Baked Eggs with Toast Soldiers, Many Ways
I’m a sucker for breakfast.
I love stealing down the stairs before anyone is up and starting breakfast
sometimes bringing it back to bed when I’m done
sometimes hearing the steady sound of descending footsteps before I’m finished with everything.
My husband’s favorite breakfasts are pancakes, waffles or dougnuts.
I make these for him at that magical intersection of him asking and me being willing.
A sweet breakfast is something I do out of love
and that’s pretty much it.
Any other time of the day
something with that much sugar would be classified as dessert.
I can’t start my day off with dessert.
I think I’d keel over from my blood sugar dropping by my toes.
Instead
give me breakfast tacos
filled with potatoes and tomatoes with cheese, bacon, and a lake of salsa fresca
an onion bagel with butter
polenta with green onions and parmesan!
Onions seem to be a reoccuring thing.
Always kiss me goodnight
BUT, BOY, YOU BEST HANG ONTO YOUR SOCKS IN THE MORNING.
In addition to onions
I also sing glory to eggs.
I don’t like an egg sunny-side up
or hard boiled
or soft boiled
or by itself.
I like them mixed in with other things
or scrambled with a lot of butter or bacon fat
or in a cheese omelet
or baked.
Baked eggs are wonderful things.
I had never made them before
but I ate them in one form at Bouchon in Las Vegas
and then came across this post about them.
Like Jennifer, I wondered why I hadn’t made baked eggs yet.
One morning I stood at my kitchen window
and realized the kale plants were starting to look like palm trees.
It was time to use some kale
it was time for breakfast
and it was time for baked eggs.
Kale from a garden is not for the squeamish.
An impressive variety of spiders claim its curly edges for home
and I now know those ruffles make a perfect spot for cocoons.
After picking, cleaning, chopping
AND GARBAGING DISPOSAL-ING THE HELL OUT OF SOME SPIDERS
I put all of the kale into a pot.
Zucchini and Bleu Cheese Soup
Some people collect unicorns, frogs, or Coke bottles
but I collect cookbooks.
I can’t help it.
I started in college and never stopped.
The first cookbooks I owned were published by Hermes House
a publisher whose catalog often shows up on discount tables at Barnes and Noble
(Borders always used to carry them;
now that they’re liquidating, maybe you can find them there even cheaper)
and at places like TJ Maxx and Ross in their teeny book sections.
Hermes House books were my starter books because they were cheap
less than $10 new
the recipes were easy
and they had a lot of pretty photos.
For a college student
it was perfect.
As my collection grew
I cooked from a larger range of books
and I ended up donating many of the books I started off with
(books with lots of photos and little else)
but I’ve held tightly onto the books from Hermes House.
The recipes in these inexpensive vibrant books are good.
They’re surprisingly good.
We Cook: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home – Honeydew, Cucumber, and Cayenne Frozen Yogurt
We have been overrun with cucumbers.
I mean that in quite a literal sense
as the cucumber vines are breaking out of the garden
through our chain link fence
and onto the sidewalk
where everyone in the neighborhood takes their nightly walks.
I hope they take some of the cucumbers as they go by.
In a concentrated effort to use up the cucumbers
I’ve been trying every recipe I find that uses them.
We’ve been pickling
having a lot of cucumber salads
and I have a cucumber risotto coming up on the menu plan.
I’m thankful for the risotto because it uses ten cucumbers
which should put a dent in our supply…
for a few days.
While the frozen yogurt recipe in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home doesn’t call for ten cucumbers
it does call for at least part of one
so I felt it would be appropriate to make Honeydew, Cucumber, and Cayenne Frozen Yogurt
on the heels of The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World.
We Cook: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home – The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World
I purchased Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home because I only had one ice cream cookbook
(Lebovitz’ definitive book for the home cook, The Perfect Scoop
and I thought it was time to try something new.
Splendid Ice Creams does not use eggs in any of its recipes
whereas most of Lebovitz’ ice creams are custard-based.
Honestly,
I prefer a custard base for ice cream
but the egg-free recipes are what interested me about this book from the start.
If you don’t try new recipes
how do you grow?
Bauer writes she doesn’t like to use eggs because they muddle the ice cream’s other tastes
(sounds like another chef I know).
Instead of using xanthan gum,
a typical emulsifier in ice cream recipes without eggs,
she uses cornstarch and cream cheese to thicken the ice cream.
When I was researching the book before I purchased it
her use of cream cheese made me pause for a moment.
I didn’t want the ice cream to taste like cream cheese or cheesecake.
I have a funny relationship with cream cheese.
I like cream cheese
but you’ve never seen me turn a cookbook page so fast
as when cream cheese is in the ingredient list.
I usually think of it as a cheater ingredient
something to “add something”
instead of thinking hard for a moment and figuring out what the dish really needs
(butter? cream? a roux base? salt? sour cream?).
I didn’t say it was a RATIONAL relationship with cream cheese.
The cream cheese only caused a small pause on my end.
Bauer’s not an amateur
and my worry that the ice creams would all taste like flavored cheesecake was fleeting.
Bauer uses cream cheese for its casein proteins
and explains why in a section of the book entitled The Craft of Ice Cream.
It’s an informative section
and also outlines why she uses sugar and corn syrup
(not high fructose corn syrup)
and how cornstarch takes care of the ice cream so it doesn’t become icy.
I’ve not had problems with my custard ice creams becoming icy
even after lounging in the freezer
but I know that some people end up with icy cream instead of ice cream.
I went through Splendid Ice Creams several times before settling on a first recipe.
You’d think that I would start with vanilla ice cream
but I went with chocolate.
Dark chocolate.
I started with The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World
(I don’t always start off with chocolate, but when I do, it’s darkest chocolate in the world)
because dark chocolate ice cream is my favorite flavor
ever since I first had it at Amy’s Ice Cream in Austin.
Jeni’s, Amy’s…
Can someone open up a place called THOR’S ICE CREAM, please?
There is danger in expecting a recipe from one place
to taste like the product from another place
so I reminded myself about that
and focused my expectations on a good dark chocolate ice cream
not Amy’s dark chocolate ice cream.
We Cook: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home
I knew they would come when I wasn’t looking.
My husband and I
with Tiny in tow
went to Canal House’s Smallholding Festival for our anniversary on Saturday
and I knew
that the moment I left the house
the moment I stopped checking the doorstop
the books I had been waiting on for a week would come.
More than one person has asked me why I have so many cookbooks
since I “can’t possibly cook everything from them.”
They’re right
but sitting down with a tower of books to plan seven days worth of meals
is the most relaxing
and exciting
time in my week.
The box that arrived at my house while I wasn’t looking
brought several new books for me
among them,
Jeni Britton Baur’s Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. 1579654363
I had read a few reviews on Amazon about the book
Googled a few press releases
but nothing told me what I wanted to know about it.
How did it feel in my hand?
What did the layout look like?
Did the photos, if any, accurately represent the recipes?
So I caved in
used a few rewards points from my book club
and bought the book to find out for myself.
My Sous has a Pickle and The Judgmental Garden
One morning recently
I couldn’t sleep.
Tiny had been up for hours in the night
my husband was on a string of night shifts
always causing me to sleep poorly
and
AND
it was hot.
I couldn’t sleep,
even in the morning
after we surrendered to a higher electricity bill and turned on the window AC unit,
even after Tiny fell asleep and my husband came home and slept beside me.
I tried to sleep.
On my back, on my side
on my stomach with arms above my head
foot out of the covers.
Eyes open,
and I can’t say ‘against my will’ or ‘against their will’
because they were most willfully open and they are quite a part of me,
I tried to decide what to do.
Weed the garden? No.
Clean the bathroom? I’d rather weed the garden.
Make bread? Too damned hot.
Foot under the covers.
My husband slept beside me
Tiny in the room across the hallway
dogs in their kennel downstairs.
My stomach growled.
No bread, but food
most definitely.
I got up
one foot and then the other
down the stairs.
Homesick Texan’s Squash Enchiladas
An almost Wordless Wednesday.
We all know I talk WAY too much to be wordless.
I am a giant fan of Lisa Fain
also known as the Homesick Texan.
I’ve followed her blog for a while
but only recently started cooking from it.
I’ve been thrilled with the outcome of the recipes I’ve tried
and now I’m waiting not-so-patiently for her cookbook.
I made her squash enchiladas
when I was pregnant
before our kitchen remodel
when I was drowning in the neighbor’s good (?) intentions of giving us squash.
Summer is here
temperature-wise
and soon the squashes will be piling up again
especially now that we planted our own garden.
We only have one zucchini plant
but we’ll be able to turn down the neighbor when he comes sauntering up with a basket of squash.
Or maybe he will leave it on our porch in the middle of the night
giggling as he runs away.
(I don’t know.
I’m not sure if I could see him giggling.
He works utilities and is pretty tough.)
A note: the enchilada sauce is good enough to eat on its own.
Make a double batch of the sauce.
Put the extra over beans
top with shredded cheese
and you have fantastic emergency food in the freezer…
if it makes it to the freezer before you eat it.
For the sauce:
And By Character, I Mean Problems
I’ve gone around and kicked the tires on this old blog and it seems to still be in pretty good shape.
Thanks for sticking with me, dear old blog!
Last time I wrote I was quite pregnant with Tiny
but if you follow me on Twitter
you know that I had him
and he is doing swell
(swell-ly?).
New Life, New Kitchen and HONKIN’ TOMATOES
Do you remember the post I wrote about starting a new year and writing more often?
AH HA. HA. HA. HA.
Almost eight months have passed since my last post here.
A lot can happen in eight months.
Some people change jobs
move across the country
buy a house
sell a house
start a family…
I did not do one of these things.
I did all of them.
Let’s give credit where credit is due:
my husband helped.
Since I last wrote
we found out were expecting our first child
only two days after we discovered we would be moving across the country for Husband’s residency.
Husband graduated from medical school
(and I may have resembled a puffer-fish I was so proud),
we secured a contract on our house in Houston in three days,
we found a house in Pennsylvania in two days,
and finished up all the miscellaneous projects around the old house
some big, some small.
WE ALSO TOOK A VACATION IN THERE.
Somewhere.
It seems like it was a very long time ago.
The major project we finished before we sold our house was the kitchen.
Before:
Red Velvet Cake, Pantaloons, and Valentine’s Day
Earlier this month
I got the bright idea to get some fabric to lay down on my kitchen counters
while photographing food.
It sounded good in theory.
Our granite counters are pretty busy
and one can only photograph a mise en place on a cutting board so many times.
The advantage of a cutting board is that you can easily wipe it off if you get stuff on it
and it doesn’t wrinkle.
I know that now.
Those things didn’t occur to me on a drizzly Sunday morning
while I stood in a sewing shop
running my fingertips over fabric.
I was thinking that I should call my grandmother
a woman who created countless smocked baptismal gowns for her many grandchildren
and almost every single dress I wore for Picture Day in elementary school.
I loved those dresses.
I loved all of them except for one.
It wasn’t so much the dress that I disliked
but the pantaloons she made to go with it.
My mother was over the moon about them
however she did not have to wear the pantaloons to school for Picture Day in 1991.
I wasn’t a stupid kid.
I tried to reason with my mom that
you wouldn’t even see the pantaloons in the photo
so why did I have to wear them?
“Because your grandmother made them to go with the dress. You will wear them.”
And I did.
At least I didn’t suffer alone.
She made a matching dress
and pantaloons
for my older sister.
You can bet I took comfort in the fact my sister looked like Little Bo Peep, too.
In the more recent past
I left the store with a few neatly folded stacks of fabric
and a desire to learn how to sew
(not pantaloons, I’ve had all I need of those).
I pushed thoughts of sewing out of my head
and tried to stay focused on the task at hand–
the task of making a red velvet cake.
Back to the whole great ideas in theory
white cloth
while making a lovely, calm background
also gives photos a bit of a ‘sterile’ feeling.
Like I lined things up on a hospital bed
perhaps.
