Sunday Munch
This morning is damp and gray, which is so absolutely welcome after yesterday’s sunny scorcher. Since we don’t have air conditioning, I really relish even the slightest temperature drop in the summer: shady, breezy days allow me to do some cooking, which on a leisurely Sunday midmorning, is one of my favorite things to do. Plus, cooking means we get to eat something other than cold salads, chilled cucumber yogurt soup, and veggies with hummus. So with a careless breeze dancing through our wide-open windows, I’ve been making delicious things in the kitchen this morning.
My approach to cooking usually starts with a real recipe and evolves based on what we actually have in our cupboards, how closely I’ve read the recipe, and what music is playing. Today we had everything we needed (give or take), I had already read over the recipe once (it was from this month’s issue of Eating Well), and listening to our very talented neighbor compose a driving rock ballad on the piano.
Here is what I made:
Pickled Eggs
These eggs are evil looking, pungent, and fabulously sinister. If I had a beaker like mad scientists use in their laboratory, I would put these eggs in it to store them in the fridge to make unsuspecting people think that I’ve got a bloody beaker full of eye-balls and innards. All pranks aside, this dish makes the reeking farts you get from hardboiled eggs worth the while. But of course, I’m a lady. I don’t ever fart. I fluff. I also really know how to make mouths water, don’t I? Ha!
You need:
1 can of beets
1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup of sugar
2 teaspoons of salt
4 whole cloves
1 medium onion, sliced into cute little rings
6 large eggs
1.) Dig out a saucepan. Drain the beet juice into it and save the actual beets for another recipe, another day. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, and cloves to the pan. If you have bay leaves, go for it and add a few of those too. Boil that shiznit over medium-high heat to dissolve all the graduals of sugar and salt. This should happens in ten minutes or so and when it does, pour the red, briny mixture in a big ‘ole bowl and stir in your onions. Set it aside to cool for an hour.
2.) Hard boil your eggs. Run cold water over them and let them cool before peeling the little shells off.
3.) Remove the onions from the red, briny mixture and put them on a nearby plate. Plop your naked little hardboiled eggs into the brine and put the onions on top of them. The onions will hold the eggs down to ensure they get a good soak.
4.) Put this pretty bowl of eggs, brine, and onions in the fridge for 24 hours and tomorrow you’ll have eggs that are pickled and red and pretty on the outside. Eat them with some pita bread and the onions for lunch. Just don’t forget to pack gas-ex and breath mints too.
Basil-Cinnamon Peaches
These peaches will make your kitchen smell like you actually know what you are doing. The aroma is so good, you will want to cook these before you have company over and they will leave thinking, “Wow! What a waft of peachy-goodness that home had!” Making people’s sniffs a pleasant experience is always a kind gesture, especially after all those hardboiled eggs you’ve been eating. Plus, these buggers taste pretty good over vanilla ice cream or plain yogurt with granola on top.
What you need:
1 1/2 cups of water
1/2 cup sugar
3 strips of lemon zest (thick strips: use your veggie peeler, not your zester)
1 tablespoon
1 cinnamon stick (Friendly tip: buy the bags of cinnamon sticks in the Mexican aisle instead of buying the little jars from the spice aisle. The Mexican kind are bigger, you get more of them, and they are only $2 as opposed to the white-bread $6 versions).
3 ripe, firm peaches, halved and pitted
1/2 cup spankin’ fresh basil
Optional: a 2-inch piece of fresh ginger left over from a stir-fry that might go bad if you don’t use it soon.
1.) Dig out another sauce pan and dump in the water, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, cinnamon stick, and skinned ginger chunk. Simmer this good until the sugar is dissolved.
2.) Add the peach halves, turning them occasionally until they are tender little vittles of love. This will take about 20 minutes, so if you want to wash some of the dishes from the egg recipe, feel free. When the peaches are tender, use a slotted spoon to fish them out and put them on a plate.
3.) Return the liquid to a boil and reduce that shiznit to a gooey 3/4 cup. Remove from heat, stir in that basil, and let it cool to room temperature.
4.) While both of these things cool for about 40 minutes go read a book or do those damn egg dishes, will ya?
5.) When everything is cool, slip off the peach skins and pour the liquid over them. Let this chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours before noshing.
Happy eating!
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What are your favorite summertime munches?
::Random Tangent::
On a personal note, life is going fantastically well, although Shaun put it best yesterday when he said that this summer was starting to feel like a “tedious epilogue.” Now that we know we are moving to Scotland this September, it is really hard to keep going to work and sit through status meetings about FY07 with a straight face. (I don’t want to give any official notice of my departure until August 1—my last day will be August 31.)
Plus, conversations with my husband keep steering towards plans, logistics, and to-do lists. It will be nice to simply talk about books and art and movies and friends and the news and just regular-people stuff again. A stirred-up sense of giddiness has imbued itself into our interactions: some days it feels like my face hurts at the end of the day from smiling too much. Also, we’ve has a number of guests stay with us these past few weeks (with more to come), so the inherent fun of that only adds to the exhaustion of caused by slap-happiness.
What I need is a tranquilizer and a dark, quiet room. My mind is too alive, causing my writing to be rushed, frantic: the story I hand in to my writer’s workshop next session reflects the frazzled, frizzy state I’m in. I need more midmornings like this one: empty and cool with only my cooking to keep me company.
How do you find zen?
