Playing with Food

Over Easter weekend I made a trip to the Farmers Market and got some early strawberries.  Some of them had really fun shapes and if you have been reading my blog for a while you know I have a thing for funny-shaped produce, natural or contrived.

So, what do you see?

Here's what I see:

(I didn't have anything good to make an eye, so I just added one in MS Paint.)

Too Pretty to Eat...Almost

Doug and I were introduced to the joys of bacon from happy pigs last New Year's Eve when some friends brought over some from Rainbow Meadow Farms.  It has since been referred to as the "Amazing Bacon".  It is so thick and fresh that it doesn't even curl up when you cook it.  I bake it in the oven and it comes out, flat, crisp and, well, amazing.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bacon, I was too busy eating it.

I went by the Rainbow Meadow Farms stand on my latest trip to the State Farmers Market to hopefully score some Amazing Bacon and to consider buying an Amazing Chicken while I was at it.  While I am all in favor of eating critters that live a happy life in open pastures, I am not quite ready for an $18 chicken.  This is in large part due to my lack of expertise with cooking whole birds.  I'll get there.

The very nice (and chatty) lady running the booth was going to run my debit card for the $7.something for the bacon even though she only liked to do it for over $10 when she offered me some fresh eggs to go with it.  Having not even thought about eggs, I happily agreed.  She then pulled out the most beautiful eggs I have ever seen.  They are Araucana eggs, and although I had a hard time capturing it on film, they are a delicate greenish-blue.

I'll admit to having entirely too much fun snapping pictures of these little beauties.  After a lifetime of sorted-by-size plain old white eggs, I found it incredibly and ridiculously charming that these were all different shapes and sizes.  I fried a bunch of them up (in a bit of Amazing Bacon fat of course) to have with the Amazing Bacon on Sunday and got a surprise.  I felt silly because I was a little sad to break such pretty eggs, but it was fun to crack the two biggest ones to find double yolks.  These eggs were even pretty on the inside, with a rich, golden yolk.  The only thing that could have made Sunday breakfast better would have been fresh-baked bread, but I have absolutely no luck in the kitchen with yeast.  In the lab, on the other hand, I put those yeasties to work!

Now, prepare for Eggs as Art!

Fancy Salad

Grandad (Papa) and Grammy (Yea-Yea) came out this weekend to visit their Sweet P.  We made our way down to the State Farmers Market on Saturday and I was inspired by all of the beautiful and delicious things I found there.  More on that in another post.  And, yes, I know that most or all of the produce I bought was not grown locally.  I'm okay with that for now.  Slowly, slowly I will consider the buy local thing for produce.  I'm not quite ready to only eat within the growing season, forsaking all else.

For dinner Saturday night I made a salad similar to one I've seen made on one the the approximately 9.5 million cooking shows I've watched.  First, the most beautiful, green and healthy-looking Boston lettuce I've ever seen, $5.00 for two giant heads.

Then toasted pecans and dried cherries because I didn't have any dried cranberries.  Finally, I broiled some rounds of goat cheese to put on top.  I think I overbroiled them just a tad, but they sure were pretty. I know it looks like a scallop in the photo, but it was goat cheese.  Add balsamic vinagrette and enjoy (with the sparkling wine we never drank at New Year's).  Yum!