Momentous Weekend with Poached Eggs!

This has been quite a weekend.

To tell you about this weekend, I need to start with this week. I was in the Washington D.C. suburbs this weekend for work. The work was pretty routine for us, those cemeteries need mapping.  We did get to go into the city on the Metro one evening, which was nice because I got to see my dear friend Matt.

This car is covered with seed beads (on the inside too). It is on display in the Museum of the American Indian.

Hello D.C. (sorry this photo is so bad)!

After leaving the job, I started to notice my scratchy throat. By Thursday, I was fully sick. Fever. Sore throat. I blame the Metro. Dirty trains. My no-kid exposure, no public transit, hermit-like existence means my immune system is the straw house to this years cold viruses. By Friday, I felt a little better. On Saturday my fever was back. Where is the justice in this! Sunny warm weekend sickness is the worst kind of sickness.

I have spent most of my weekend on the couch. I have read three books and watched several hours of "How I Met Your Mother" on Netflix. Enough about my pathetic existence.

In a few hours of clarity, I went to the farmers market and made myself breakfast. This is momentous because I poached an egg! Amazing! Right?!

I have never been able to poach an egg before. I watched this video and then I did it. I just did it. It was so good. I should mention I have failed repeatedly to do this in the past.

This is not so much a recipe as a suggestion. It is also something that I am not the first person to come up with. Asparagus and eggs! Shocking combination.
 

Spring in food.

Spring has come to North Carolina. I got asparagus, green garlic, cucumber, strawberries, and pea greens. That's right, strawberries. 

Delicious food.

Poached Eggs with Asparagus on Toast

This is not a recipe, adjust portions according to desired serving amounts

Asparagus 

Eggs

Bread

Salt

Butter

Olive Oil

Parmesan Cheese

1. Clean and trim the asparagus. Lightly toss with olive oil and a pinch of salt. Broil asparagus for about 6 minutes, turning at about 3 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, toast bread, then butter the toast. If you are using unsalted butter, I suggest you add some salt as you are buttering the bread. 

3. Poach eggs. I am not going to give directions for this because other people have done a better job than I ever could. This is the tutorial that finally worked for me. 

4. Place the asparagus on the toast, then top with the eggs. Grate some parmesan on top of the eggs. This is a great breakfast or lunch (or dinner).

Delicious.

Max love the spring sun. He enjoys basking.

Freeze Dried Haddock: An Endorsement

We have a cat named Max. I try to refrain from talking about him too much on this blog, because my irrational love of this fuzzy mammal starts to make me sound like a crazy cat lady. Plus, this is supposed to be a food/archaeology blog. I will start this blog post by clarifying a few things. Yes, Max is incredibly spoiled. No, we only have one cat, he does not eat at the table with us. I promise he has no clothing and I try to avoid anthropomorphizing him.

Believe it or not this blog post is about food (sort of).

At a very, fancy, very ridiculous pet store in Chapel Hill, we discovered Max's favorite treat. This is something I need to tell other cat owners about as a public service. Firstly, I need to make a point of saying we do not make a habit of frequenting this ridiculous yuppie pet store. Max has plenty of toys and he eats a regular mainstream(ish) cat food. We first went in there when Max was a small kitten and I was feeling empowered by my ability to finally buy cat stuff (I wanted this kitten for a long while before I obtained him).

Wow, look at that kitten

Now we mostly just go there to get this product. It is called Simple Catch for Cats and it is a giant bag of dried haddock chunks.

As far as I can tell, these chunks of fish have not been processed much at all. Just caught off the Icelandic coast and dried. Then packed up for my fuzz to enjoy. Warning, they smell like fishy grossness and handling requires hand washing.

A piece of haddock, an incredibly hard picture to take. I am fending off the cat with one hand.

Before you judge me too harshly for feeding my cat wild caught Icelandic haddock, know this is a sometimes food for him and a bag lasts a very long time. When you read this illustrated reaction to the treat being offered you will understand why we do it.

Note: Max is normally a fairly aloof creature who deigns to allow us to occasionally worship him. Crazy abandon is reserved for haddock treats only.

Max getting haddock fillets:

1.) The bag rustles and no matter where Max is in the house he hears this and is able to tell the haddock is on the move. He does not react like this from the movement of any other plastic bag, including is other (less desirable) treats. Max immediately comes running meowing intensely.

2.) The bag opens and the intensity of meowing increases. Max immediately begins jumping and attempting to decrease his distance from the bag.

3.) A treat is removed and Max jumps to obtain the treat.

Note the look of intensity

4.) Rather than immediately eating the treat in an exposed position, Max takes the precious fish away to somewhere safe and munches happily.

Cat thought "I am so exposed up here, must retreat to lower ground"

So much safer down here... (from what, we may never know)

5.) Max returns to either the human or the bag (if the human has been so stupid as to leave the bag accessible) to attempt to obtain more. He has been known to attempt bag capture. Presumably he is trying to take the bag somewhere safe where he can work out the problem of opening it in peace.

See the cat in the right of this picture, he is waiting for me to let down my guard so he can carry off his prize.

6.) Human must hide the bag, preferably in an airtight container. Max is not very intelligent, but he is just smart enough to find it and feast.

This all sounds funny, and I assure you Derek and I find it really amusing, but to Max haddock is no game. It is a serious procurement of food and it is wonderful to watch.

That is why all cat owners must find out how to get this. If you live in the Chapel Hill area, Phydeaux, by the Whole Foods carries it. If you have a dog, I believe the product is also marketed to dogs. I cannot vouch for the canine reaction. I can say, I gave some of this stuff to a friend for his cat and Orange Peel was also smitten.

Oh by the way, in case anyone read this, then thinks this is the kind of blog where people might pay me to hawk products, it isn't. I am not entirely sure anyone reads my nonsense. But in case someone does this was not sponsored, I just love watching my fuzz go crazy and think every cat owner should have that chance.

Sunny Pretzel Sunday

I was fully intending to write a post today about all of the wonderful stuff we have made with our guanciale. I will still write that post, but as Derek and I sat down to lunch the internet went out. This unleashed a fortuitous chain of events. Because the internet was gone we could not watch Futurama on Netflix Instant Watch (we are working our way through the seasons). Derek suggested that instead we watch some old episodes of Alton Brown's Good Eats he has on DVD. He queued up the pretzel episode and we sat down with our lunch.

Approximately a half an hour later I had to make pretzels. Derek revealed that he already wanted to make pretzels and this was all part of an underhanded manipulation of my taste buds. He did not take out the internet (which was out throughout Carrboro and Chapel Hill), but everything else was planned. Somehow I did not mind.

I am not going to retype Alton Brown's recipe because you can get it here. The recipe is perfect. They were incredibly easy and about three hours later we poured ourselves beers and sat on the back porch with some spicy mustard for dipping our warm fresh pretzels.

In case you are curious the beer pictured is De Koninck a Belgian amber ale and my current favorite beer.

Now I know I do not need to go to Bavaria for my pretzel fix. Cheers to an excellent Sunday afternoon!

Teaser: We ordered a meat grinder, homemade sausage here we come!

Making Me Happy (or why the world is not such a bad place)

This week (well during the past couple of weeks) there have been and are lot of really sad things happening around the world. There are actually some really sad things happening in my friends and family members lives. So I wanted to talk about some things that are making me happy. Staying on the bright side and stuff...

1. My kitten Max makes me happy. He is fuzzy and when I look into his eyes I want to pick him up an bury my face into his soft belly. Then I do this and he scratches my face. The gnome in this picture is named Darwin and he makes me happy too.

2. My new bike is beautiful. My old one was stolen a couple of months ago and I finally replaced it with a beautiful new (fast) bicycle.

3. My wonderful husband always makes me happy. He is taking his comprehensive exams this week and he is doing such a great job. Every time I look at him I smile and think about how lucky I am.

4. My friend Julie is awesome. I miss her when I am in South Carolina.

4. Chocolate.

5. Spring makes me incredibly happy. Our bulbs are blooming and we planted herbs and other flowers. Plus our lawn weeds are already blooming. I actually sat on the balcony this weekend with the cat. Vitamin D is joy inducing.