A Great Start to the Week

When I woke up this morning, it was 27-degrees... that's not a very good start to the first full week of Spring, now is it? Well, I walked the dogs on the sunny side of the street, so it wasn't so bad.

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Ready for breakfast!

I always feed them a small wet food breakfast when they come in from their morning walk, so I thought this morning (afternoon, really) would be a great one for me to have a nice breakfast, too.

I started with a hot cup of coffee, which is something I haven't made in a long while. In fact, I haven't even had a coffee to drink since... before the end of January? I tried to water it down a little, so the caffeine wouldn't overwhelm me.

My breakfast comfort food is chilaquiles, and now that I'm eating eggs again, I decided to make my chilaquiles with fried eggs instead of scrambled. I've always worried that there would be some gross texture things going on, what with the combination of egg yolk and sour cream, but it turns out it was delicious! I'm talking, the most delicious chilaquiles I've ever eaten, hands down.

This cast iron pan is one of the lights of my life. It cooks everything so evenly, and it's easily "washed" with a quick paper towel wipe-down.

I finally found a carton of eggs that I'm not grossed out by.  Phil's Fresh Eggs are certified humane, tasty, and affordable -- hooray!

A gorgeous plate of food.

I made my own salsa, but started before I realized we were out of onions, so it only had pablano pepper, Kumato tomato, garlic, black beans, cilantro, and a little salt. I couldn't believe how tasty it was, even without the onion! This might be my new go-to salsa recipe.

I hope y'all are having a nice start to the week, despite the still-cold temperatures. Just hang in there. :)

Ah, what the heck!

Wanna hear a funny story?  Well, okay, it's not really a story, and it's not all that funny... but today I started packing up the kitchen, and was getting SO frustrated!  Where does all of this stuff come from, anyway?  I have three different kinds of flour?  I even found a stick o' lard.  Seriously, lard.  So I called my sister, and she assured me that this wasn't unusual (she is a fellow frequent-mover), that the kitchen is always the most difficult room to pack.

But the best part?

Our new place doesn't actually have a kitchen.

I've dramatically named this the "dedicated cooking area".

Yeah.  I'm going to spend at least 2-3 days packing up a room with nowhere really to put the things once I get them to the new space.  I find that moderately funny, anyway.

We've got kitchen-esque plans, of course.  Shelves, Mason jars full of dry goods, a fancy-schmancy new mini fridge (with an adorable little freezer).  But seriously, I might have to really start cutting down on my kitchen supplies, because this is starting to look a wee bit crazy.

Snow, snow, snow, and soup.

Usually when it snows, I start roasting a squash.  It's my thing.

But last Tuesday, I had run out of squash.  So I made soup instead.

I made it in a cast iron pot, just to be fancy.

Vegetable soup with rosemary dumplings -- divine!

CSA Haul

My CSA from Newleaf Natural Grocery is delivered every other Saturday, and it feels like Xmas morning for grown-ups around here!  I get so excited to see what luscious surprises await me inside that cardboard box.

Of course, there's nothing more beautiful than a carrot.  It's not my favorite vegetable to eat, but it's certainly one of my favorite vegetables to look at.

4 carrots

Also in the box, veggies:

2 leeks

1/3 cabbage

5 celery

3 potatoes

There was also a gorgeous head of lettuce, but I had washed and stored it before it occurred to me to take it's portrait.  :) 

and, fruit:

2 pears

2 oranges

2 kiwi

2 bananas

Seriously, show me one natural/organic store where I could buy all of this for $15, and then have it delivered to my door for only another $5.  This is the big time, folks, and if you live in Chicago, you really need to get in contact with these folks!

Newleaf Natural Grocery