Saturday Brunch

Brunch is my favorite meal. While I love breakfast food, I don't like the timing of
american breakfast. I recall with displeasure "breakfast meetings" held at 7 am
an hour that I didn't want to be awake, never mind eating.

Brunch for me, some call supper, eaten at the time of lunch and combining aspects of breakfast.

Today wild smoked Alaskan sockeye salmon arrived in a golden pouch. Along with it came
baklava,fruit butters, blackberry and assorted galettes and preserves. When I rolled out in the arctic cold to drag in the boxes, a red car turned the corner and slowed,
had they been contemplating stealing my boxes? The salmon box proclaimed
salmon, with a red inked picture of one leaping.

It was too cold for me to look at who was looking. Inside, excited by the arrival of these delicacies, I thought about Garibaldi on Babylon 5 awaiting the arrival of ingredients, and G'Kar the Narn eating rice thrown at Delenn and Sheridan's wedding; or his disagreement with Londo the Centauri on the right time to eat spoo; and the visual joke of flarn, the food of the Minbari, that looked like tofu. I too am at home, far from from home, re/creating its tastes and smells

I made a version of what we called "scrambled eggs with stuff in 'em". My mother began to experiment with eggs at one point and we all thrilled to the amended and enhanced eggs. I remember the taste awakening when she added soy sauce to them... the door of possibilities was thrown open back in the sixties in that Queens kitchen.

Today my "stuff" was green scallions and mushrooms,chopped, sauteed in extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, seasoned with sea salt, garlic powder, and pepper.

I whisked two egg whites, one egg yolk, about two tbl. of the smoked salmon and
one and half tbl.of the salmon juice, together until forthy.

When the "stuff" shrank and was glistening, I turned the heat down and poured over the egg-salmon mixture. When it was set, as if for omelette, I stirred it, once, twice.
then cut the heat.

Meanwhile in the oven, I warmed a half of a tandoori nan, and half a previously oven baked sweet potato/yam.

Then I plated: scrambled eggs with wild Alaskan salmon, scallions and baby bella mushrooms; warm sweet yam; hot Tandoori nan with apple butter.


My drink was warm goat milk with vanilla, while I watched Rudy Maxa in Sweden eating gravlax, and the last rays of winter sun shined in the warm kitchen.

Rediscovering Lentils

Ahh! How quickly we forget, how sweet to remember. Lentils were such a part of my early vegetarian menu back in the 70s and I guess the rise of vegetarian soups replaced my making my own.

I soak the beans overnight, rinse

My recipe varies but there are some basics:

olive oil
onion
carrots
garlic
cumin
salt
pepper

I circle cut the carrots, med fine chop onions and garlic.
To hot oil in stew pot i add onions then spices, then carrots, then garlic, then any other veggies. Lately this has been
swiss chard...

I don't cook as much as soften and flavor. I pour water from my Brita filter, then add the lentils and sometimes
a half a cup of basmati rice.

Scrumptious and fast food for days!

I cook white or sweet potatoes separately--- with their own savories and then warm them together with the days
portion of soup. I like this as a way to vary the soup and also not overcook it.

Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard is my new green friend. My new favorite sandwich is stir fried swiss chard...olive oil in the second biggest frying pan, red pepper chopped and then when wilted, and a fried egg.... served on 7 grain , toasted with a bit a mayo and ooooo so delicious....

I love my sea salt and miss fresh ground pepper.... but use the big rough ground black pepper....

Now swiss chard is new to me and it offers both the green and the delicious translucent crunchy stem.... yum....

$5 MACE

ARgh! It cost $5 for a tiny little container of mace! and $5 for a tiny little container of cloves. So for those who still have money to invest, perhaps they should invest in spices, because the prices are like those from when the world
was thought to be flat!

Recipe Exchange: Apple Torte

This Apple Torte is dedicated to my memory of the Peacock Cafe on Greenwich in
the village. Walnuts are a nice addition to the crumble.


Apple torte
2 pounds Total
of three different kinds of apples
: gala, pinklady and empire
is what i like also golden delicious,macintosh and rome

1 tblsp Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2tsp mace
1/2 tsp Ginger
1.5 cups sugar
1 tblsp Molasses
1 cup flour ( i like oat or pastry flour for this)
1 cup oatmeal
1/3 cup butter, softened

Mix sugar and spices
cut molasses in until crumbly
and evenly brown

Thin slice apples
chop apples
Mix 1/2 of sugar-spice mixture with apples
put in 2 quart baking dish

Cream butter and sugar.
Mix flour and oatmeal
Add flour-oatmeal to butter-sugar mixture

Sprinkle this over apples.
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until apples are tender
and top is golden


serve with whipped cream or ice cream topping
or as i do, with vanilla soygurt.

Now what i left out of the recipe exchange, what i think makes it special is fresh grated ginger root, mixed in with the apples, and of course this must be peeled, fresh, juicy ginger root,,,, but just a bit and added similarly to the sugar mixture... the fresh melds in, does something special to all this.... the reason north americans squeeze lemon, but better, to my tastes than lemon on apples is ginger

Akua Lezli Hope

Goat Cheese for Lactose Intolerant

ahhh how fortuitous to discover goat cheese.

Now in mimicry of another ancient taste I have goat cheese cheddar and goat cheese feta. I pair these with fresh baked multi-grained currant bread. It makes a hearty breakfast or brunch. Many complimetary tastes in the mouth with the seed, and the sweet currants and the sharp or salty cheese , the wheat, and not that i have a tiny expresso pot I can have coffee brewed to a ripeness of flavor.

and that with very vanilla soymikl is sheer delight.

so simple. so good

what am i reinventing and remembering. My mother taking me to chock full of Nuts on 34 street an Broadway across the street form Macy's in the 1950s and me smelling her coffee and eating datenut or raisin bread with cream cheese. I miss you, mommy.

Saturday Brunch

I slept late. Moved slow. the rhythm of a fall arriving late, the sweet confusion of the day abloom ablaze and warm
where afternoon quickly cools, darkens moody. A day for brunch, brunching, grazing.


Last night I baked the plantains that took two weeks to ripen nto fragrance. I munched one for a foody desert.
I heated the other in the frying pan after frying a beautiful egg.

Why are the brown eggs so much more... flavorfull and shimmering than the white ones? The difference is like that of summer tomatoes vs. shipped from wherever tomatoes. I used to think I needed a juimbo egg to feel satiated. one of these samll brown eggs fills me, teaching again the lesson that it is not size it is quality and intensity of the experience that counts.

I boiled quatered red potatoes last night, using the fresh basil stems and less prstine leaves in the water, along with sea salt, and parsley. I seldom use plai water for anything.

Boiling is an opportunity to introduce and infuse flavor. These potatoes were so delicious that I munched a couple of quarters while I made my cheap and delicious coffee. I amend Bustelo with cinnamon. The result is not cinnamon flaovered coffeee but a smoothening and warming. I mix the cinnamon in the the fine grounds and pour boiling water over the grounds in the filter--- for a real but "ionnstant" coffee.

This I sipped black for a bit and then addedd a dash of very vanilla soy milk. Sweet yum without sugar.

So what else? The whole grain cinnamon rais bread, heated in the oven, layered with apple butter, and the prebaked palntain, warmed in the fying pan after the fried egg.

Great, Saturday, brunch.