provencal scrambled eggs

Back to school!



While I had a great summer with some culinary high points (see below) there were some low points as well. Even though I didn't have to pay rent for a month or so, I literally spent all the money I saved on takeout. Not even burritos wolfed down with joyful abandon: we are talking JACK IN THE BOX DRIVETHROUGH, fistfuls of french fries without bothering to put on ketchup, more than two ice cream sandwiches a day. I guess I started sometime last year when I was busy and it snowballed. So.

Back to school not only has that meet-the-new-kids newness and new-house-commuter-schedule-weirdness but also a relationship with my body I haven't had in awhile.... I am training for a half marathon. It's nuts!

So not only do I have to figure out how I fed myself before The Kummerspeck, but excessive culinary delights (kettlecorn dinner) suddenly make me feel like crap instead of awesome. I don't like the discursive baggage that comes with exercise-- in a lot of ways, I feel like I am too self-aware, cynical, or invested in my academic project to join the ranks of moms with shortshorts and strollers doing jumping jacks in Mission Bay. But maybe feeling awesome is awesome no matter how you get there.

Anyway, here is what I have taken to eating after running. In actual-runner-terms, I am still doing tiny distances, but it still feels good to eat a ton of protein as soon as I get home.

PROVENCAL SCRAMBLED EGGS

Crack three eggs in a pan and keep the heat low low low while you beat them up with a fork.

Throw in a tablespoon or two of milk if you have some that isn't skim because that will just make them kind of spongy and weird.

When curds start to form, stir in about a teaspoon of herbes de provence (or just a bunch of thyme) and the juice of about half a lemon.

Keep stirring.

When the eggs look creamy, toss in some creamy cheese or creme fraiche (or not, but i have been working my way through a block of feta the size of my head that i got at the Middle Eastern market because it was so cheap and i was so psyched to be in the land of bulk-bins and brined cheese.)

Enjoy my cheesy late 90s asphalt-slappin jam:

hello, internet!

i kind of forgot i had a cooking blog until blogging came up in conversation and a deadline came down. and, frankly, i haven't been cooking at all. maybe its a feeling of rootlessness. maybe i have actually just been rootless. i have whipped up some sandwiches or grain salads and even a batch of gift pickles, but nothing really felt successful. i've been off my game. here are some superlative food memories from six weeks of nomadism, procrastination, and takeout:


-- teatime at mohonk mountain house for the first time since i was a child, when i felt like a queen holding a small ceramic cup and saucer filled, mostly, with milk

-- a filet o fish consumed in three bites in sparks, nv
-- smoked salmon at a fake oasis for the second year running, what are the odds?

-- vanilla malteds, to excess
-- lavender honey ice cream eaten preemptively in a blackout, with a cold beer
-- pici. so much pici. the fresh-pasta-feeling on your teeth. c.f. boar fat, duck fat, pig fat.
-- vin santo, like liquid amber in the afternoon light: sweet and cold

-- sheepishly dunking a second shot of grappa into an espresso and talking to canadian strangers about their children
-- new york city, the old haunts
-- san francisco, an ice cream sundae written on the back of a napkin (toasted coconut, salted caramel, and "that one with the snickerdoodles") and eaten in the sun on a very steep hill in the mission


-- a mexican chocolate popsicle in the new neighborhood, so spicy it made my mouth hurt
-- a pitcher of homemade horchata, crushed ice from someone more settled's fridge, two percent milk
-- bratwurst, sauerkraut, campfire, skinnydipping


that's all folks. see you when the literal and metaphorical dust has settled. drop a line. please!