Italian egg hash ranchero

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know: I'm posting pretty sporadically lately. Look, my repertoire of food is pretty limited, and my coworkers and I have fallen into a rut of always going to the same restaurants for lunch. 

Actually, last week, my coworkers finally went to a different place for lunch. They had sushi with bread on it. But I was absent, having to stay home with a sick toddler. So no pictures of an empty table that once had bread sushi. And no, they're never going back there again, so there will never be any pictures of that empty table. (One of my coworkers said he preferred the tables at the bread sushi place over the tables at any other restaurant, by the way.)

To make up for the bread sushi, I present to you Italian Hash Ranchero!

So about two months ago, I went to a brunch place where I ordered something called Huevos Benedictos Rancheros, which was eggs benedict with guacamole and fresh tomato salsa instead of hollandaise sauce. It was pretty fucking awesome. It was so good that I resolved to eat my eggs with avocado and salsa from then on. It was an interesting experiment.

My first attempt to add avocado and salsa to my egg universe (eggiverse?) was with scrambled eggs. Let me tells ya, scrambled eggs do not go well with avocado and salsa. Scrambled eggs with avocado and salsa kinda tastes like random mush. It was not good.

However, eggs over easy, eggs sunny-side-up, and fried eggs in general taste really good with avocado and salsa.

But the best type of eggs with avocado and salsa is Italian Hash! 

Italian Hash is so oily and salty and cheesy that it practically begs for salsa and avocado. Seriously, the salsa and avocado totally take Italian Hash to an entirely new level. You know how on Top Chef sometimes the judges say things like, "I felt this needed some acid to break it up" or "It needed something fresh"? Yeah, well the salsa is the acid that breaks it up, and the avocado is the freshness. 

It is the best breakfast ever, even if it's probably 6 zillion calories. On the upside, though, you will not be hungry at the office, and you will not stuff your face with veggie straws from the snack closet.

Six Zillion Calories of Pure Fantastamagoliciousness.

Isn't This a Cute Coffee Shop? Let's Go In!

Look at this picture from a cute, hip coffee shop in a newly-gentrified neighbourhood:

Cute, no? That's two espressos and a caramel brownie right there. 

The place had a children's corner where all the newly-moved-in hipsters could let their kids play with educational toys and read educational books while they had their coffees and cakes and paninis made with natural, locally-sourced, organic ingredients and only the best roasted beans.

The brownie was good. 

The coffee though...what can one say about the coffee?

How about: OMIGOD THIS WAS THE WORST COFFEE I EVER HAD!

Seriously, it was disgusting. Neither of us could drink it. It tasted like when you accidentally put Taster's Choice coffee into a stovetop espresso machine (yes, this has happened to me). In fact, it tasted worse than Taster's Choice instant coffee.

This was surprising since the entire coffee-making process was automated. They had a fully automatic push-button espresso machine. The grinder and doser were automated, grinding and dosing out the exact amount of coffee for a single shot at the push of a button. 

The only variables were the beans and the tamping. They over-tamped the coffee, but that couldn't explain the awfulness of the stuff. No, the awfulness had to have come from the beans or the grind. My guess is that the beans were bad/stale, and the grind was too coarse. 

But that doesn't really matter, does it? Because the fact remained that we paid $5 for undrinkable espressos.

Bacon Fail/Prosciutto Win

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's not that I haven't been eating, so much as I have been completely forgetting to take pictures altogether. And when I do take pictures, I forget to upload them because my htc Whatever S phone won't show the pictures I've taken if the card is too full. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

But I did take pictures of my porc cookery!

When I was at the butcher's getting my all-naturally-raised, hormone-free, free-range. antibiotic-free, locally-sourced meat, I saw that the butcher's had thick-cut "Danish style" bacon. I had no idea what that was, but it looked good. The kid behind the counter -- the butcher's nephew, I believe -- told me it was way better than regular bacon because it was thick cut. So I bought 8 slices.

The next morning, I made 4 slices of bacon. I'm going to admit that I'd never fried bacon before that moment. I had either let Spousal Unit do it, or I'd let my mom do it. So I had to look up how to fry bacon.

The Internets told me that the best thing to do was to make one layer of bacon covering the entire pan, and let the pan warm up with the bacon in it. Then, once the bacon started to sizzle, you let it cook for 6 minutes per side.

I did that. The first problem I ran into was that my bacon was longer than my pan. I had bacon edges running up the sides of the pan. The other problem I ran into was that the pan was not warming up uniformly. This may have been because the slice of bacon on one side was just slightly bigger than the slice on the other side.

The next problem I ran into was that once the bacon started sizzling, it started to attack me! It was spitting grease at me like nobody's business! I put the pan lid up and used it as a shield. I got the baking soda out of the fridge and prepared myself to put out a grease fire.

The source of my humiliation

Fortunately, while I did burn the bacon, I did not start a fire.

The bacon tasted pretty good, even though it was slightly burnt. But I didn't try frying the last 4 slices. Instead we cut them up and used them in black bean soup (not pictured). It made tasty black bean soup.

The next day I decided to try something else to satisfy my still-unrequited desire for bacon: I decided to bake some prosciutto.

My mom had made prosciutto chips as a garnish for salads a few times and they had been really tasty (the only good part of the salads, for the most part). I knew they were baked, not fried, so I didn't have to worry about the prosciutto attacking me with grease. It sounded fool-proof.

And it was!

For the first time ever something I tried from an online recipe worked out perfect! I mean, beside the Martha Stewart one-bowl muffins. Those were good.

But seriously, the prosciutto chips were easy to make and were absolutely fantastic! I just layered the prosciutto on parchment paper and baked them for 10min (I think I baked them at 375F or 400F). Then I took them out, put them on a rack to cool, and ate them.

My redemption.

And so my weekend was a time of sadness and rejoicing.

Mid-Century Madness French Onion Soup!

Well hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? That's what happens when you end up with deadlines, another blog, and a personal trainer who means business: you end up letting something go.

Anyways, I return with mid-century madness!

Have you heard about the Mid-Century Menu blog? It's basically this chick who makes food from her ancient cookbooks and let's her husband taste-test them. What's most interesting about the blog is that as they eat more and more of these hideous concoctions, the less and less they find them revolting. 

As I read the blog, it occurred to me that I don't have to try mid-century recipes from ancient Good Housekeeping and Family Circle magazines because I can just go over to visit my parents and eat my mom's food to experience mid-century madness.

No yolks, thanks to my mom's nameless ex-boyfriend.

Case in point: French Onion Soup. My mom made French Onion Soup over Easter weekend. She even made them in the individual little pots that she got when she got married in 1972. And of course my mom told her French Onion Soup Story as she served it. It wouldn't be French Onion Soup if it weren't accompanied by the French Onion Soup Story.

Here's how it goes: A long, long time ago, in 1965 or so, my mom found a recipe for French Onion Soup in some magazine. It called for an egg yolk emulsified in the broth and some kind of bizarre spice mix (which probably accounts for the ancient bottle of marjoram that resided at my grandparents' place). She went home and made it for her family and it was a big hit. Everyone loved it and she made it for many years.

Then one day some nameless boyfriend of hers took her to a fancy French restaurant for dinner and my mom had French Onion Soup. My mom said that she was amazed that this simple onion soup was so good. So she went home and tried French Onion Soup without the yolk and without the spices (but keeping the bread and gratin). It was an even bigger hit! And she's been making it this way til this day.

If it weren't enough that my mom pulled out her onion soup bowls, she also gave me a mid-century-madness-coloured espresso cup set for Xmas (which she only ended up giving me at Easter, but that's an entirely different story). Seriously, each cup-and-saucer in the set is a different mid-century-madness colour: mustard yellow, dark powder blue, burnt orange, etc. 

Of course my favourite cup is the avocado green one: 

Saturday Experiment: Nutella Swirl Muffins

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What kind of Google fail caused my search for 'Winter Gazebo Maintenance' to land on this page?" (hint: remove the quotation marks.) 

Alternately, if you actually came here on purpose (which is unlikely), you're thinking, "This chick who makes lentil soup that tastes like dirty water experimented in the kitchen? What kind of disaster was that!"

Well ye of little faith (and ye of the winter gazebo maintenance), let me tell you it was awesome! It was the best thing I ever did. Nothing will ever compare to my Nutella Swirl Oatmeal Muffins. Nothing!

Except maybe the dirty water lentil soup I'm making right now.

Is this sink or swim?

*sigh* It sounded like a good idea at the time. I saw this recipe online for Nutella Swirl Banana Muffins where you just made banana muffin batter as usual, dolloped Nutella on the top of the batter once it was in the pan, and then swirled the Nutella into the batter with a toothpick.  It sounded so simple:  I could just swirl Nutella into any muffin and have a tasty, wavy gravy, Nutella treat.

Alas, that was not so. First of all, oatmeal muffin batter is kinda thick. Second of all, because it's been cold, my Nutella was kinda solid.  The result was that I couldn't actually swirl the Nutella into the batter. Instead it kinda just mushed into the top of the muffins. 

The result was oatmeal muffins with gross-looking Nutella tops. You should be happy that I don't take pictures of my food before it's eaten.

It wasn't bad. I washed it down with some coffee. Spousal Unit liked them, but Spousal Unit also drinks almond milk. 

Fortunately I only ruined half the batch of muffins. I just put chocolate chips in the other half and called it a day.

Keep Your Turkey Away from my Chili!

There's this guy in the office who eats chili every day. OK, he may not eat it every day, but he eats it so often that if I smell chili reheating in the microwave, I assume he's nearby.

His chili smells really good, and one day I asked him for his recipe. He told me his recipe wasn't authentic, and Ireplied that I didn't believe there was such a thing as an authentic chili recipe. But then he told me that his was made with ground turkey and lima beans, and I changed my mind.

Then again, I eat lentil soup that tastes like dirty water.

Anyways, Spousal Unit bought organic, free-range, antibiotic-free, all-natural, old cow ground beef the other day. I asked him if, for the love of all that was good and true, he could, for once, not insist on making spaghetti with meat sauce with it. He asked what I suggested, and I suggested chili with black beans.

Spousal Unit hates black beans -- but he loves lima beans, ironically enough -- but he made it anyways. I brought the leftovers for lunch. He made himself a turkey sandwich instead.

Not authentic, but lima-bean-free.

100th Post! Polenta! Chicken! Cheetos!

Hello everyone -- if anyone is reading this at all at this point...

Welcome to the 100th post here at Food I Have Eaten.

Posts have been few and far between lately. I have an actual deadline approaching at work and a toddler who doesn't believe in sleep, so I have almost no time to actually write anything that doesn't go something like, "When developing a custom component, ensure that you have imported all the SDK libraries."

To top it off the God of the Snack Closet i.e., Linda, the office manager, was on vacation for a while before and after the Christmas/New Year break. This meant that the snack closet was bare. There was literally nothing in the closet. It was so bad that people started eating the sugar. I kid you not:  By the second week of the new year people had eaten through the whole giant box of sugar packets and everyone had to have their coffee -- espresso included -- black.

Needless to say, mutiny was imminent.

Fortunately Linda came back from vacation and the closet was replenished. And what bounty! There were chocolate chip cookies, Two Bite Brownies, chips, crackers, and, the piece de resistance, Cheetos! And not just any Cheetos: The crunchy kind!

The chocolate chip cookies and brownies disappeared within a day and a half. I had two cookies on the morning the package was opened. That was it.

The sacred imprint of crunchy Cheetos!

But Linda, in her wisdom, had provided us with a family-size bag of Cheetos. Oh how we pigged out on those! We had them for breakfast; we had them as lunchtime condiments; we had them with our coffee; we ate them as a late-afternoon snack. It was glorious!

During this time, spousal unit and I decided that we were sick of  making food that consisted of opening a can and heating it up. Just because there's a resurgence of 60s/50s nostalgia doesn't mean we have to eat like we're still on war rations.

Anyways, as such we made chicken cacciatore with polenta.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking how two people who seemingly can't get a lentil soup to not taste like dirty water can make a chicken cacciatore with polenta that doesn't suck. Well the answer's simple: chicken cacciatore is easier to make than lentil soup. You can't really fuck up a dish that involves chicken, tomato and wine -- it practically flavours itself. Meanwhile, you can totally screw up flavouring lentils boiled in water.

As for polenta: it's deceptively easy to make. You should try it. It's very tasty.

Easier than a lentil soup! Faster than a beef stew! It's chicken cacciatore!

Slightly Less Awful Lentil Soup

You know what sucks about winter? It's that no matter how much climate change makes it warmer and less snowy and generally less gloomy, the produce still sucks ass. So you're basically stuck eating root vegetables or canned beans for a few months.

Sure everyone says that frozen veg is great and awesome and tastes fresh and whatnot, but it's all a lie. Frozen broccoli tastes like nothing. And you can never get just regular frozen broccoli; it's always vegetable mixes, filled with vile crap like snow peas and sliced anemic carrots. Lastly, who the hell knows where these vegetables are from! They could be grown on toxic waste in a Chinese industrial city for all you know.

Anyways, the long and the short of it is that I don't like frozen veg and I'm not a big fan of root vegetables (screw Jamie Oliver!), so it's cans for me all winter. All. Fucking. Winter.

You know what the easiest thing is to make in winter? Canned lentil soup. It takes talent to make canned lentil soup taste like anything beside dirty water. You have to add spices or balsamic vinegar or tomatoes to it, and you have to do it in such a way that it doesn't just taste of whatever you added in.

A long, long time ago, my mom had a crunchy granola vegetarian recipe book that included many unremarkable soups that tasted like the inside of a health food store smells. However, there was this one recipe for curried apple lentil soup that was actually pretty good. My mom only made it once because she hates curry -- and because my mom is a traditionalist who will forever make lentil soup the same way.

The other day I found a bunch of bruised apples in the vegetable crisper. They were starting to go bad, but were still salvageable. So I said to myself, "Self, why don't we give curried apple lentil soup a try! We have a bottle of random curry powder in the pantry, so let's do this."

So I made it. It turned out OK, though not quite as awesome as I remembered it. But it was better than regular lentil soup.

Less Terrible Than Usual

As usual, I brought leftovers for lunch the next day and had one of those stupid low-fat yogurts for "dessert".

Lean Mean Smoke Meat Machine

Spousal Unit and I were all on our own one day and decided that we would go for lunch at the Deli down the street. The deli is owned by expat Montrealers who actually know what smoke meat is supposed to taste like.

Lean smoke meat makes more crumbs than medium smoke meat.

For some reason the place was ultra-packed. It was 2pm; why would so many people be having lunch at 2pm? This is a question that remains unanswered, but the result was that they were all out of the medium smoke meat, so I had to settled for lean.

Lean smoke meat is not quite as awesome as medium smoke meat. Medium smoke meat is soft and velvety on the tongue. Lean smoke meat tastes like meat. That said, any kind of smoke meat is better than no smoke meat.

The meal was finished off with a slice of apple pie à la mode. Unfortunately, because I decided to not be all Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, the apple pie was cold. Tsk.

A Tale of Two Yolks

You know that Italian hash I make? So the yolk is technically supposed to remain intact. I never managed it, ever, and was frankly thoroughly puzzled as to how one could even achieve a non-broken yolk when dealing with fried bread.

Success! Unbroken yolk!

But then a miracle happened!

OK, it wasn't a miracle. I just figured out that to not break the yolk you needed to make a little well in the middle of the fried bread, hot pepper and cheese and put the egg in there. Then you had to be very, very careful about flipping the entire concoction (yes, it requires flipping).

Failure. Broken yolk and sheepy cheese.

And this was how I managed to not break the yolk for the first time ever. Big round of applause for me!

I was so impressed with myself that I then decided to demonstrate my new mad non-egg-yolk-breaking-skillz to Spousal Unit. Unfortunately, I managed to break the yolk in the bowl before even dropping it into the pan. (Yes, I always crack eggs in a bowl first. This way I can check whether they're fertilized or bad. Yes I do realize this is somewhat crazy.)

Spousal Unit looked at the broken egg and asked me exactly what I wanted to show him. I lied and told him that I wanted to show him how if you mix Crotonese cheese with the Parmigiano it gets even gooier and tastier. And then Spousal Unit said that he didn't like sheep's milk cheese and that was the end of that.

O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!

That's some strong coffee!

O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine;
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine;
Not only strong in Espresso roast,
But in VIA form it packs the most.
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
That's some crazy-ass caffee-ine!

 O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou has given me;
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou has given me;
How often has my heart raced
After consuming you at a fast pace!
O Xmas Bleuch! O Xmas Bleuch!
Much jitters thou hast given me.

Soup for Breakfast

Yeah, you read right: soup for breakfast.

If you can have cereal for supper, you can have soup for breakfast.

Culturally-insensitive mug, meet your soup bowl counterpart.

Do you need backstory? Fine. We all woke up Sunday morning to no eggs, no bread and no OJ. It wasn't like it was a surprise: we had seen this coming for a week. Spousal Unit had a plan to go out and buy us breakfast. So off he went, forgetting that the time change would make The Toddler and me ravenous by 10am. The Toddler is happy having Cheerios at every meal, so there was no problem there. The problem was me.

All I wanted was hot soup because I had this nasty-ass cold that had decided to squat in my upper respiratory tract. We had leftover matzoh ball and kreplach soup (in chicken broth, natch) in the fridge. I warmed it up and the kreplach expanded to about 12 times their normal size.

At this point I should ask: do you know what kreplach is? Don't bother answering because I can't hear you. Also I am typing this in the past. Anyways, kreplach are dumplings filled with stuff, in this case mystery meat. We got them from the deli down the street because we're not really a dumpling-making family.

I ate the broth, the half-matzoh ball that was left and the two kreplach, then I washed it all down with an espresso because I didn't need a caffeine-withdrawal headache to amplify the sinus headache I already had.

By the time Spousal Unit got back with the breakfast sandwiches (sadly not Egg McMuffins), neither I nor The Toddler were hungry. Spousal Unit ate alone.

Chicken without Soup

Having a cold sucks.

After working from home, the cold had seemed to get better. Then I had a colossal lack of judgement and decided to go trick or treating in the cold rain with The Toddler. The next morning I woke up with a cough. The day after that I woke up with a cough and blocked sinuses. I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I elected to take a sick day.

Solid Gold

I did not have the energy to make soup. I went scavenging in the fridge and found some leftover oven-fried chicken. It wasn't soup, but it was chicken, so that counted for something. I reheated it and ate it on the sofa while watching some daytime talk show where they explained how to use the "exciting fall fashions" to hide "problem areas".

Minty Mouse

I drank so much mint tea, it wasn't even funny. My sweat had turned minty fresh. Even my coffee tasted minty fresh. The KitKat I stole from The Toddler's Hallowe'en stash was lovely, however.

I Need to Do Groceries: Stale Wafers

Even mushier when dunked in coffee.

I desperately wanted some dessert. I was working from home with a cold. I was going to have some coffee and a I really desperately wanted something sweet to go with it.


I looked in the pantry and found an open pack of Loacker chocolate wafers with exactly two wafers left in them. I had no idea how long they had been there, forget about how long they'd been open. I was desperate, so I had them.

They weren't just stale, they were hellastale. There was no crispness left in them whatsoever. They bent rather than snapped. But at least they were dessert. Plus, once you dunk them in coffee, it doesn't make much of a difference.

At least they reminded me that I should put them on the list for the next grocery run.

Fractal Food!

Spousal Unit asked me what he should make for supper one night that I wasn't going to be home. I told him that I had bought a romanesco broccoli and that he should make that. To which Spousal Unit replied, "What's a romanesco? How do I make that? What are you talking about?" So I had to explain to him that it was the Fractal Broccoli. Then he understood.

We only make one dish with the fractal: a pasta dish that includes saffron, raisins, loads of cheese and, of course, the fractal. It's sweet and savoury and it's a great excuse to drink wine. Because you have to drink wine with this kind of dish. You just have to. Don't argue.

Anyways, it turned out really well and we had leftovers for lunch the next day.

That Fractal's a Bit Old.

As a rule, I don't bring pasta leftovers to work, but the fractal pasta is different: because there's no tomato sauce, there's no bizarre acidic aftertaste and the pasta doesn't because a revolting mushy mess. Instead it just tastes a little stale. Hmmmm...stale.

Migraine Medicine

Drink Me!

I knew from the moment I got into the office that it was not going to be my day. I could feel the pressure around my temple and the heavy feeling around my eyes. I knew what was coming: a migraine.

I worked through it as much as I could, but then I couldn't do it anymore and went home.

The next day, I woke up and my migraine was slightly better, but not by much. So I worked from home and made myself some "migraine medicine": hot chocolate with coffee.

I swear this stuff keeps migraines at bay!

You make hot chocolate by combining cocoa, sugar, cinnamon and milk to make a paste, then you add boiling water a capful of (real) vanilla. Stir. Let cool so you don't burn your palate, and drink.

For migraine medicine, you add some instant coffee to the cocoa, sugar and cinnamon mix.

A few minutes after you drink it your migraine will miraculously go away.

Except when it doesn't and you end up in the dark, curled up in the fetal position.

Autumnal Eats: Lentil Stew and Apple Crumble

I made apple crumble.

Dessert That Tries Your Nerves

It wasn't even one of those spur-of-the-moment-temporary-insanity things either. I actually planned to make apple crumble. I went out and bought two different types of apples (Courtland for texture, MacIntosh for flavour), and made sure I had all the fixin' for the topping, and made the damned thing. In the process of peeling all the damned apples, I damaged a nerve in my wrist and my pinky finger now constantly feels tingly. It's not really as fun as it sounds.

Then I made lentil stew because it is easy and because sometimes all you have left in your pantry is cans of lentils, and all you have left in your fridge are some dying carrots and onions because you neglected to buy anything else while you were stocking up on apples for the damned crumble that damaged your wrist.

In the end, though, it was all worthwhile because you had seasonal apple crumble and lentil stew to bring to work and all your coworkers were like, "Oooh! How very autumnal of you!"

Or so you tell yourself as you try to ignore your tingly pinky.

Business Park Diner Quesadilla

When you don't have your car with you and you work in a business park, your options for lunch are limited. So it was either Business Park Bulgogi or the greasy spoon diner next door.

I decided to walk to the greasy spoon diner in the hopes of procuring a tasty BLT -- because why else would you visit a diner? -- but then I discovered that they had "quesadillas" on the menu.

Make yourself a danged quesadilla!

I've had the "quesadillas" before. They're a mass of cheese, red and green bell pepper, sautéed onions and grilled chicken in a tortilla. It's not bad and it was a fairer bet than the BLT, which I'd never had before.

This time, though, the quesadillas were heavy on the cheese and peppers, but rather light on the chicken. And the tortillas were these whole grain tortilla things that had been burnt on the grill.

At least they served it with piles of fries and sour cream. Salsa and guacamole would have been nice, but this diner doesn't really do "fresh".

Couscous!

This is different, isn't it?

Plastic makes it better. Kinda.

OK, not really because it's still an empty container. But the crumbs are different! See? They're couscous crumbs! Or rather individual couscou (one couscou, two couscous?). They were topped with stewed chickpeas that were made with lime and cinnamon, not that you could taste either because both flavours were obliterated by the tomato. Or maybe they were so harmonious that the flavours smoothly combined.

The last time I made this dish, the stewed chickpeas came out better, but the couscous was stale. I had just bought the friggin' couscous that day and it was already stale! That was the last time I bought boxed couscous. This couscous was happily hermetically sealed in a cellophane bag. Better living through plastics.

Veal, Broccoli, and Weight Loss

Apparently veal cutlets are a nice, tender meat. Apparently they're easy to cook. Apparently they're hard to fuck up.

And yet.

And yet my veal cutlets were chewy. I am pretty sure that I expended more energy chewing these cutlets than I actually got out of them. In addition to the veal, there was also barely-cooked broccoli which, let's face it, is pretty indigestible. So I'm guessing that I lost a couple of pounds eating my lunch.

Too bad that I made up for the calorie deficit with a ginormous helping of veggie straws. At least it was better than last week's Cheetos fest that I *ahem* forgot to take pictures of.

-546 Weight Watchers Points!