Yesterday I wrote from the University library here in town, and I noticed a lot of students wearing green knee high socks with flip flops and Dr. Suess-style oversized green top hats. Their expressions:  Adrenalized. Which meant only one thing: St. Patties Day in a conservative college town!

There were plenty of street pizzas delivered on street corners and parked cars last night, I’m sure.

One merry-making dude came up to me and  deposited a shamrock sticker on my wrist, which I took to mean he thought I was young enough to be a co-ed.

These Irish eyes were a’smiling, though I’m not Irish.

(Or he just felt sorry for me, all bundled up in my Patagonia fleece and woolen scarf, black nurse clogs weighing me down like foot coffins.)

So I got to thinking: Jake and I are abysmal when it comes to acknowledging these peripheral holidays — or most holidays, really —  and I thought it would be nice to surprise him by making green eggs and ham filet mignon for dinner. I’ve got the filet mignon (I found it, frozen, lurking in the depths of my freezer — “waste not, want not,” my motto!), but I had some trouble figuring out how to make green eggs without resorting to green food coloring.

Until I came up with this clever little strategy:

Crack as many eggs as you feel like eating, separating the whites from the yolks.

Whisk the whites and a couple spoonfuls of pesto together until the whites turn appropriately green.

Gently pour the whites (turned green) into a preheated skillet and cook over low heat. You want to give the eggs as much of a fried egg appearance as possible, not an omelet. You may even want to use a round cookie cutter to hold the eggy shape.

After the whites have cooked through, remove them from the skillet. Set aside. Gently add the yolks one by one. I found that picking them up with my fingers was the way to go. Cook to your desired set. (Check out how healthy and robust these yolks are. THIS is why we raise chickens.)

I don’t care for runny yolks, so I cooked mine a minute longer than I cooked Jake’s.

Cut the heat. Transfer the “whites” to a plate and top with the cooked yolks.

Okay, so the whites could have been greener and I think I cooked the yolks too long, but…..it was exceptionally tasty!  I’d put it right up there with a body shot of Jagermeister anyday.

Just because I haven’t been in the mood to eat eggs doesn’t mean I don’t want to rock with them.

A few months ago, I committed to eating one original egg recipe a day for a period of one year. I started out with the best intentions. I ate omelets and egg soups and quiches and shakshukas. My hopes were high. My fridge overflowed with eggs. I was determined. I had too many eggs to deal with. And then. Well, and then I found out I was pregnant.

And my eggs-periment has been on a death march ever since.

Pregnancy in and of itself is not much of an excuse for abandoning my ovum ambitions. Eggs are supposedly a “perfect protein” and are really good for developing babies; they make their brains really huge or something. It’s just that, well, I found that eating an egg a day in a new, original, crazy interpretation whilst with child didn’t exactly spark my appetite. It was a huge turn-off, actually. I came to dread my daily dose of yolk.

As a pregnant lady, I find that I only want to eat what I want when I want it.  No exceptions.

So I hope you’ll pardon the egg hiatus. I’m not abandoning the project altogether. I’m just whittling it down–drastically–to about once or twice a week or so.  Not as dramatic as the one-a-day thing, but it’s all I can handle.

For the next five months, I gotta go where my appetite takes me. And right now, it’s calling out for a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and a piece of venison jerky. Gotta go.

When it’s cold outside, my mind turns to boredom. Then baking. Then baked concoctions fit for a 5-year old. I swear, mine is the most unsophisticated palate when it comes to dessert — peanut butter and jelly cupcakes. Can it get more Sesame Street?

First, line two muffin tins with paper holders. Set the oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, sift together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt.

3. In a separate large bowl, cream together 1 stick softened unsalted butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well with an electric mixer, then add 1/2 cup whole milk.

4. Slowly add the flour mixture and combine until the batter is uniform. Do not overmix.

5. Fill each cupcake liner halfway with batter. It’s important not to overfill. (You’ll see why a few photos down.)

6. Drop slightly less than a full tablespoon of jam in the center of each cupcake. I used homemade grape jelly I made last summer. It sure is a treat to open a jar of tart, bright summer-y preserves when it looks like this outside:

Back to those cupcakes:

I put in a little too much jelly. Which is why I recommend using not quite a tablespoon in each.

7. Top with more batter so that they are a little more than three-quarters full. As you can see, mine are a little too full.

8. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out cake free (you may see some jam), or until the cupcakes spring back when touched slightly. Ideally, you want your cupcakes to look like what you see above once they come out of the oven. But…

….if you filled them too much, as I did with some of mine, the jam spills over onto the tin and sticks like cement…..

….making removing them from the tin a messy, sticky business. It’s better if your tray of baked muffins comes out looking like this:

(save for that one jammy splotch.)

9. Next up, whip up some crazy delicious PEANUT BUTTER FROSTING: Beat 1 1/4 sticks of unsalted softened butter and a huge spoonful of creamy peanut butter in an electric mixer. Add 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp. salt and then 3 tablespoons of whole milk. Add more milk or sugar to loosen or tighten the icing, respectively.

This makes too much frosting for 12 cupcakes, but given that my husband eats peanut butter and Duncan Hines cream cheese frosting sandwiches for lunch, I don’t think he’ll mind.

ENJOY!

My eggs experiment is going to pot!

My Internet has been down all week, hence spotty posting, and the thought of eating a lot of eggs while pregs has been making me way queasy. But I shan’t give up! I’m an egg masochist!

Though I’ve had to stay away from ultra-rich, fatty, creamy egg recipes in favor of lighter fare.  Which is why a recipe like Eggs Beatrice is tolerable right now.

Eggs Beatrice is considered the light version of Eggs Benedict. It calls for grilled tomato slices over Canadian bacon and a vinegar shallot reduction instead of creamy, fattening Hollandaise sauce.

Eggs Beatrice for two:

Grill or pan fry two oiled, seasoned tomato slices, a minute per side. Place the slices on the cut halves of two warm biscuits or English muffins. Using the same pan, melt a little butter and fry two eggs sunny side up over low heat. Cover the pan while they cook. Remove the eggs from the pan and place them on top of the tomato slices. Next, add a tablespoon of butter to the pan, increase the heat to high, and add 2-4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Cook until the liquid reduces somewhat, then throw in a handful of minced shallots or chives and whatever other herbs you have lying around. Cook until the herbs soften then drizzle the liquid over the top of the two eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Cover with the other half of the cut biscuit/muffin and EAT UP!

Whenever I think of huevos rancheros, I think of Austin. Austinians drink beer with their huevos rancheros.  I like people who drink beer with breakfast.

There are all kinds of complicated recipes for huevos rancheros, which is why I never made them before last night. This is what happens when you have 8 cartons of eggs in your refrigerator at all times — you end up never going grocery shopping and end up eating eggs morning, noon and night. It’s pretty disgusting, really.)

I didn’t feel like following some fancy-pants recipe, so we ended up putting together our own version of whatever ingredients we had lying around. Think of this as the Rachael Ray approach to making huevos rancheros:

The fundamentals:

• corn tortillas

• fried eggs

• black or refried beans

• salsa

• queso fresco

To make, we first pan fried the tortillas in a little hot oil for 3 seconds each side, then warmed them in an oven set to 200 degrees. Meanwhile, we heated a can of beans in a sauce pan, and gussied it up with all sorts of seasonings — oregano, s&p, a little chile powder. Next, we fried four eggs, and served two eggs each atop one warmed tortilla. Add a large spoonful of beans to the eggs, drizzle with lots of hot salsa and top with crumbled queso fresco, chopped cilantro and scallions. Hearty, hot, eggy and delicious. And no stinking “EVOO.”

Witness, my breakfast:

A lot of commerical ice cream makers such as Ben & Jerry, etc., use stabilizers like guar gum to give their products a more toothsome, almost chewy texture. I have nothing against gums, per se, I just don’t want to, like, go out and buy any.

We make a lot of ice cream in this house, using just the basics: whole milk, heavy cream, sugar, a drop of vanilla bean. That’s it. It’s simple. It’s perfection. It tastes bright and clean and wholesome. (Like us! We’re vanilla!) And yet, despite my purist sensibilities, I kind of missed the chewiness of commercial creams, that feeling of taking a bite of ice cream as opposed to an airy lick.

Enter the egg. We’ve found that adding a raw egg right before processing makes the liquids and fat in the milk and cream more miscible. It gives the ice cream a denser structure by allowing it to whip more thoroughly, which gives the cream greater resistance to melting.

We like to think of the almighty egg as the original guar gum.

Some people have issues eating raw eggs. I don’t have those issues. And we have noticed a huge difference in the texture of ice cream finished with an egg versus that without: it’s silkier, smoother, denser. Mmmm.

Try this recipe, and you may wonder why you ever bothered with Chunky Monkey

HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM WITH EGG YOLK

- Whisk 3/4 cup granulated sugar with 1 cup whole milk until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes.

- Add 2 cups heavy whipping cream (Note: Using high quality cream makes a big difference in the outcome of the ice cream. Subpar, less dense whipping cream makes the finished product too watery, causing it to crystallize in the freezer more quickly.)

- Add a tiny bit of crushed vanilla bean or a teensy splash of pure vanilla extract

- Add two to three egg yolks

- Whisk everything together to make sure the yolk is well blended, pour the contents into a pre-frozen bucket of an ice cream maker and process for 25 to 30 minutes.

- Transfer ice-cream to a freezer safe container. Freeze for 4 to 24 hours to give the ice cream time to set.

One more thing: No need to invest in an expensive ice cream maker, unless you plan to make ice cream professionally or in bulk. We have found this ice cream maker works wonders, and it only cost $50. For what it’s worth, it came highly recommended by the food snobs at Cook’s Illustrated.

I’ve already blogged about the infamous Aussie burger, but I’m posting about it again as part of my all-gripping egg-eating experiment.

The Aussie burger is a hamburger for people with backbone!! It’s not for wussies who think a burger is comprised of an anemic pattie topped with a wimpy splotch of ketchup and a sole slice of pickle!  No!  The Aussie burger is for people who say things like, “Go big or go home, bro!” before smashing somebody in the face with a can of Fosters*!

I give thee: Two Aussie burgers

The components of the Aussie burger:

On the left side, witness bun, burger and a delicately grilled slice of pineapple, crowned by my very own pickled beets.

On the right side, find bun, a fried egg (in butter, bro!) topped with a smear of hotter-than-hell, homemade Thousand Island curry sauce.

Slap both sides together, shove it in your burger hole and smile like a drunken Aussie after a successful fist fight.

(* I know real Australians don’t drink Fosters, but I rather enjoy perpetuating the stereotype.)

I’m finally back on the eggs!

You’re looking at my fancy, dual-purpose egg-holders from Japan. Right side up, they hold a poached egg. Turn them upside down, they hold a hard-boiled egg. We’ve been using them with a lot now that we’ve stumbled upon the awesomeness that is poached eggs.

I’d never eaten a poached egg in my life because I thought to make them was a needlessly complicated, fussy process (fade in Julia Child), but they really couldn’t be any easier.

This recipe is inspired by the first course of a seven course meal Jake and I enjoyed on New Year’s Eve at an area restaurant.

The genius of this classic French dish — the name of which escapes me — is that the flavors are layered; each bite reveals a different taste.

The first bite gives you egg and salt. The second bite is egg with a lingering maple syrup infusion. The final eggy bite features a generous dollop of cream. Jake and I loved it, though I am normally not a fan of  mixing sweet (the maple syrup) with savory so I sought to make my own version at home.

First, crack an egg into a small bowl. Add a tablespoon of vinegar to a small pot of water. Bring the water to an almost boil, but don’t let it boil. Carefully slide the egg into the water.

Gander at that thick, eggy membrane, that sunshine yolk!

Allow the egg to cook until the whites are set, anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes, depending on how you like your yolks.

It looks like a white blob, but it's actually three eggs poaching

Meanwhile — and this is the fun part — add a dollop of full-fat sour cream or yogurt to the bottom of a demitasse cup or egg holder. (Don’t bother with that low-fat crap! Full-fat is the only way to go. I’m quite sure you eat less in the long run because there’s no self-deluding “health halo” that entices you to eat more.)

Three egg holders, three dollops of sour cream

After you think the eggs are done, remove them from the pot using a slotted spoon. Some recipes call for adding the eggs to another bowl of water warmed to a 150 degrees for 15 minutes….

…but I’ve found this to be a giant pain in the arse. There’s no point. I don’t want to have to wash another bowl.  Just move the egg from the almost boiling water, give it a shake in the slotted spoon to remove any excess water, and place it into the egg holder.

Next, top the egg with anything you like: a splash of hot sauce, maple syrup, minced chives, a bit of grated cheese, bacon crumbs, caviar, pate.  We like spice, so I added a smidge of homemade tomatillo salsa to mine and a splash of Texas Pete’s hot sauce to Jake’s.

Finally, top with a dash of fleur de sel. Enjoy in three (maybe four or five) uniquely delicious bites.