The Garden is Giving

I did not expect to see one of Patsy Cline's eggs before I left for spain, so you can imagine my delight when I went out this morning and she was still in the roost. I thought, perhaps she is laying a blue egg! I opened the door to the roost and she hopped up from a spot in the corner. She laid her egg right on top of Wynonna's egg, except that hers was GREEN! I am so excited that I am going to bring the green egg down to Pine State and see if Kevin can't fix me up a little green eggs and ham. 

All those potatoes and shallots and beans and carrots and tomatoes and eggs are from yesterdays harvest. I made hashbrowns with everything you see there. The carrots are earthy and bitter raw, but cooking them brought out the sweetness I was hoping for.

Also pictured is a fried quail egg. I find it hard to eat the quail eggs because they are so cute and precious, but I accidentally cracked this one with excitement so I had to eat it! It was absurdly tasty. 

Thunder Eggs

Not only were there two chicken eggs in the coop today (Loretta's first, Wynonna's third!) but there was also a TINY QUAIL EGG!!!!!!!!! It was there, on the railing where the quail are always hanging out. I don't know why she didn't go into her tiny quail condo to lay, but I guess that's how teen moms do it these days. I am going to eat it because I accidentally cracked it- such a fragile egg it was! 

My heart explodes.

Thanksgiving Memories

Here you see images of a huge failure (the Italian style squash tart with chocolate, caramel and rum that was featured in Portland Monthly last month- I almost wonder if they ever tried the recipe, it was so bad, no offense Portland Monthly!!), and some beet pickled eggs that are destined to be deviled. Those were tasty, though I found that the pickling made the eggs a little... tough. Next time I will only pickle them for one day rather than three.

Ba-runch

Oh did we eat. Do you see those homemade english muffins? They were SO. GOOD. Kevin and I were in charge of Bloody Mary's. We made ours with Aviation gin, a bottle of the new dark Sessions beer, a whole jar of horseradish, black pepper, dried chilies, fresh celery juice, salt and tomato juice. They were really good, and we garnished them with our host Jon's pickled green beans and meyer lemons.
Jon works with me and he has been responsible for some of the best staff meals I have ever had. It was no surprise that the brunch he fed us was perfect. The eggs were slow cooked at a low temperature for 3 hours. This resulted in the creamiest, softest eggs I have ever had.

My friend Nic and I have a goal for each of our 25th birthdays (we are a month apart- I am about to achieve my goal, hopefully). We decided that on our birthdays we would each saber a champagne bottle. This is when you use a knife to chop (shave? flick? It's a little hard to describe...) off the top of the bottle, leaving a clean cut in the glass that you pour out of. You can see a photo of the final result up there, except it didn't work this time and the cork stayed in the bottle, despite the glass being cut off! He did it perfectly on his birthday, but at brunch he somehow messed up twice. Ha! We only got a few tiny cuts in our digestive systems- the wine was still great!