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.

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.