There is something so appealing about weekend brunch. It’s wonderful to sit down to a leisurely meal, still in pajama bottoms, drinking fresh coffee with cream and brown sugar (as we do at our house), and read the paper, talk, or surf the Internet on our laptops (as we do at our house).
Cauli and I started this tradition before we were married. I’d research a recipe and make it on a Saturday or Sunday, and we would linger over our meal, making fresh coffee when the last grew cold, and enjoy the late morning. I’m very glad this tradition has stuck.
I’ve recently read a some blog posts about slow cooked scrambled eggs (I can’t find the exact blog post I had previously found and liked, but The Amateur Gourmet has a good post). I beat some eggs* in a bowl and added a little bit of half and half. I then melted some butter in a pan on low (the butter I made!) and cooked the scrambled eggs on low, mixing in some fromage blanc near the end. I continued to stir them as they cooked, not letting them chunk up together, and what resulted were very creamy eggs with a slight tang from the cheese. I topped these off with sauteed shitake mushrooms from the farmer’s market and thyme from my herb garden; a recipe that is rapidly becoming my favorite way to serve mushrooms. I also took some cinnamon chicken apple sausage links (not local, but California-raised chicken – the best I could do) and formed them into patties to fry up. We rounded the meal off with some leftover plum clafoutis.
*I’ve been buying Judy’s eggs as they are located in Petaluma, and therefore local. After doing a quick websearch to find their website, I found this post at the The Ethicurean. This is a perfect example of how important it is to really know where your food is coming from. As Cauliflower has often pointed out, places like Whole Foods offer a false sense of security to those who are interested in shopping ethically, locally, and organically (I’m embarrassed to admit that I was sucked in myself for awhile). There will never be a one-stop Feel Good Store that will offer all the right choices. One must continue to think carefully about the choices they make and do a little research, even more so now that the local and organic food movement is becoming industrialized, much what has happened with the “green movement.”
Brunch in our backyard.
