Hungry Times Two

Just pulled up the collards and some baby spinach, cilantro and parsley for tonight's dinner of frittata and salad. Loretta helped. It's so chilly and damp - hard to believe its nearly time to plant for spring. Then again, it was nearly 80 on Saturday! We're not sure if we will keep the garden up if we move by late June. I'd love to continue with the salad greens and herbs for now. A $250 investment for a little bit of green stuff? Well, it's worth the education at least. Happy Monday evening, y'all.

It's Friday. Let's make this short, sweet and fantastic. Yesterday I posted about my new-found love of eggs. Then last night I read in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle (rereading it, as I now have a vaguely deeper understanding of how damn hard it is to grow your own food) about her family's favorite Eggs in a Nest dish. And what's in my email this morning? A friend sharing Eggs in Purgatory , which looks like something we need to cook NOW. I love it. File this under "Well, that was something": Last weekend while visiting good high school friends in the Raleigh area, we stumbled upon this at Harris Teeter: Gjetost, a cube of brown Norwegian cheese. A quick Google search indicated it's commonly called "fudge cheese," something the Norwegians like to fuel up on before they hit the slopes. Somehow I thought I'd be ok with that. My friends liked it; I thought it tasted like caramelized Play-doh. Next up: I need to fin...

I'm on a doctor-sanctioned "diet," though I'd rather call it a "nutrition plan" or "Erin eats more healthy food now" or something else, anything, rather than that four-letter word. The doctor suggested I restrict carbs to around just 60 grams per day, so boo on that. Do you ever count them? You shouldn't -- it's depressing as hell. But just to give you an idea: a bowl of healthy-ish non-sugar laden cereal is around 30 grams. So I'm learning not to blow all my carbs in one meal. And no more toast for breakfast. Oh toast. I miss you like crazy. What do I eat instead? Greek yogurt like it's going out of style (it probably is), moderate amounts of raw almonds, cottage cheese, beans instead of meat in lots of entrees, and vegetables are my new BFFs. I thought I ate "a lot" of veggies before I started this path to hell plan, but it's amazing when you keep a food journal to discover what you really eat. (And no cheati...

You know when you own too much of something and you make a promise you won't buy any more of it? Some women do this with shoes or scarves or pretty sparkly jewelry. My problem purchases: pottery. So it's no real surprise that when I traveled to Seagrove, NC on my day off on Monday with my lovely mother -- who's no shopping slouch herself -- that I would return with goodies. It had to happen. Conditions were perfect. Seagrove, located in the Middle of Nowhere, NC, or south of Asheboro (yup, out in B.F.E.), is a pottery mecca.   Only 228 people live there (according to the 2010 Census) yet it's home to over 100 potteries, many of whom date back eight or nine generations. It's really beautiful stuff for the most part -- maybe the exception is the popular face jug. Below is a practical pottery item I just had to have: a bowl handy for soup, large cups of coffee, etc. It's made with Yuengling Beer bottles by Lantern Hill Pottery . Check out this adorable ...

It's a solid week for home cooked meals at the Adams family wee apartment: Sunday, I baked this Lemon Loaf Cake , subbing in Greek yogurt for sour cream. I also whipped up some tuna salad in advance for quick lunches this week and made this white bean dip from Giada De Laurentiis (I don't watch her show, but her recipes are featured in the 2007 Food and Wine compilation cookbook I love.) The tip is a nice change from hummus - creamier and not as "earthy" tasting, if that makes sense. For Sunday dinner, I made these Moroccan Meatballs with Eggs , as a good friend recently gifted me with her leftover Rachel Ray magazines. Man, those babies are packed with recipes...it's almost too much for the eyes! The lamb meatballs were fantastically flavorful, but the eggs didn't set for me as they suggested, so I warmed the bowls in the oven to get them to soft-cook. It didn't really work but we ate them anyway, runny yolks and eggs whites and all, and we're b...

I'm renewing our segment "We've Got It Made," in which we highlight our joint ventures in the kitchen. HTT is in the house, baby. After sitting on the recipes from the awesome Mrs. Wheelbarrow class on Easter Desserts for nearly a month, I up and went to the grocery store this a.m. to ensure I had all the ingredients to make a pretty pretty pavlova . Since I won't be here for Easter, I thought it would be nice to make it anyway.

Forget fashion, fancy cars, all that bling-bling; when it comes to brand names, we aren't usually ones to be sticklers for the high rollin' stuff, 'cause we're cheap, I mean, frugal. BUT we do have our exceptions; such as: Yeah, I know it's not healthy and some people tend to hate on this condiment, but seriously, mayonnaise is a good thing, Martha. It adds so much flavor and moisture and creamy delight to so many foods. And as much as I'd love to think I am a "from scratch" kind of gal, I am not about to crack up some eggs and whip up a batch of homemade mayo any time soon, especially with that salmonella scariness going around. If I'm going to revel in the full-fat, high calorie content that is mayo, I might as well use the GOOD stuff - no crappy Miracle Whip (which is not even really mayonnaise, let's get that straight right now) or ho-hum Hellman's. I mean to tell you, y'all, Duke's Mayonnaise is the best. Moving to Maryland, ...

Pardon the pause on posts here - Scott and I visited Colorado for a little spell this past weekend and we have a wealth of photos and good food/brews to blog about -- coming soon. After a trip, it's always interesting to come home to find there's not much in the fridge or pantry to eat. I executed a small grocery run and well, I didn't purchase much for lunch. Somehow I got the idea to boil some eggs to take along with salads for a protein kick. My eggs came out fine, but I was extremely self-conscious about the odor of said eggs. You know the egg smell. It's...special. Most people at my office bring or buy lunch and eat at their desks, which is something I resisted for the first couple months at work. After spending time hangin' on my own at the dining hall tables upstairs, I started feeling very "odd girl out" a la a bad movie scene set in a high school cafeteria. Like Ally Sheedy's character in Breakfast Club , only without the dandruff issues (and ...