Easter Eggs

It's hard to imagine getting a boiled egg wrong, but, yeah, I managed that. Somewhere along the way I decided that the recipe said to boil them for 15 minutes. After two or three minutes, a little voice said, "Hey. I don't think that's right." So what happens when the eggs are brought to a boil, endure a hard boil for a few minutes, and then rest in that water for another 15? This batch ended up a layer of egg white that clung to the shell. It was like peeling away to find a white yolk. But they tasted fine. Even the few I cracked before I dropped them in the water. (Oops.)

Breakfast Pizza and a Toasty Lunch

We're a pretty nerdy bunch, but this week I took it to a whole new level.

"Geography Club" sounded like a good idea to me after I printed a blank map of North America and appeared to be the only person in my house who could identify Greenland. I put the map near the phone where Scrappy likes to hang out, but I didn't really think it was helping her as much as I thought it might have helped me back in 4th grade. I had colored in the states that we get phone calls from. So, if she knows that Arizona and Ohio come up all the time on Caller ID, then she should be able to pick one of them out from the dozen that are colored, right?

Then Luis's website got a hit from Rome, and for some reason that really set things off for me. In the past, we've had "band practice" and "drawing club," and now Scrappy wanted me to teach her how to sew, but I want her to learn to prepare food... A whole integrated curriculum came to mind. Italy. Geography Club could start with Italy and all the other things Scrappy and LV like to do on weekends would fit right in: art, music, food, fashion...

I prepared a Power Point presentation, but only got as far as loading it up with history. (I like history.) There weren't really any great ideas for Italian breakfasts that I could find in the short search that I did. Scrambled egg pizzas kept coming up. I never have yeast and I didn't want to go buy dough, so I made one gigantic biscuit instead to use as the crust. It didn't cross my mind until much later that this would be the equivalent to eating a dozen biscuits. Perhaps I should have cut the recipe in half... (Those are red peppers.)

For lunch, I wanted to melt cheese on a tostada. I chose the toaster oven instead of the microwave. I chose wrong.

Roast Chicken, Muffins, Mini Quiche

My parents came to visit. I made a chicken.

I also made mini quiche (much better when I didn't haphazardly add salt) and...

muffins for Sunday morning. (I was up *real* early on Saturday.) The muffins are oatmeal-cranberry-pecan. Because that's what was around...

Ham and Eggs

What better dinner to make with your leftover ham than breakfast?

Bacon Wrapped New Year

When we invited LV's family to come over for brunch the day after Christmas, I thought I would make mini quiches and a ham and I don't know what else. They declined the offer, but I still wanted to try making mini quiches. So I made them on New Year's Eve (and added way too much salt). Luckily, one of the recipes I found online said that they freeze really well. The three of us weren't about to eat two dozen of these before midnight.

Mini quiches seemed appropriate because I wanted to try wrapping bacon around anything, and bacon and eggs go well together, right? So, I just had to decide what I was going to wrap the bacon around (after I found which store had bacon on sale). Apples became my answer. (Again, I have a lot of time to ponder life's mysteries...) Apples are cheap and they would give it that sweet-salty combo. And if that didn't work well enough, then there would always be mozzarella sticks... wrapped in bacon.

The heartburn was pretty extraordinary. But bacon wrapped goodies are still tasty the next day during your Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

Christmas

I've seen that commercial for Pillsbury cinnamon rolls a million times. When I saw they were two for $5, I had to get them. I think I was the only one who was excited, though.

Last night I made the crust. Even though I've seen on a dozen TV shows that you should use something to weigh down the crust, I skipped that step. And didn't bake the crust long enough. And so even though I thought the quiche was delicious (I had been up since 6 (there's more of that broccoli from last night, too)), Scrappy had a hard time cutting it.

Having conquered first big cuts of beef and then big cuts of chicken, I felt ready to move on to a new challenge. Giant cuts of ham were on sale for the holiday, so we bought a shank portion the size of my head. I scored it, made a glaze, and overall was pretty happy with my first attempt at a ham. I think we'll still be eating it in February.