Sunday Morning Breakfast

Wish I had some pictures, but didn't have my camera around...

For a little while now, Sunday morning breakfasts have been a ritual we both look forward to. It started out with the simple revelation of how nice it is to eat eggs, toast, and coffee together, and then later watch some Sunday afternoon movie (my favorite of these so far, by the way, is Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces).

However, cooking never remains non-experimental with me for long, and a few pancakes here and there just isn't gonna do it. So this Sunday, I flexed my creative breakfast makin' muscles and came up with this little gem:

Mango Salsa Omelettes

This recipe serves 2.

In 1 Tbsp butter, saute about 2 Tbsp chopped green pepper until softened, and remove from heat. For each omelette, use a separate small bowl. In each bowl, combine 2 eggs, salt, pepper, 1 Tbsp of the green pepper, and chives.

Making one omelette at a time, put 1 Tbsp butter in a 7-inch pan on medium-high heat until melted and bubbling. Before the butter browns, put the egg mixture from one of the bowls into the pan. Moving the pan around, coat the pan completely with the egg mixture, thinning it out as much as you can. Then, with a fork, whisk the omelette together until cohesive and push to one end of the pan, making a half-moon shape.

Once finished, put the omelette on an oven-safe plate, place a slice of pepper jack cheese on top, and put in a warm 200 degree oven, until the cheese melts. Repeat with the other omelette.

When both omelettes are finished, put a couple of spoonfuls of mango salsa on top and serve!

Although I've tried to describe as best I can my method for getting an omelette to actually be an omelette, it's extremely helpful to learn from the master, Julia Child. Here she shows how to make the perfect omelette. I also have to use a fork to guide me, because, well, I'm not Julia. But the best advice I can give is to keep the ingredients very simple and finely chopped, and only use 2 eggs per omelette.

Now that the weather is nice here, we've also taken to eating on the porch, and that's what we did with this breakfast, with french-pressed Sencha green tea from Teavana, toast, and fresh mango slices.

Then we watched Survivor. Progress, not perfection.

Summer Dinner

Although it's spring throughout most of the rest of the country, here in the desert we're beginning to feel a hint of summer. This weekend has certainly been a welcome introduction to this, my favorite of all seasons. So, we watched baseball, made iced tea, and cooked a wonderful dinner.

In my family, summer weather also means grill weather, so that's what we did tonight. We grilled Wild Alaskan Salmon in two ways. The first was just a simple sea salt, lime, and lemon marinade. The second one, however, was quite a creation, thanks to my stepdad. He used green onion, dill, blue cheese dressing, and crumbled crackers to create a wonderfully fresh, yet rich flavor combination which looked beautiful, too.

On the side was angel hair pasta and tomatoes that we grilled stuffed with mozzarella cheese and basil. We finished it all off with good old-fashioned apple pie.

It was a fresh, healthy dinner on a beautiful evening with the breeze coming through the open windows, a relaxing sunset, and great conversation about the importance of gratitude.

Iced Tea!

A sure sign that summer is here is my family's increasing desire for iced tea, which we have worked down to a science, albeit a simple one!

The Basic Formula:

3-4 tea bags
1-2 Tbsp raw, local honey
1 quart boiling water
pitcher

In a pitcher (which we like to hunt for in thrift stores), place the tea bags and squeeze or spoon in the honey. Boil 1 quart of water, and pour it over the tea bags and honey in the pitcher. Stir and let steep for 10-15 minutes, depending on how strong you like it. I like my iced tea to have a light flavor. Let it stand and cool to room temperature, and then serve over ice or refrigerate, covered.

We like to experiment with different flavors, especially fruity flavors. Our favorites come from Celestial Seasonings. I also like just plain chamomile because you can dress it up with different flavors. My favorite is a combination someone once showed me using chamomile tea, honey, fresh thyme, and fresh plums. It is AMAZING and very unique.

We keep a pitcher of iced tea around all the time during the summer, and it's a much healthier alternative to soda. There are so many benefits to tea- bioflavanoids and quercitin in black tea, antioxidants in green tea, calming properties in chamomile, and digestive properties in peppermint, just to name a few. The important thing is that it's homemade- unlike the store bought brands, which are loaded with sugar, flavorings, and preservatives, and which I don't even think taste like tea. It's a healthy, inexpensive, non-alcoholic drink that is truly refreshing during the summer months.

Florals and Wildflowers

A recent trip to Southern California reminded me of how much flowers can brighten life. In Las Vegas, this is easy to forget sometimes. Flowers, like many other things in the Mojave, are spare- things that must either be cultivated or noticed.

But even here in the desert, our little backyard garden is beginning to bloom (I can't wait for the jasmine buds to open!) and little purple and yellow wildflowers are growing along the highways back into the canyon.

And everywhere I look are florals. Clothes, accessories, everything is floral. This clutch, which I love, and which went everywhere with me around L.A., is actually from Target.

Flowers inspire, relax, color our world. So I've been driving more, noticing more, and shopping more, to fill my life with all that is floral.

Ripple Blanket

I love crochet. I'm addicted. And the thing I'm addicted to the most is the Ripple. It's just enough a pattern to keep me interested in the act of crochet, but simple and repetitive enough to be relaxing (read: I don't want to tear my hair out).

Plus, it's BEAUTIFUL. I am alternating complementing colors every 2 or 3 rows, depending on how much yarn of a certain color I have. This is a great project for your stash, or for yarn left over from other projects, and it's enjoyable to kind of watch how it comes along and creates itself. I've just been using (gasp) acrylic yarn, and prefer a plastic crochet hook (which gives me more control over the yarn than the slippery fancy metal ones), but the piece is still vivid and inspiring.

My mom and I got the pattern here at "Handcrafting with Love."

More posts to come as it comes along!