Half-Baked Posts

From time to time I think "this would make a good blog post" and I take a photo or two. But for some reason or another I never get to turning the thought into a post. Sometimes it is because the post was going to be about a meal and it seems a better idea to just eat the food while it's hot and delicious rather than spend extra time posing the plate and taking the backup shots.

Tonight was one of those nights. So I decided to gather a few of those thoughts and photos and post them anyway even if the whole story is not quite "baked" yet.



Okay, we have the jumping photos to contend with I see.

On Sundays we usually have brunch which means an egg meal. This week's brunch had started with the purchase of some smoked salmon on Friday. By Sunday we decided to turn that into a version of Eggs Benedict. This version began with slices of sour dough bread, topped with smoked salmon, poached egg and then smothered in hollandaise sauce.

Now the challenge always starts with using the dreaded egg poacher. It has these four little cups that are coated in a supposed non stick coating. But, you guessed it, the eggs always stick. So we have finally figured out we need to butter the inside of each cup first. Then once we put the eggs in it is important not to fully cover the pan as there is no vent on the lid. Now, with precise timing we can sometimes remember how long we poached the eggs for last time to get the desired setting of the yolk. So off goes the burner. Then starts the challenge of how to get the egg out of the poaching cup. Yes, we have buttered the cup so the egg will slide out with a little coaxing but first you need to pick up the cup; that would be the cup with the metal handle which has just been sitting in simmering hot water. Burning of the fingers slows things down.

To add to the fun this week I was so intent on getting the egg out (hey, I got four out perfectly) that I forgot that the salmon should have gone on the toast first, before I slid the perfectly poached egg on. Sigh. So one person was detailed to carefully lift the egg, taking care not to cut open the yolk, while the other poked the slices of salmon underneath.

The end result tasted just fine although by now we were more intent on eating than on snapping more photos.




For dinner tonight we had decided to have gumbo to use some of the okra I had bought at the Farmers Market on Saturday. Now this was a bold choice when we were choosing our menus on Sunday as gumbo is not something I have made with any regularity. With some vague idea I had bought chicken sausage, chicken thighs and shrimp and thought that would be the basis of the gumbo. This afternoon I thought perhaps I should look at a recipe. Oh. That seems like a lot of stirring, ingredients, chopping up and more. Oh well. So using a bit of this recipe and a bit of that recipe but mainly just winging it, a concoction was produced.

We all agreed it tasted just fine.

 This position behind the kitchen faucets is often taken by a vase of flowers. But in the summertime I keep an ever changing bowl of red tomatoes picked fresh from the garden. They can be snacked on during the day or turned into a side dish for dinner.

 These are my volunteer plants. I have no idea what variety they are - the fruit is larger than a cherry tomato but smaller than a regular sized one.

These ones have ripened first. We have had about four yellow cherry tomatoes from the pots on the deck but it will be a week or so before we get any more of them. In the meantime these plants are loaded.

So there you are. A bit of this and a bit of that.