local food – Jezebel’s Table

San Diego Eats, Leftovers, and Tiny Garden Treats

I’m inspired to cook by food photos. By recipes. Food descriptions. People’s culinary stories. The aroma of garlic on the breeze. It’s my hope that these photos, descriptions, and stories will inspire you to cook as well.

Moving to San Diego has dramatically changed how I eat. I had finally adapted to the “eat it that day” freshness of Isla’s tropical climate, and we moved to San Diego, where I’m figuring out growing, shopping, and eating all over again.

We have a little garden space, and room for a few container gardens at our little house in North Park. So far we’ve grown: rainbow chard, green beans, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, two kinds of snap peas, basil, mint, rosemary, exactly one potato, and some incredibly tenacious nasturtiums.

Other than the basil, chard, mint, and nasturtiums, there have been very small harvests of the other produce. However, I try to make sure that Callan eats at least one little thing from the garden each day. It’s a little ritual that makes me feel like I’m grounding us in place, however temporarily.

We’re moving again in less than a month. Our house is scheduled for demolition to make room for more apartments in these rapidly growing San Diego neighborhoods.

When we find our next home to settle in and make our own, I’ll plant seeds there too. Our family will watch them grow, and one afternoon we’ll walk out, pick a cucumber, and each take a bite.

Home, is where we grow.

One of our first harvests that wasn’t herbs:
Rainbow Chard and Blue Lake Bush Beans. I planted the beans in honor of my dad, who grows this variety at our home in Michigan.

I like to cook the beans lightly steamed so they still have a snap, and then give them a generous, delicious serving of butter and salt.

Chard is just, wonderful. The different colors even have different nutritional benefits.

Add chard to stir fry
Chop and sauté with olive oil. Add garlic and soy sauce/Braggs Liquid Aminos. Break a couple eggs on top and serve with toast. (Add balsamic and tomatoes—the options are endless).
Add young chard to your green smoothie in the morning. (I like medium handful of chard blended with dragon fruit, lime juice, honey, and strawberries.
Cook bigger chard like spinach or collard greens and serve as a side.

We planted lettuce in a flower box attached to the fence. Callan, and his brother Hayden when he visits, like to go out and pluck one lettuce leaf at a time and eat them. They also love to pick the mint.

I bought a fancy salad spinner at the second hand store on University Ave. I’ve used it properly only a handful of times. Other than that it’s been worth it’s pennies as a most interesting toy that occupies Callan for minutes at a time.

Mix the mint and lettuce. Add cucumbers and tomatoes with a balsamic/garlic/olive oil dressing and you have the perfect fresh salad for a hot summer night. (Oh, and add feta. Don’t forget cheese!)

A few weeks ago, I had one of those parent moments that make me feel like I must be doing ok.

Callan looked up and me and said, “Momma, can we have some pesto?”

My heart suddenly felt bigger.

My momma makes the most delicious fresh pesto. It’s a mostly-parsley pesto from fresh parsley she picks from the garden, washes, and puts right in the blender. It’s one of my favorite meals.

Our pesto pictured above was mostly basil with a few mint leaves thrown in.

To the blender we added:

A couple handfuls of toasted walnuts (substitute sunflower seeds, pepitas, or pine nuts).
A healthy dose of olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Parmesan Cheese
Blend everything together. Add to pasta, smear on bread, or add to scrambled eggs.

We’ve been shopping at Costco more regularly now that we’re back in the states. Living in California, I can’t believe how expensive everything is. Buying in bulk at Costco helps (especially with a tiny human who never stops eating). However, the bulk bags of carrots sometimes have a tendency to get a little bit slimy if left in the fridge too long.

Enter, the roasting pan. Roasting vegetables is a great way to use veggies that are starting to get a bit past their prime.

For the Roasted Carrot soup pictured above, I roasted the carrots with salt and olive oil, then puréed them with a hand blender. I then put them in a sauce pan and added coconut milk, broth, spices, and garlic. The toppings are roasted pepitas and mix of chopped basil and mint.

The Hillcrest Farmer’s Market is not too far down the street from us. It’s hands-down the biggest farmer’s market I’ve ever been to, stretching for several blocks and full of delicious aromas and delectable foods.

We bought a bunch of beets and a bunch of carrots from The African Sister’s produce stand. The fresh carrots were as sweet as those from my father’s garden, which is a high compliment.

One of Callan’s favorites is when I roast beets and carrots together, and serve them with butter, salt, and either honey or a sweet balsamic reduction.

I was raised to believe stir fry is the great “hider of leftovers.” Leftover noodles or rice? Make a stir fry. Leftover vegetable odds and ends? Make a stir fry. Leftover chicken, steak, pork, or seafood…

Make it fancy and top with some chopped egg, cucumber, and a garden nasturtium flower, which are edible and taste a bit spicy in a wasabi-kind of way.

One day in May our neighbor stopped by with these two fresh tuna steaks. A gift indeed.

Ryan looked up the best way to cook them, and decided on a quick sear and done.

That tuna was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. It literally melted in our mouths with a delicate flavor complemented and lifted by salty soy sauce and spicy wasabi. I think I’m ruined from ever eating tuna in a restaurant again.

Sometimes, it’s nice just to go around the block and have a customized slice of pizza and Two Hearted Beer at Luigi’s. (Two Hearted is my favorite down-home Michigan beer and I will never get over being able to get it on tap at the local pizza place in San Diego).

Luigi’s has become a Rickman-family favorite. My pizza is pesto with ricotta and green olives. Sometimes mushrooms. It’s amazing.

When we went to our local nursery to pick up seeds, I bought a package of yellow sugar snap peas, which I’d never seen before. The flowers were a beautiful purple-blue, and the peas were sweet and delicious. Callan ate most of them.

During the pandemic on Isla, we were contained mostly to our home for weeks and months at a time. To stave off going crazy, Ryan picked up a delicious hobby: smoking meat. He spent hours learning from another American-Isla transplant who was from the south and knew his way around a smoker. Ryan spent days in front of the fire, in all sorts of weather, heat, and mosquitoes. The ribs (and homemade beans) he makes are the best I’ve ever had, no question.

While our tomato plants succumbed to the lack of nutrients in the soil, beforehand they produced a few beautiful and succulent fruits.

One of my favorite movies is “Julie and Julia,” about a food blogger who cooks her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. In one scene, the main character makes a truly stunning bruschetta with buttery toasted slices of baguette and juicy ripe tomatoes. She and her husband eat it in ecstasy, tomato juice and olive oil running down their hands, happy moans of pleasure the only sounds as they eat their way through the plate.

That was all I could think of when I saw those perfectly ripe tomatoes, and what I hoped to recreate here.

Slather baguette slices in lots of butter (and/or olive oil). Sauté in a pan until golden brown.

Mix together a finely minced garlic clove, diced fresh tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. You can also add diced herbs of your choice such as basil or thyme.

Top the baguette slices with the diced tomatoes.

Close your eyes when you eat it, it’s so good. Think about the sun, warm on the skin of the tomato. Olive oil tang. Bread, yeasty crunch. All coming together, for a moment of perfection.

Callan adores cucumbers. I love that grocery stores now offer the small, crunchy cucumbers. Trying to get a little person to enjoy a store-bought, out-of-season cucumber with tough skin and mooshy insides is somewhat pointless.

These crunchy, sweet, delicious cukes fit perfectly in a toddler’s hand, and are such a good snack.

We decided to grow them, and before the powdery mildew took over the few little plants, we enjoyed at least eight cukes picked right off the vine.

There’s nothing like it.

When in doubt, disguise your leftovers with a nice biscuit topping or crust!

Another great way to use leftovers is to make a “casserole.”

I’m from the Midwest, and the word “casserole” covers a lot of ground. It’s also a great way to take a hodgepodge of leftovers and make them delicious again. Simply combine veggies and meat, cover with a bechamel, gravy, or other cream sauce.

From there, put into an oven-safe pan such as a cast iron Dutch oven.

You can cover it with a pie crust, or in my case I did a homemade biscuit crust. I have the worst time with pie crusts. But the biscuits were fluffy and delicious.

I was putting together breakfast a few weeks ago, and I had to laugh and get a photo of the difference between my breakfast and Ryan’s. While he can be an adventurous eater, breakfast Needs to be simple for him: scrambled eggs with salt, pepper, butter, and cheddar cheese. When we were first dating I made the mistake of fixing an eggs and greens dish I adore. The look on his face when I put the delicious mess in front of him was unforgettable, and I still laugh thinking about it.

I, on the other hand, am a child of my parents, who eat any kind of leftovers scrambled into eggs or smooshed together on a plate and mopped up with bread. I’ve seen many different cultural cuisines find common ground on plates in my parents’ home.

As an adult, I’ve found my own love for leftover, squishy salads topped with an assortment of leftovers.

It creates a culinary balance in our household: new meals and leftovers. Everyone is happy.

I attempt to plant something everywhere I live.

I’ve lived a lot of places in my 37 years. I’ve grown many gardens, in various forms.

In our little North Park home, we planted all sorts of things in the nutrient-deprived, sun-blasted soil, with various degrees of success.

When I discovered a bag of sprouting potatoes at the back of the cupboard recently, my mind immediately went to memories of my father planting sprouting, wrinkled potatoes on humid spring afternoons in Michigan.

Currently, we had a dirt-filled planter on the porch, waiting for the symbiosis of roots, stem, and leaves.

With realistic hope I tucked the little round tubers, tentacled in sprouts, into the sub-par soil that was affordable but didn’t offer much for nutrients.

Against my expectations, one, two, four, six little potato plants sprouted and grew to about four or five inches before lack of nutrients and some pest I couldn’t identify caused them to stop growing and slowly crumble into brown-leafed-nothingness.

The wilted plants didn’t look very good next to the front door, so I began pulling them up one afternoon. The second plant yielded, but with difficulty.

From the bottom of the wilted stalk dangled one, single, perfect potato.

Despite the slow demise of the top part of the plant, the roots were continuing to do what they do: make potatoes.

In the face of yet another move, and more change in our lives, there’s something about the tenacity of that little potato plant that won’t leave my mind.

We held it up in wonder. The strange, wrinkled tuber at the bottom of the bag in the back of the cupboard that normally would have been thrown away, tucked into soil, sprouted, and created a replica of its genes.

Maybe it’s a bit off, to find meaning in a single, solitary potato grown on a front porch planter, but if the last year and a half has shown me anything, it’s to take life’s little miracles where we can find them.

A potato seems as good a place as any.

Laughing Whitefish Cabin Observations:

Fear

I walk the property in deep dusk, with Bea a tiggered, bouncing shadow at my side. Mist hangs, ethereal—a gauzy veil—over apple orchard and south lawn. We enter the tree line—mostly cedar, scrubby pine, and the occasional towering old growth. The world goes from dim to black. The familiar trail becomes a new entity—roots and dips to discover. Trees are twisted silhouettes. Bea disappears, but I can hear the faint “ching” of her collar rise and fall against the river’s chuckling backdrop. Other than that, it’s silent.

I stand still, contemplating the old me that wouldn’t have stepped away from yard-light-safety-halo, let alone out of the yard entirely and into the dark woods. I’m aware, my senses heightened, but I’m not afraid. The absence of fear so recent I search it like tongue to pulled tooth. There’s a freedom here—freedom tickling against my breastbone like moth wings.

“Aren’t you afraid to be all the way out there, on that big property, in that old house, all by yourself?” Friends, family, students, ask me.

The lack of fear was hard earned. Born bloody, out of pain, anxiety, and fear of a different kind. These experiences teach us the real things to fear, rather than the imaginary that so captivate us and keep us out of the woods at night.

22 Target Practice also helps lose fear.

Cycles

I’ve never seen so many mushrooms.

Humans continually speculate as to the reasons reactions occur in nature. For better or worse, we’re a meddling species, always poking and prodding; always postulating. I’ve heard many speculations about everything from the winter ahead: “It’s going to be an average winter.” To the prevalence of mice indoors this fall: “They’re cyclical.” To the sudden and varied explosion of mushrooms across the region. “Perfect ratio of heat to rainfall.” I like these hypothesis, empirically science and observation based—as much as I like the mythological explanations for such events: Poseidon’s wrath at fault for stormy seas. Coyote’s trickery for things going awry. Pele for erupting volcanoes.

Humans are meaning-makers. We seek answers. This aspect of our nature has led to both positives and negatives for both our species, other species, and the planet as a whole. Watching the Trump ascendency and listening to the rhetoric of his supporters, I cannot help but wish for more of this questioning nature across our population, and while I’m at it, the world. Perhaps we’ve become so inundated by our advertising/media/capitalist centered society, we’ve forgotten the importance of questioning, observation, careful analysis before reaching conclusions. On the other hand—and I’m debating with myself at this point—studying mythology shows that, despite scientific advances across thousands of years, humans haven’t changed at all. We still love, lust, grieve. We’re jealous, angry, and start wars. We’re fascinated with one another’s drama. We don’t know what exists before we’re born, and we don’t know where we go when we die. We still don’t know our purpose any more than did the ancient Greeks, Aborigines, Mayans staring up at the stars and making meaning out of constellations.

I don’t know why the mushrooms have appeared in such vast quantities this year, but I’m captivated by their shapes, sizes, colors, and prolific-stemmed-capped-cragged-horned-tilting presence. I’ve seen purple mushrooms, six-inch-tall table-topped Aminitas, brown and white puffballs like blown-bubbles on the lawn, and various eye-popping orange and red fungi that screams “poisonous” in all their fluorescent vibrancy.

They’re delightful, turning the woods and lawn into a there-and-gone fairy world overnight.

The Ancient Britons believed that stumbling into a fairy ring of mushrooms, one risked being taken to the land of faery, where you might never emerge, or, worse yet, emerge after only “one night” to find you’d been gone 200 years in real time. Many cultures have and continue to use certain mushrooms for their hallucinogenic qualities and ability to alter consciousness. Proponents across the centuries believe these characteristics reveal deeper meanings and truths than humans are able to see on a day to day basis.

I suggest a healthy dose for most modern politicians.

Cold Weather’s Coming

The change in season happens so gradually, I hardly notice. Subtle shifts in day-to-day routine are always the first clues.

Less skirts, dresses, shorts and more leggings and jeans.

The windows, always open at night, get lowered bit by bit until cracked just enough to hear the river as I fall asleep.

I’m hungrier than I was, as though, bear-like, my body’s preparing for cold.

Birds fly in chittering flocks, foraging together in preparation for a flight south I’m eager to imitate in December.

Fields turn green to gold, catching late-day sunlight in haloed reflections.

Days get shorter.

I hauled and stacked three face cords of wood yesterday. It felt like a lot, but I’ll need much more. “Wood warms you twice.” I hear my father’s voice as I bend, lift, stack, repeat. Sweat trickles between my breasts. Thunder rumbles and wind whips errant blond hairs into my eyes and across my lips.

Leaves swirl in colored tornadoes.

The cherry tree, first to acquiesce to coming cold, stands, a leafless profile against a gathering-storm-sky.

Tastes Like Fall

As the seasons change, my culinary fantasies shift from blueberry bursts, sweet corn and BLT bliss, and sugar snap pea sweetness to daydreams of bacon-wrapped-duck breast, apples melted with honey and cinnamon, and buttery-orange mounds of butternut squash.

Ideas and Recent Recipe Concept-Photos to Follow:

*Email rachelmills906@gmail.com for Recipes and Ideas

Mustard Greens, lettuce, shaved pecorino romano cheese, carrot, purple cabbage

Gazpacho, sauteed salmon, roasted potatoes

Butternut Squash, Leeks, Fresh/Sundried Tomatoes, Coconut Milk, Wild Rice

Brat with beet sauerkraut, turmeric/garlic roast potatoes, Asian cucumber salad with peanuts

Sweet Corn Season

Sweet Corn Season

Something elemental in me knows fall is coming on, without looking at a calendar. A flock of robins hurried, heavy-breasted above me this evening. The ditch-side weeds are fluffy and dry—going to seed and taking to the winds, switching directions like winging dragonflies. I crave corn—sweet and salty.

Sweet corn season catches me up every year. I wait all eleven or so months for a handful of tantalizingly-temporary meals containing fresh sweet corn.

I eat popcorn multiple nights a week at all times of year, but there’s nothing like the summer’s first shut-eyed, yellow-crunch, sweet-buttery bite of corn on the cob.

Fresh Sweet Corn, Garden-veggie Panzanella Salad, Herbed Rice

Corn in many incarnations comes our way on a daily basis, but in forms far removed from the yellow maize harvested by early Americans hundreds of years ago. We don’t recognize it any more, it comes in so many shapes and varietals—yet our idea of “corn” is still deeply entrenched in an image of a yellow, husked and tasseled ear.

Corn has developed a negative reputation in our culture—and rightfully so. Its large-scale farming destroys ecosystems; its processing is harmful to both environment and individual consumer; its production exists in a precariously balanced government subsidy program in which, ultimately, the farmers who risk their livelihoods to cultivate the ancient grain, lose—often sacrificing a lifetime’s health and finances.

It’s strange, how human intervention so drastically changed the corn plant—how, as Michael Pollan illustrates in his book The Botany of Desire our desire for certain traits from the corn plant irrevocably transformed corn’s evolutionary trajectory.

Corn was and is a staple diet of many segments of ancient and modern America. U.S. culture visualizes corn as the yellow and white symmetrical rows with green husk and frilled tassel. In reality, there are dozens of strains, in various shapes and sizes. Corn was sacred to many early American societies, particularly in the South Americas. Each variety and function corn represented was respected and even worshiped.

Its significance as a staple crop was recognized and celebrated.

We’ve deviated far from understanding our mutualistic relationship, and that lack of consideration has compromised our health, ecosystems, and connection to a symbiotic plant-human relationship that is crucial to human well being and survival.

I find it odd to ponder that the corn syrup found in soft drinks and candy is produced from the same plant that formed the well-salted, butter-dripping ear of corn clasped between my thumbs and forefingers. It truly is a wonder how humans invented ways to manipulate the natural world. Whether many of these manipulations are bad or good remains to be seen—we’re human experiments.

What concerns me is how often we stop to ask, “Why.” It seems an important question, that’s too often overlooked.

Corn on the cob is delightfully messy to eat. It’s a sensual experience, sweet and salty, butter dripping between fingers and across lips and chin. It’s a meal that requires full physical involvement—chewing, picking teeth, licking fingers, wiping chin, sucking sweet juice and butter soaked cob, and then having just one more.

My favorite summer meal is a BLT and corn on the cob. I’m blessed to have had this meal every summer I can remember because my parents raised my sister and I in a dreamy, hard-work-harvest, food landscape. Food and food production plays in most good memories I have.

The corn crop is a passion-project for my father. He puts up electric fences and works tirelessly to keep birds, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, and raccoons from destroying the tempting plants.

The summer I was fourteen, we worked as a family propping up corn stalks after a flattening wind and rain storm almost destroyed the harvest. We crawled on our hands and knees in the black, rain-wet dirt—my mother, father, sister, and me. The sun was hot, and it was humid beneath the tasseled corn-tree-trunks that towered above my bent back. Dirt crawled up my fingernails, and slugs slumped away from my patting hands, as I propped and packed, propped and packed. It was boiling and hard work, but a camaraderie developed between siblings and parents. When the rows stood straight again, we swam, the four of us, washing away dirt, laughing, brushing corn pollen from our hair.

I’ve had a lot of delicious BLTs, but those made in the Mills household will always be the best: my mother’s homemade bread, bacon, fresh-picked tomato, crisp garden-lettuce, and tangy organic mayo. My sister and I were usually given the task of shucking the corn, which we did with gusto, enjoying the squeak and pull as husks loosened and tore. We brought the glowing ears to mama, who lowered them, careful not to splash, into waiting boiling water.

She always knew exactly when to remove them (3-5 minutes).

As soon as the corn was ready, it was time to eat. We rolled steaming, golden-rowed, summer-incarnate ears in butter; salted, peppered, and ate.

It all comes together in flavors that, for me, hold the essence of summer and family. It’s a connection to the ancient grain that binds peoples and generations across this giant American continent, and now, in our global world, across the planet.

Roasted Sweet Corn, Chicken thighs, broccoli slaw, tomato salsa

Sweet Corn, Cantaloupe, Roasted Jalapeno, Sungold Salsa:

Diced Sungold Tomatoes

Lime Juice

Diced Cantaloupe

Minced Roasted Jalapeno

Boil or Roast Sweet corn then slice from the cob

Minced Garlic

Salt/Pepper to Taste

Minced Fresh Oregano

Replace Cantaloupe with other fresh berries such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries.

Sweet Corn, Sungold, Cantaloupe Salsa

Roasted Sweet Corn and Chicken Thigh Tacos

Boil or Roast Sweet corn then slice from the cob

Quality corn tortillas

Sautéed Chicken thighs—chipotle seasoning

Broccoli Slaw

Diced Sungold Tomatoes mixed with diced garlic

Roasted Sweet Corn

Roasted Sweet Corn Tacos

Sungold Tomatoes

Breakfast

Breakfast can be greatly improved by a bit of inspiration. Oatmeal, granola, eggs–they don’t have to be boring. The addition of/pairing with nontraditional ingredients makes this meal more delicious and interesting.

I love to make a big breakfast for a room full of people–scrambled eggs with everything from the fridge–everyone crunching on toast and bacon. Coffee steaming. I also love to make oatmeal from the odd grains at the back of my cupboard, dab on Fage Greek Yogurt (full fat please) and mix and match fruits (frozen, dried and/or fresh), nuts, granola, seeds, milk, honey/maple syrup. Sometimes jelly or jam. Nutmeg or cinnamon.

Many of my tastiest ideas are inspired by photos. I hope this gallery will help provide inspiration. I will keep posting as inspiration occurs!

Fresh Raspberries, dried cranberries, fresh blueberries over Greek yogurt and mixed grain (whatever was in the cupboard) Oatmeal

Blueberry, Granola, Greek Yogurt, Coconut Milk, Black Chia Seeds

Veggie Scramble, Bacon, Toast–Blue Stem Farms CSA

Raspberries and Honey on Mixed Grain Oatmeal

Eggs N' Greens with Brie Toast — Eggs N’ Greens with Brie Toast

Sunny-side up local eggs with smoked sea salt and polenta

Eating Alone

Eating Alone

I’ve been in two, serious, back-to-back, long-term relationships since I was 19. I’m 32 and six months single.

I came of age as a cook, and as a writer, with a partner. Cooking for someone else at least five nights a week sincerely influenced my culinary decisions. It challenged me to find ways to make two very different men like vegetables more. It pushed me to impress, both my men and extended friends and family, with my culinary prowess. It was a way I attempted to show two very differently, indifferent men, that I loved them. Every meal I put in front of them, I handed a little piece of myself to be taken inside them. Love, infusing food I’d made with these hands, now, a part of my love.

Venison Tenderloin, homemade sauerkraut, Brie, fresh herbs, garlic toum — Venison Tenderloin Sandwich, homemade sauerkraut, Brie, fresh herbs, garlic toum

Unfortunately, good food and love need more, to keep a forever-relationship, forever.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m really alone. One room cabin, 40 acres. Middle-of-nowhere-Deerton-Upper Peninsula wilderness-alone.

In the past, when single people have talked to me about challenges cooking for themselves, I fear I’ve been a bit flippant in my response. “I love cooking for myself,” I’d say with just a hint of disbelief and a total lack of context. “I cook something delicious just for myself, and it’s a treat. I’m glad to give you some recipe ideas,” I would finish with what I fear might have been a hint of bothersome self-assuredness. I couldn’t fully understand their perspective, because I’d never been in that position.

I get it now. It’s damn hard to cook a nice meal for yourself when you live alone. By nice, I mean put the time and energy to buy groceries and create something delicious and soul-satisfying, just for yourself. When we cook for others, we’re aware of many things: the need to impress, nourish, sustain, and nurture those we’re feeding. We put all of that into the food, and the flavors, etc. answer. But there isn’t always incentive, to do that for ourselves. Food becomes fuel when you’re alone. You eat standing, perching, laying down, but not sitting around a table. At the moment, I don’t even have a table.

I try. I’m a food writer. I love food and flavor is really important to me. Every aspect of good eating is important to me. But somehow, other things take precedence. I don’t eat as regularly. I read or watch a movie, trying to remember mindfulness with each bite. Trying.

Why are we less likely to nourish ourselves, than others?

In a rural setting, it becomes an interesting challenge. The closest grocery store is a solid 25 minute drive away. When I’m hungry at home, I’m also all the way home, and not likely to jump in the car just to get myself a meal. So I end up with interesting concoctions and combinations of snacks and half-meals that I often consume standing, then sitting, then walking around as other agenda items momentarily take precedence over eating. It’s not like that, when you eat with others. You focus more, on the meal, atmosphere, conversation, their reactions, the play of light across food, wine, faces.

Mindfulness. Mindfulness. Mindfulness. I chant, a mantra. But before I know it my eggs are getting cold, and the buttered toast, chill. However, I’ve managed to sweep, play with the puppy, and hang clothes on the line, so there’s always a tradeoff.

Sit down and eat your damn eggs. I remind myself in something approximating a mental-stern-mommy-voice. They’re still good, even cold.

I’ve learned that eggs are a single person’s best friend. They’re a simple-to-cook, locally sourceable, healthy, versatile protein option. They’re adaptable to any cuisine theme. They’re comfort food.

***All recipes are adaptable to adding many more people to your meal!

Soft-Boiled Eggs and Toast—Arguably, the Ultimate Comfort Food (Shailah, I know how you feel about yolks)

2 local eggs
Good bread for toasting
Butter
Cheese (optional)
Salt/Pepper to taste (I also like to use garlic salts, dill, tarragon, turmeric, etc. depending on what flavor mood I’m in)

Bring a small pot of water to boil. Slowly lower in eggs, one at a time, careful not to jar. Let boil for approximately 4 minutes, depending on how runny you like the yolk.

Run eggs under cold water and carefully remove shell. Sprinkle eggs with desired flavors.

Toast bread, and then butter. Cut into dippable/scoopable slices.

Eggs and Greens

2 local eggs
Good bread for toasting
Butter
Large handful of greens (chard, kale, spinach, micro greens, mustard greens, arugula, wilted lettuce, etc.) –The greens melt down into next to nothing, so use a generous handful.
Minced Garlic (Add garlic towards the end of cooking process for a more full flavor)
Salt/pepper/spices to taste
Olive oil
Braggs Liquid Aminos/ Soy Sauce
Water—not always needed, but might be necessary to keep greens from sticking. Sometimes, I also just add butter.

Melt greens in oil with spices and Braggs/Soy Sauce. When greens are melty, make a well in the center and add eggs and garlic. Cover, making sure to keep a bit of liquid in the bottom, and cook until eggs are sunnyside up (whites are cook and there’s a film over the yolk, but yolk’s still runny). Scoop eggs, greens, and pan juices into a bowl.

Other Egg Meal Ideas:

Sometimes, I cheat and use packets of Indian curries our food coop carries. The ingredients are good and healthy, and they don’t have a bunch of preservatives. There’s different options, and you can add to them. Ditto with the organic ramen/noodle packets. I add cabbage, peppers, zucchini, seafood, leftover sausage/chicken/venison/beef/pork, chopped nuts, etc. And of course, eggs. They can be cooked however you’re craving eggs, and added to the curry/noodle dish.
Hard-boiled, or even soft-boiled (using the yolk as part of the dressing) eggs are delicious on most salads.
Plain old eggs, bacon, and toast is a perfect comfort food.