ideas for grains, and I was lucky enough to learn about some of them when I moderated a panel of three local chefs, Ana Sortun of Oleana and Sarma, Jason Bond of Bondir, and Barry Maiden of Hungry Mother, as well as Liz l’Etoile of Four Star Farms, a small Massachusetts farm that is producing and milling wheat, corn, rye, barley and hops. I was inspired to revisit teff, a tiny grain that is a staple in Ethiopia (they use it for their fermented injeera bread). I’ve never had much luck with teff, but when Jason Bond described the polenta he makes and seasons with chipotle, I was ready to give it a try. I also had a breakthrough with farrotto (farro risotto), because Barry Maiden told me to first soak the grains and crack them in a food processor. The farrottos I subsequently made were creamy, like a risotto should be, and I’m looking forward to using this method with other robust grains as well, like barley and spelt.

One of the new old grains that has peaked my interest since the conference is freekeh, a green wheat product that is popular throughout the Middle East but seems to be just catching on here. It has a smoky/earthy flavor that has won me over, the result of the production process: the immature grains of durum wheat are harvested just when the leaves begin to yellow and the seeds are still at the soft, creamy stage. The wheat is arranged in small piles, left to dry for a day, then the piles are set on fire and the flames carefully controlled so that only the straw and chaff burn. The moisture of the seeds prevents them from burning, but they do take on a marvelous smoky flavor and aroma. The wheat then undergoes further thrashing, or rubbing (the name comes from the Arabic word farik, which means “rubbed”) and drying, and then the grains are cracked, so that it looks a bit like coarse bulgur, but the color is greener and darker.

Barry Maiden also talked about the amazing grits and cornmeal milled from heirloom varieties of corn by Anson Mills, and one of the first things I did when I got home was place a big order so I could find out what he was talking about. The grits were simply life-changing. I cooked them according to the very specific Anson Mills recipe by creative director Kay Rentschler, and I can assure you, they are the most luxuriously flavored grits you will ever taste. When properly cooked – over very low heat after an overnight soak – the resulting grits are incredibly creamy and almost as sweet as fresh corn. They are nothing like the boring white grits I’ve had in the past that no amount of butter or salt can remedy.

I also revisited kasha, the cooked cereal made with buckwheat groats. I’d given up on this grain for a while, as I my results were not consistent when I cooked the groats; they would sometimes come out mushy and indistinct. But this changed when I bought a box of Wolff’s medium-cut kasha at the supermarket, followed the directions on the box, and ended up with a perfect batch of nutty, fluffy kasha. 

So, don’t let the dearth of winter vegetables get you down this season as you try to stay warm. Experiment with whole grains, use them in big bowls, substituting them for some of the grains I call for in my Craftsy class big bowls, or make up your own dishes, and I can assure you, you’ll have an exciting winter in your kitchen.