Power Foods

38 Power Foods, Week 34 — Eggs — Sriracha Eggs over Biscuits with Basil Salsa

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RELAXING ON THE WEEKEND…

Brunch is a loved meal that doesn’t get eaten nearly often enough. It spells S-L-O-W.  Relaxed.  No rush. Picking and choosing as in, “There’s too much to choose from!”  Shades of a string quartet bowing off in a corner.  An attractive guy in a long apron at your elbow, murmuring, “More coffee?  Champagne?”   Unfortunately, we go out for brunch most of the time–and spend a bundle, too.  We sort of assume it’s too much trouble to cook or maybe even to entertain midday on the weekends, but I enjoy it.  (Even for just two.)

Add to the pull toward the middle of the day menu that I am crazy about eggs.  One of my really good friends says, “I never met an egg I didn’t like.” That’s about the size of it.   If you don’t believe me, you’ll have to see some of the things I do with eggs.

This is my Oven-Baked Vegetable Soup with Poached Egg

 or my Porridged Eggs, which are eggs cooked in oats stove top:

You get the idea, right?

But take a look at today’s pretty little egg dish and…


To this fast meal,  you might add a little fruit salad and maybe a piece of coffee cake or pastry from the best bakery (chocolate mousse?) in town and you’re in business.  Bloody Marys and Mimosas (or some variation) are part of the conventional brunch wisdom, as is a vat of strong, perfect coffee and real cream.  A dash of Jack or brandy in the coffee might replace the marys and mimosas for some.  Even hot cocoa (mocha?) with a swig of brandy or a tot of Peppermint Schnapps would do the trick.  Don’t skip out on the fun drinks; they’re a big part of why people like to go out to those expensive, extravagant brunches at inns or hotels.   Set the table with your favorite things and pour a little pitcher of real cream.

Really quick real hot chocolate at my house:  To a microwave safe mug, add one ounce of good-quality bittersweet chocolate. (Just break it up; no need to grate) Add one teaspoon granulated sugar.   Pour in milk until the mug is about 3/4 full.  Microwave on full-power until hot–about two minutes in my microwave. (Don’t boil.) Whisk until smooth.  

Save yourself a few bucks and invite your sister or that neighbor you keep meaning to ask over.  There you go.  You have the entire Sunday afternoon to while away sipping that second (third) cup of coffee and dreaming about what you’re planting next month.

How about some dill?

And while you’re at it, you’re eating one of the thirty-eight power foods, eggs. One of the few foods with vitamin D, protein-packed, quick-cooking,  low-cal (90)  and inexpensive eggs are also loaded with B vitamins and lots of minerals.  There is little with which they don’t pair.  Eggs and asparagus are one of my most-loved combinations.

My Boiled Eggs and Asparagus on English Muffins with Cheese Sauce–perfect for Easter brunch.


My Dad called them (one of) nature’s perfect foods.  Read more about eggs here at The Incredible, Edible Egg. 

My friend Cathy’s “ladies” lay sexy-colored beauties. They’re just starting to “come on” with the longer light.

And while I love eggs, I don’t like chickens at all.  Here in Saint Paul, we can have chickens right in the city, but I’m not going there.  Cathy has to keep her ladies to herself and just share the eggs.  I trade her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or granola for a dozen of these lovelies.  I get the bargain.

 So call a friend for next Sunday at 12:00 and——

Chill the sparkler, set the table, and make the biscuits on Saturday.  Put on your brunch music:

 Product Details

Williams-Sonoma Presents Sunday Brunch

  and make….

      Note:  These eggs are just barely “spicy.”  If you like HOT, double or triple the Sriracha.

sriracha eggs over biscuits with basil salsa
Serves 2              doubles, triples, or quadruples easily

There are people who would marry you for these.
    • Basil Salsa (recipe below)
  • 2-4 biscuits (depending on how thick you’d like your bottom layer)*
  • 1 teaspoon butter, melted or olive oil
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Fresh ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons grated sharp cheddar or gouda cheese (optional), plus a bit for garnish
  1. Make basil salsa and set aside.
  2. Slice biscuits+ (in thin or thick layers-up to you) and divide between two serving plates.
  3. Place butter or olive oil in small skillet and heat over medium heat.
  4. Meantime, in a small bowl, beat together the eggs, Sriracha, salt, and a grind or two of black pepper. 
  5. Pour eggs into pan and let set briefly, stir to bring uncooked eggs up from the bottom.  Repeat until eggs are cooked to your liking. Stir in cheese.
  6. Divide eggs evenly over biscuits and top with basil salsa. Garnish with a bit of cheese and another grind of black pepper. 

*No biscuits?  English muffins or toasted leftover baguette are good substitutes.
+Don’t want to worry about rushing?  Make your biscuits the night before.  Heat briefly in the oven (350 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes.)
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Sriracha is a hot chili sauce named for the coastal port city in Thailand from which it hails. The general recipe for sriracha includes ground chiles, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt, and was first developed to serve with seafood. (about.com)

 

 alyce’s basil salsa 
                               ***also tasty on chicken or fish tacos or plain grilled or poached white fish

  • 1/4 cup each chopped fresh basil and spinach
  • 1 tablespoon minced onion
  • 1/2 teaspoon grated or finely minced garlic
  • 2 tablespoons minced red bell pepper
  • 1 small tomato, chopped finely

In a small bowl, mix all ingredients together gently.  Taste and adjust  seasonings.  (More onion? Garlic?) 

cook’s note I like this salsa without the heat of jalapeno, etc; it’s much fresher and the beautiful delicate basil is not overpowered by heat.  That said, add a bit of minced jalapeno if you like it. I opted for Sriracha in the eggs, which could be increased. You then have spicy topped by cool and fragrant–refreshing.

If you like this, you might also like my Poached Eggs on Grilled Cheddar Tomatoes

or my Egg+Egg White Omelet Filled with Cottage Cheese on Whole Wheat Toast

Say that three times real fast.

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38 Power Foods is a Team Effort!

Stop by these other blogs and see what they’re cooking each week as we team up to bring you some of the healthiest cooking available:

Minnie Gupta from TheLady8Home.com

Sarah – Everything in the Kitchen Sink

All sites may not blog power foods each week.

Are you a food blogger?  Join us:  Email Mireya@MyHealthyEatingHabits.com
   
 Sing a new song because while the snow is still piled up, the sun is shining in the beautiful city of  Saint Paul, Minnesota,
Alyce

38 Power Foods, Week 31 — Walnuts — Leek-Fennel Soup with Walnut Pesto

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Hot!

I didn’t mean to do it, but you can see the steam billowing away from this hot Fennel-Leek Soup with Walnut Pesto.  Hearty without being heavy, this is a lovely light lunch with toasted baguette and cheese..

Left:  Roquefort                     Right:  Aged Provolone

or a lemony start to a special dinner.  Simple pictures are often best and this is no exception.  The soup pot ingredients are mostly fresh fennel, sliced leeks, chicken stock, and lemon juice–cooked up in about twenty minutes until the vegetables are just barely tender.   The only complexity involved, and it isn’t much, is a gremolata-like pesto made in the food processor using today’s power food, walnuts, along with lemon and parsley.  Traditional gremolata contains garlic, but I tossed that in the soup pot intead, so have named the topping a pesto.  You can call it what you like; I also call it good.

As walnuts are the nut grown where I live in Minnesota (there’s a black walnut tree right down the street),  I was happy to blog about them today!  Not only are they locally sourced and extra-heart-healthy goodies, they also improve brain function and are full of anti-oxidants. A good source of easy-to-carry protein, walnuts weigh in at about 185 calories per ounce (about 14 walnut halves.) While we think of walnut oil as special salad oil, in France, at least,  it was in years past used in lamps for light along with candles.  I happen to be reading a book just this week  From Here, You Can’t See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and its Restaurant, by Michael S. Sanders.  Just at the point were I stopped, a local duck farmer was explaining about walnut oil to the author, as many local gardens featured walnut trees and some farms still had walnut groves:

(100 years ago)…  And of course they force-fed geese, mostly for the fat, rather than for the meat.  FOR THE FAT!  Not for using in preservation, because pork fat is better than goose for that, but for cooking!  And the walnut oil, they burned in little lamps, a shallow dish with a wick suspended above — you see them in all the antique shops now — les calèmes.  They had walnut oil, back then, for lights.   Oh, people make such a big cheese of the walnut oil now, eh?  But it’s not that good, it goes rancid fast, and back then it was used almost entirely for lighting.  They had no petroleum yet, that was the next thing to come.  So they burned walnut oil or candles. 

Three things: walnut oil was and is probably used for a lot of things,  but it isn’t terribly useful for cooking per se as it’s heat-sensitive and burns easily.  Also, it does become rancid easily, so buy small quantities and store the oil in the refrigerator.  I have always stored walnuts in the freezer (up to a year); they keep only about a month on the pantry shelf.  Let them come to room temperature before using for baking.

Learn more about walnut here, but first make the soup!


   leek-fennel soup with walnut pesto  

The pesto ready to be made in the food processor.

                    
4 generous main-course servings 
6 small first course servings

      Cook’s Note:  While the soup cooks, make the pesto, and have it ready at the table. This soup is easily vegan if vegetable broth is used instead of chicken stock.  Without the toasted cheese accompaniment, it’s also gluten-free.

                                                                                                           
 for the soup:

  • 1 tablespoon each olive oil and butter
  • Pinch aleppo pepper (can substitute crushed red pepper), optional 
  • 2 fennel bulbs, trimmed, cored, and sliced thinly
  • 6 leeks, white and light green parts only, well cleaned, and sliced thinly
  • 1 small carrot, peeled and sliced thinly
  • 1 celery stalk, minced
  • 1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon Herbes de Provence 
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper 
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 quart chicken stock (or vegetable broth)
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1-2 drops hot sauce, optional
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon–or to taste (you need to grate the peel for the pesto-do that first!)

 for the walnut pesto:

  • 1/4 cup each fresh parsley and walnut pieces-whole or in pieces
  • grated peel from 1/2 lemon  
  1.  In a 6 quart soup pot, heat the oil and butter with the pepper over medium heat.  Add the fennel, the leeks, carrot, celery, parsley, herbs, salt, and pepper.  Stir, cover and cook about ten minutes, stirring once or twice; turn heat down if browning too quickly.
  2. Add the garlic, stir, and cook two minutes. Pour in the stock and the white wine.  Season with hot sauce, if desired.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover, and let cook another ten minutes or so until all vegetables are tender.
  3. Meanwhile, make the pesto by placing all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor or hand chopper and pulsing until finely ground like fresh breadcrumbs.  Place in a small serving bowl with a tiny spoon at the table.
  4.  When vegetables are tender, purée soup using an immersion blender or in batches in the food processor or blender.  Squeeze in about half of the lemon juice.  Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary, adding the rest of the lemon juice if you like it.  I liked just a little more salt–this will depend on how salty your stock was. Serve hot with a small spoonful or two of the walnut pesto.

Disclaimer:  For vegan and gluten-free options, please check all ingredients in your own kitchen as some ingredients are available with different options from different manufacturers.  As always, check with your dietician with questions.  
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38 Power Foods is a group effort!   Stop by these other blogs and see what they’re cooking each week as we team up to bring you some of the healthiest cooking available.

Ansh – SpiceRoots.com  
Minnie Gupta from TheLady8Home.com

Sarah – Everything in the Kitchen Sink

All sites may not blog power foods every week.
 
    Are you a food blogger? Join us!

 Sing a new song,
Alyce  

38 Power Foods, Week 22 — Brown Rice — Chili and Brown Rice with Spinach Salad

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BTW, those are still cherry tomatoes from our garden on November 8.

While chili is a quintessential American fall meal, it is often eaten as is.  Just a bowl.  Just a spoon.  Just you and your chili.  

Fall in our ‘hood–tiny, dried crabapples against a St. Paul blue sky.

The chili mostly stands alone, I guess.

Or at least just with chips, cheese, onions, sour cream….or on hot dogs or fries.  Ha.

(Election Day Turkey-Lentil Crock-pot Chili--my last post–is one of Michelle Obama’s favorite meals… well–Turkey Chili is, at any rate.)


 But I like chili in all kinds of ways and with lots of different things.  I grew up with chili poured over a burger at the Dog ‘n Suds where I car hopped.  My Mom’s “Irish Chili” was full of the quarts of tomatoes she canned each summer.  It was a whole lot of tomatoes.  College at Western Illinois University brought Chili Frito over at the cafeteria for Washington and Lincoln Halls.  I loved it!  Why hadn’t I thought of it?  As years went on, my chili changed repeatedly.  After all, I lived in Europe where they didn’t know from chili.  I lived in San Antonio where if you knew beans about chili, you knew there were no beans in chili.  (I mentioned that to some Minnesotans once.  In concert, they all went, “WHAT???”)  I lived with The Silver Palate Cookbook and made their “Chili for a Crowd” forever…well, actually I still it make with variations. Later I moved on to Ina’s Chicken Chili–one of my favorites.  In other words,  these days I make several different kinds of chili (mostly my own–whatever happens to go in the pot), but one of my favorite chili meals originated one day when there wasn’t quite enough vegan chili to go around…

So I made some brown rice and a little salad.  For grins, I put it all in the bowl together.  Now I do it all the time.  Gives your mouth a break from the heat and provides more whole grains and greens.  It also lowers the cholesterol and calories of a chili meal so I can have it more often with less guilt.

Here’s the base for my vegan chili.

So here’s how I made this chili with brown rice today…using the leftover Election Day Crock-Pot chili and some brown rice I let cook this morning while  I walked the dogs.

“Come on, Gab.  Get the leash and let’s go, huh?”

alyce’s brown rice and chili with spinach salad

For each serving:

1 cup fresh spinach
1 shallot, sliced
Kosher Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
Drizzle of Olive oil
Cherry Tomatoes 

1/2 cup lightly salted and peppered cooked brown rice mixed with 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1 cup chili (I like the chili I just blogged–full of hot Italian sausage and lentils as well as beans, but use any chili you’ve got or buy some Wendy’s chili to take home if you’re stuck.)


To assemble:

1.  In a large shallow bowl (a pasta bowl is fine), add spinach to one corner.  Top with half of the sliced shallots and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Squeeze lemon over the greens and drizzle with oil.  Add cherry tomatoes at side.

 2. Add rice to one side of the bowl and chili to the other.  Garnish with rest of shallots and a few tortilla chips.

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brown rice– tips and info……….

Brown rice takes about 45 minutes to cook at sea level, but quicker versions are available.  Some markets even sell frozen cooked brown rice.  You can also make brown rice in your crock-pot and freeze small portions for future use.  And, yes, you can make brown rice in your microwave.  You don’t save a lot of time, but a few minutes.  The directions are on the rice bag.

Rice field

 
  As our Power Foods group moves through the 38 Power Foods (click to order book), you’ll gather we’re up to brown rice this week.  The main food for over two-thirds of the world’s population, rice is sacred to many people.  Rice is a complex carbohydrate high in protein.  Did you know Arkansas is the largest rice-producing state in the U.S.?  If you were raised by southerners in the United States, you grew up eating a lot of rice.  Rice and gravy (or butter), rather than potatoes and gravy, were the standard at my family table.  My sister-in-law, who’s Korean, keeps a rice pot hot pretty much 24-7.  If her children are hungry between meals, they know where to go without bothering her.

Nutrients in
Brown Rice
1.00 cup (195.00 grams)
Nutrient%Daily Value

manganese88%

selenium27.3%

magnesium20.9%

tryptophan18.7%

Calories (216)12%

chart courtesy whole foods
 
       Brown Rice is Healthy!  As only the hull is removed off brown rice, we have a much healthier grain to eat that actually works against cholesterol in our bodies with its larger component of fiber.  You can read all about it here, but you’ll see with just a little bit of research that eating foods like brown rice works toward protecting us against heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, muscle spasms,  migraines, and many other things.  Tryptophan?  But of course.  Eat turkey and brown rice and you’re much more likely to sleep well!  And best of all, if you’ve ever been on Weight Watchers, you know a cup of brown rice is four points and white is five.  Who wouldn’t take the brown?  With a few exceptions, I use brown rice instead of white rice for nearly everything.  I draw the line (usually) at fried rice, but that’s a VERY occasional meal and I sometimes even use brown rice for that. 
(rice field photo courtesy producer’s rice mill)

       Leftover brown rice?  Make extra.  Always.   Rice is good food!  Then you can….  Add milk and a little sugar for breakfast.  Stir into some scrambled eggs with cheese and green onions. Add to a burrito.  Stir up a stir fry for a topping. Warm well and add a teensy bit of butter and lots of pepper to eat with cooked squash.  Make a patty, fry it up and make a hole in the middle.  Crack an egg into the hole. Cover and cook 2-3 minutes.  Add to soup or stew.  Cook up Thai curry.  In fact, there are so many ways to use brown rice that I know several people who just cook up a great batch every weekend and eat off it all week with whatever. The simplicity, cost,  and health benefits of brown rice appeal greatly to those who don’t cook much and to those who cook often.

       One of the favorite posts on my other blog (Dinner Place–Cooking for One) is “Help!  I’ve Got Leftover Take-out Rice and Don’t Know What to Do With It.”  Click and check out the recipe; it works just as well with brown rice.

Brown Rice for Breakfast in Colorado Springs:

Smiley’s…on Tejon in Colorado Springs

       There is absolutely the very best breakfast to be had in Colorado Springs at a tiny place downtown on Tejon called SMILEY’S.  Now funky, spunky Smiley’s has all kinds of breakfasts and lunches (as well as incredible baked goods–pie and homemade whole wheat bread for their toast, for instance), but each day they have specials.  We’re not talking eggs and bacon.  We’re talking lovingly designed, gorgeous breakfasts.  One favorite in the fall is a halved acorn squash filled with a mixture of brown rice, cumin, cheese, and scrambled eggs.  I’m going to try and fix it for breakfast this morning without a recipe.  If I turns out, I’ll add the picture here.  (I’m also working on a brown rice dessert for the soup cookbook.  Be patient.)  photo courtesy smiley’s

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Join our blogging group!

 I blog with a great group of writers every Friday where we cook our way through the list of foods from Whole Living Magazine’s Power Foods:  150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients:    Read more about tasty papaya this week at these sites: 

 
Ansh – SpiceRoots.com  
Minnie Gupta from TheLady8Home.com

Sarah – Everything in the Kitchen Sink
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The sun shining on my brown rice.
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 please help

Hurricane Sandy Relief:  Donate to Food Bank for NYC

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Sing a new song,
Alyce

all photos copyright Alyce Morgan, 2012 (except where noted)~please ask for permission to use~i’m likely to give it, but like to know where my pics go

50 Women Game-Changers in Food – #50 – Julie Powell – Poached Eggs

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Poached Eggs:  They’re not just for breakfast anymore.   Alyce’s  Poached Egg Chef’s Salad

If you saw the movie “Julie and Julia,” you’ll know Julie Powell didn’t like eggs.  While working her way through Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume I in one year, Julie one day had to wake up and smell the eggs.  Yuck.  Something she never cooked.  But eggs were on the list and eggs are what she finally did fix.  And liked.  Who knew?

To begin with, Julie was a young married woman in NYC with a job that was stressful.   She needed more.  She loved to cook.  What else to do but to cook all of Julia Child’s recipes from The Art of French Cooking in a year and blog about it?  The original blog (2002-3?) is still online if you’d like to peruse it; blogs have changed immeasurably since then.  I actually did read it once upon a time…  If you’d like to read quite a bit of it all at once, you can still order the book, Julie & Julia .  As you more than likely are aware, the book became a very popular movie of the same name (2009) that taught everyone I know about  food bloggers.  I no longer ever have to explain what I do with my free (insert eye roll) time; people just say, “Oh, like Julie in Julie and Julia.”  I just nod my head, “Yes.”  What more can I say? She did change our world.  No doubt at all.  I don’t know how many food bloggers there were in 2005 versus 2012, but a current figure  (wrong/right?)  is over 11,000 in the United States alone.  Smile.

As far as poached eggs go, I’m a fan.  I often blog them:

Egg Salad #2

Alyce’s Asparagus-Mushroom Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette and Poached Egg #3
Poached Eggs on Grilled Cheese Tomatoes–one of my favorite breakfasts
After the cut.

Don’t know how to poach eggs or are scared?  Ah, gwahhn.  Heat up some water and let those eggs slip naked into the hot tub.   There are ways to make them more perfect, but here’s the easy lesson I posted in my Dinner Place blog, which is all about cooking for one person: 


Alyce’s Method for Poaching Eggs:

1. In a deeper small skillet or saucepan, heat 3″ water to boiling.  Turn down the heat to simmer and add a small splash of white vinegar (1 tsp) if you have any.  You don’t want a big boil here, the whites will fly all through the water.

2.  Crack one egg into a ramekin or tea cup and tip the egg slowly and gently into the water, holding the cup in place for a couple of seconds as the egg begins to set.  Repeat with second egg a certain distance away so that the whites, if possible, aren’t touching.  Either let simmer for 3 minutes or so (occasionally spooning hot water over yolk if you like)  or, alternately, turn heat off and cover tightly for 3-5 minutes, depending on how set you like your eggs.  3 for runny yolks, 5 for firm.  Approximately.

Not perfect, but perfectly edible.  Just add salsa.
I like my eggs “eye ball” set (haven’t drawn hot water over tops) and quite runny — often for salad dressing or part of anyway.   Most people want the yolk completely masked–above.

3.  Remove each egg from its bath using a slotted spoon or spatula and tap the spatula gently on a towel or paper towel to remove excess water before sliding the egg onto the plate.

4.  Season well with salt and pepper.   Eat immediately.

A couple of tips:  Room temperature eggs crack more easily than cold eggs; you have less chance of shell fragments.  Also:  crack  your eggs on a flat surface, not on the edge of the pan.  You can also buy egg poachers (metal cups with long handles on legs) or silicone poachers for the microwave.  I’ve never tried either gizmo, so let me know if you like them.

Here’s my equipment:

 
And, of course, tasty eggs–all sizes!

We can raise chickens right in the city here in St. Paul.  These are from Cathy Velasquez-Eberhart and her ladies.

Here’s my copy–a first edition even.

Julia’s Method

 Notice that Julia Child was always “Julia Child” until the movie came out.  Now she’s just Julia.  Kind of like Just Joan. (“Jewel of the Nile” l985–Kathleen Turner)  Well, maybe not!

Just for grins, I’m going to look up Julia’s instructions. Hold on.  Whoa.  This is all coming back to me.  If you’ve the book (Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I), it’s on pages 116-117.  Yes, it’s two pages of instructions that you’re welcome to.  I make my instructions short and simple; you’ll learn technique and improve your eggs over time IF you’re a beginning cook or even an accomplished cook who hasn’t made poached eggs.  Not that my technique is better (cough cough), but while I’m wordy, I’m not quite as wordy as Julia—usually. 

One biggy is that even Julia admits you might want to make a 6 minute (boiled) egg instead of poached.  (Not likely for me.)  She also wants you to use fresh eggs, which are worth hunting for.  Check out your Farmer’s Market if you can’t find eggs any other way.  You can then set up a schedule to buy eggs from that person throughout the year.  I trade things for my eggs–things like baked cookies, granola, homemade ice cream sauces, etc.  You could try trading a service even.  Often, however, the eggs are no more expensive than quality eggs from the store.

One thing Julia writes is that if you need to keep the eggs for any length of time, place the cooked eggs in ice water.  You can store them in the frig like that.  Later, to heat them, slide them into salted hot water for 30 seconds. This is perfect if you’d like to have some friends for Sunday brunch.  You fix your poached eggs on Saturday, and do the hollandaise and English muffins (oven) on Sunday.
Or what if you’d like to do a few eggs for yourself for weekday breakfasts?  Do them Sunday afternoon and eat them Monday-Tuesday.

A Couple of Thoughts About Eggs 

We eat a lot of eggs and while they have a bad rap for cholesterol, so far we have no problems as we ease on toward 59.  I encourage young or new cooks to make eggs.  They are easy, fast, accessible, and inexpensive protein.   They store well.  They travel beautifully (if boiled.)  You can do all kinds of things with them!  In two minutes flat, you have an omelet and you can put nearly anything in the frig or pantry into it.  In twenty, you’ve cooked a dozen, boiling, and you  have lunches for work done.  Go eggs.

Want more about Julie Powell?

Watch a great video of Jacques Pepin and Julia Child poaching eggs together.  Julia uses the metal egg poacher with the long handle!  HA HA!!
Read Amanda Hesser’s 2003 NYT article about Julie Powell’s “web log or ‘blog'”
NYT 2009 updated article on Powell
Julie’s 2010 blog
Wiki biography
Time Magazine, 2010–Julie becomes a butcher.

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With this post,  I give a low bow and fine thanks to our great group of bloggers writing about Gourmet Live’s 50 Women Game-Changers in Food as we come to the tail end of our project.  A few folks will write another post summing up the whole 50 or writing about someone spectacular who didn’t make the list (Marion Cunningham for me), but mostly this is our last hurrah.    I joined the group late, but have enjoyed all of my experience and am thankful for all of the learning, camaraderie, and fun…  Please take time to visit the other fine bloggers and see what they made for “Julie” week — or any other week, for that matter.

THANK YOU, LADIES:

Val – More Than Burnt Toast, Taryn – Have Kitchen Will Feed, Susan – The Spice Garden
Heather – girlichef, Miranda – Mangoes and Chutney, Amrita -Beetle’s Kitchen Escapades ,

Linda A – There and Back Again, Nancy – Picadillo, Mireya – My Healthy Eating Habits
Veronica – My Catholic Kitchen, Annie – Most Lovely Things, Jeanette – Healthy Living
Claudia – Journey of an Italian Cook, Alyce – More Time at the Table
Kathy – Bakeaway with Me, Martha – Simple Nourished Living, Jill – Saucy Cooks
Sara – Everything in the Kitchen Sink

Several of us plan to begin another blogging venture (though I’m about to put the blog on vacation and join up a little later) featuring the 38 healthiest foods featured in 


Power Foods: 150 Delicious Recipes with the 38 Healthiest Ingredients by The Editors of Whole Living Magazine (Dec 28, 2010)

I hope you’ll join us!

Sing a new song and poach a new egg,
Alyce