Deviled Eggs

"Deviled eggs are so ding dang addictive. I love them!"

-- Ree Drummond, "The Pioneer Woman"

Deviled egg 12-9-14

"They held their hard-boiled eggs in one hand

and a piece of bread in the other, 

munching happily."

-- Enid Blyton, Five Go Off in a Caravan

I'm doing it again.

I'm waxing rhapsodic about eggs.

Shut the fuck up. It's my blog. I'll make sweet deviled egg love if I goddamn want to.

I'll eat eggs pretty much every which way, but deviled eggs are one of my all-time favorites. I don't make them all that often, so they always seem special when I do.

For lunch yesterday I made myself a deviled egg.

That's right, I made one. I did not make myself a bunch of deviled eggs, because if I make a bunch of deviled eggs, I will eat them all until they spew back up, and that is a terrible waste of good deviled eggs.

So I ate one. I enjoyed it. It was a good egg.

When you only have one deviled egg, you have to slow down and savor its textures, its flavors, its goodness.

Here's a confession, though. As much as I love deviled eggs, I do not enjoy eating other people's deviled eggs. 

I really only like my own.

Deviled eggs are a very personal thing for me. I like them the way I make them (which changes, depending on my mood.) And I like eating them the instant they are made because I don't like them cold from the fridge. I like them when they're still warm and soft, just barely cooled.

But that's my prerogative. Because they're my eggs. 

It seems like the only time you get offered other people's deviled eggs is on a funeral buffet or some church-lady picnic spread where they've been sitting out too long, and the tops are dried out and nasty looking (the eggs, not the church ladies). And there is always some shit of unknown provenance and origin in the filling. I don't want my yolks fucked up with crunchy shit like onions and celery and sweet pickle relish and paprika and, God forbid, canned tuna.

And don't get me started on the evils of Miracle Whip. I can't even.

(In my personal Hell, Miracle Whip is the only condiment.)

Anyway, when the deviled eggs are really good, which mine are, I don't like to share. I almost always make them just for myself, when there's nobody else at home. 

My current favorite deviled egg variation is a sort-of homage to sushi, with a tiny bit of wasabi in the filling and a sprinkle of black and white sesame seeds on top. 

You're lucky I even shared a picture. 

Nothing From a Box, Can, Store or Truck

"When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree;

when drinking water, remember who dug the well."

-- Vietnamese proverb

Vegetable frittata 7-30-14

"We may find in the long run that tinned food 

is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun."

-- George Orwell

"Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. 

They probably get jet-lagged, just like people."

-- Elizabeth Berry

One of the most singular pleasures in life, for me anyway, is cooking a meal with food that comes straight from the good things growing in my own garden.

Yesterday I did just that, using ingredients I picked twenty steps from my backdoor. Anything I didn't grow myself came from someone I know who did.

I provided the zucchini, basil and tomato (I found my first ripe one blushing on the vine yesterday).

My farmer friend Bob grew the spinach a stone's throw away on his local vegetable farm. 

The eggs came from a physical therapist named Megan who raises her own chickens. She personally hand-delivers dozens of her home-grown brown beauties -- eggs so far beyond "jumbo" that the cartons won't close over their tops -- to my husband at work every week or two. 

With this handful of simple, good things, I took a personal stand against "big food" and the corn cartel and environmental negligence and processed pseudo-food and cooked up a nutritious, deliciously simple vegetable frittata.

It was probably the best frittata I've ever eaten. I made enough to fill my biggest cast-iron skillet -- plenty for four people -- and ate half of it all by myself. I'd give you the recipe, but there isn't one. Sorry. I just free-formed with what I had and made it up as I went along.

I like cooking that way. 

It feels more creative and exciting and satisfying. Instead of running to the store to buy something some cookbook or recipe writer says I should use, I'd much rather assess what I have on hand, and go from there, creating something good all on my own -- with a little help from my friends.

Breakfast Anytime

"Everyone runs around trying to find a place where they still serve breakfast 

because eating breakfast, even if it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 

is a sign that the day has just begun and good things can still happen.

Having lunch is like throwing in the towel."

-- Jonathan Goldstein, Lenny Bruce Is Dead

Polymer clay breakfast 7-25-14

"Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it."

-- Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love

I don't usually eat breakfast, but I love breakfast food.

It's not unusual for me to eat toast and eggs for lunch and supper on any given day.

My son Sam hates it when I cook breakfast for supper. He won't touch an egg with a ten foot pole unless it's baked into a cake -- just so long as it's not a pancake.

Well, Sam was out eating pizza with friends last night, so I seized the opportunity and cooked a full-on breakfast spread for the rest of us -- French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, little crispy potatoes, strawberries and whipped cream, and a pot of good decaf.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and to start things off with a good one.

I agree. A good breakfast is a good thing. 

I'm just a slow starter. But I get there eventually.

Hey, better late than never.

It's all good.

Farm Fresh Brown Eggs

"... the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs."

-- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Brown eggs 3-5-14

"I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee."

-- P.G. Wodehouse

Brown eggs (2) 3-5-14

EGGS RATED

These eggs
Are eggscellent.
I'm not eggsaggerating.
You can tell by my eggspression
They're eggceptional ...
Eggstra fluffy,
Eggstremely tasty,
Cooked eggsactly right
By an eggspert
With lots of eggsperience.
Now I'll eggsamine the bill ...
Ooh -- much more eggspensive
Than I eggspected.
I gotta get out of here.
Where's the eggxit?

-- Shel Silverstein, Falling Up








If I was forced to eat a single food every day for the rest of my life, it would be eggs like these.

Unlike the uniform, carbon-copy, egg factory eggs in the supermarket, these beauties have individual personalities. Each one bears the unique fingerprint of the chicken that laid it. Some are smooth, some are bumpy and lumpy. Some are satiny, others rough and chalky. Some have little tiny speckles, and some have big fat freckles. Some are nicely egg shaped, others are rounded or long or pointy. Some have grooves and wrinkles like sheet marks on skin. They are all different shades of brown, from light latte to deep caramel (occasionally white or even soft grayish blue). They are all different sizes, from petite, demure little lovelies, to overgrown extra jumbos that make it impossible to close the carton over their bulging tops. Even their yolks are each slightly different in size and color. But typically, the yolks in these eggs are unbelievably large and vivid -- not the weak little pale yellow wrinkly ones you're used to, but deep, glistening, orange-gold fatties.

What they all have in common, though, is their deliciousness.

If you've never tasted the difference between a run-of-the-mill grocery store egg and a days-old one fresh from a free-range organic fed chicken living in a backyard farm, well, then you haven't really tasted an egg in all of its glorious egg-i-ness.

Now, if you'll indulge me in a little bit of food porn ...

How people like their eggs prepared is about as individualistic as how they like their PB&Js.

I like them sunny-side-up. I nibble the white part, little by little, all the way around until all that's left is the jiggly, golden, liquid center, which, if it's not too huge (and it sometimes is), I eat in one whole bite, letting the yolk ooze onto my tongue and fill my whole mouth with it's warm, velvety goodness. Sometimes I close my eyes for this last bit so I can savor it better. It's too good to rush it.

It's a beautiful moment, every single time.

(Can someone please tell me where I can find those people who force you to eat a single food every day for the rest of your life?)

Some food fills your stomach. Some food feeds your soul.

Kelly

"A hatchling, that is what you are.

A hatchling struggling into the world ...

Do not worry about these things.

Find peace in where and what you are."

-- Christopher Paolini, Eragon

Cracked Barbie head with a raw egg 1-15-14

"I am not a dime a dozen!"

-- Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Barbies in an egg carton 1-15-14

Ever notice how the girl's dream job in every romantic comedy is to own a bakery?

Every pretty little girl with an Easy Bake Oven wants and to grow up and bake exquisite pastries all day.

I hate to break it to you, but bakery dreams are a dime a dozen. Achieving them is the fictional stuff of movies. Nobody ever really gets to do that for a living, do they? Only the really lucky ones, right?

Wrong.

My good friend Kelly gets to. And it has nothing to do with luck. She's baked her ass off to get where she's going. She's chased her dream from Ohio, to Rhode Island, back to Ohio, to Chicago, and back to Rhode Island again.

Kelly is a professionally trained pastry chef with the education, experience and moxie to actually be living the dream.

After plenty of years working for other people, in other people's bakeries, taking other people's shit and cleaning up other people's messes, Kelly is currently in the midst of a move from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Atlantic coast, where she'll finally be running her own place. She'll be calling the shots. She'll be the boss. She'll be the head bitch.

Except she isn't bossy or a bitch, at all. Which is what makes her so great.

She's beautifully lovely -- an adorably pretty, nerdy, non-blonde bookworm-in glasses who wears cute dresses as easily as she wears her tattoos (of cakes and cupcakes, of course!) She is the kind of friend who never forgets your birthday, always shows up with treats, and will stand in the Lego aisle in Target feeling up the Lego mini figures bags until she finds a Medusa, because she knows you really, really want the Medusa.

But she's also tough as hell. And brave. And courageous. And she doesn't take anybody's shit.

I've worked in a bakery with Kelly, and she makes it look effortless. But pursuing her dream hasn't been. She's made tough decisions and difficult sacrifices. She's had to leave behind jobs, and cities, and people and friends that she really loves.

As they say, you've gotta crack a few eggs to make meringues ... and cakes, and cookies, and pretty much all of the good things that Kelly makes.

So go get 'em, Kelly! Keep living your dream.

Break an egg! I mean a leg!

Toad in the Hole

"A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of

not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead."

-- Nicholas Chamfort

Toad in the hole 1-4-14

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. 

"It's the same thing," he said.

-- A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh

"I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time'

so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance."

-- Steven Wright

First, let's clarify.

I don't eat breakfast. The first meal of the my day usually happens around noon or later. So technically, it's still breakfast, because I'm "breaking the fast." It just takes me a while to get there.

So, that's the when.

When it comes to the what, I go in spurts. 

For a while I'll be on a cinnamon toast kick. Then it's a few weeks of walnuts and berries. Then hot cereal.

But typically it's some kind of breakfast food. Eggs are my favorite.

As for the the how, I love 'em every which way: poached, fried, scrambled, boiled, omelette-ed, frittata-ed. 

But by far, the most adorable way to enjoy an egg, has to be Toad in the Hole.

What could be happier than a piece of crispy golden toast with a round center cutout snuggled around a perfectly cooked egg? You don't need a fork. If you get the yolk just right, so that it's neither too cooked nor too runny, you can pick it up and eat it with your fingers without losing any of the yolk dripping all over the plate. But if you do lose any of the yolk, that's what the little round bit of toast is perfect for. Mopping it up.

Since I usually get the yolk just right, I like to put strawberry jam on the toasty bit as the perfect sweet note to finish the perfect breakfast.

Which brings us to ...

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The first ever "One Good Thing Daily Challenge!"

I challenge you to make Toad in the Hole for yourself, or someone you love, for whenever you enjoy breakfast (even if it's at midnight, which is a lovely time for eggs, and Toad in the Hole is a much cozier midnight snack that dry old pretzels or chips. And I think eggs pair beautifully with red wine.) 

It's super easy. Here's how:

Cut out the center of a slice of bread with a small glass or cookie cutter. Warm up a skillet (I swear by cast iron, because it makes the crispy so much crispier.) Melt some butter in the skillet (keep the heat gentle ... medium to medium low.) Then lay the toast (and the little round bit) in the melted butter. After a few minutes, so that the pan is heated fully, crack one egg into the center cutout. Salt and pepper it, and put a lid on it. When the egg white is about halfway set, flip the whole thing, salt and pepper the other side, adjust the heat so it's not too hot, and cover. Cook until the yolk is fully cooked, but still tender. (Press on the yolk ... if it's real squishy, cook it longer. If it's just this side of firm, it's ready.) Slice in half, sprinkle with fresh parsley if you like to be fancy. 

If you've made it this far, Voila! You just made Toad in the Hole!

Now isn't that a good thing?