Next-Door Eggs

"I do, I like them, Sam-I-Am!"

Remember that line?  We do, and we like them too.  Green eggs, I mean.

Our neighbor has the most adorable flock of four hens, all well-loved by her two boys, and all very tame.  They're pretty, they're fun, and they're very productive!

Her Ameraucauna lays the greenish eggs and they're lovely next to the speckled ones.  Sadly, they're not green on the inside!  If you haven't had a really fresh fried egg recently, we'd suggest find some local chickens and try them out.  A warning: once you've had them, it's hard to go back to runny grocery-store eggs!  Next thing you know you'll be contemplating a coop of your own.

If you're lucky, you'll turn up a neighbor who will let you hen-sit when they're out of town!

Egg Toast

If you like having your toast and egg all right there, this is worth trying.  Plus, it's fun for the kids to make (mother's day is coming soon, right!?).  They cut the center out of the bread, warm some butter in the pan, put the bread in and crack an egg into the middle.  We usually flip them over to fry both sides, and put the centers in the toaster oven to crisp (perfect for dipping).  One thing we've found is that a curved frying pan doesn't work well - the egg creeps out under any not-so-flat edges!

This breakfast reminds me a bit of a dish my grandparents used to make for my sisters and me - we called it "stuffed eggs".  They would butter and cube bread, then crack a soft-boiled egg over it and stir with salt and pepper.  It's one of those simple, fulfilling memory-rich foods.  I've made a version of that for my kids when they were little, sometimes with a little breakfast sausage mixed in, but we seem to have settled on this newer version for our weekends.

It does not make crusts more palatable, however!

Monday Night: Soufflé

It’s Monday night: work meeting night.

Sunday night I was wondering what I would make for dinner – it’s always a tight fit between 5 and 7 – and soufflé rose to the top of the list. I know that sounds crazy – 2000s xanax meets 50’s housewife crazy - and that’s what I would have thought a couple of months ago too. But then I read this article about soufflés.

It was written by someone who lived in France and she waxed eloquent about the joys of her soufflé nights in the home of an ordinary-working-woman-French-host-mother. Could this be the French equivalent of pizza? I was intrigued. So, a Saturday a while back, I gave it a whirl.


The article appealed to me for a several reasons. I lived in France for a year in high-school and have fond memories of the (sometimes interminable) meals, the conversations and…the food. Another reason? I have chickens, 4 of them, and I am always looking for ways to use up eggs. My son is an avowed egg-hater, so anything that could tempt him into eating eggs would be a boon.

The best reason though? It’s a soufflé. I have this unexplained attraction to things that puff and morph in the oven, that have to be served immediately and the challenge cinches the deal.

Turns out, the basic cheese soufflé is not all that hard.

And it’s a great dish with kids. Even my son loves soufflé. Perhaps because (in his words) “you have to eat it as soon as it’s done!” or perhaps because of the cheese.

My daughter is an egg-separating fiend. I taught her how to tip the cracked egg into her hand and let the white fall through her fingers. Amazingly for a child who doesn’t particularly like to have her fingers dirty, this is a pleasure.  So we whipped up some eggs.

Following the recipe exactly the few times, it came out just fine. I don’t have a soufflé dish, we used a small dutch oven and that worked just fine. We’ve experimented a bit with spices and different cheeses and it’s been a success each time.

This evening, I took a cue from the French host mother I never met and pulled it off. The 25 minutes it takes to cook provided just enough time to clean the dishes and we were ready to eat. Some salad and a yogurt with jam for dessert and Voila! Monday night was a success.

I wouldn’t try this on a deadline for the first time, but if it falls flat, we’ll call it a quiche.

Keeping it Light

For a while there, it was all about French cooking. Between Julie and Julia, butter made a comeback, boeuf bourguignon was all the rage, and we even hosted a poulet-en-croute dinner for a few friends. My favorite thing from Mastering the Art of French Cooking though, is the omelet.

I love reading that book because it works as a cooking instruction book and as a delightful diversion. I have a tendency to wander from the page, try new ingredients and methods, not always with the desired results. My mother handed down her love of an orderly kitchen along with the notion that recipes are “suggestions”. This helps me a lot when it is 6 o’clock on a weeknight, everyone’s hungry, and I need a substitute ingredient for whatever we’re making. It also encourages creative use of the pantry (another hand-me-down talent). 

The downside is that it's easy for me to forget to learn the basics somewhere along the line.

Omelets are about as basic as you can get. Eggs, butter, salt and heat. Then there’s the flip, just to keep it interesting.  If you follow a Julia Child recipe, it turns out just like it should. 

I read My Life in France first, and there was so much attention devoted to the omelet, I was hooked. I ordered a set of Mastering from my favorite used book place and lugged them around on car trips, read them at my desk over lunch, too late at night and so forth. Then it was time.

My friends came over after work for omelets before going to see the movie. We had a delicious salad fresh from the winter garden, French wine (bien sur!) and…perfect omelets!

I was feeling pretty confident.

So, the next morning, I made omelets for my kids.

Let's just say that's not how it looked in the cookbook.....

After several minutes of the floor-rolling-belly-clutching kind of laughter, I scooped the eggs up and they were delicious.  My kids love to know that perfection isn’t the goal – how much easier things are that way! The wonderful thing about cooking? You always have another meal coming up.