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We love eggs around here. Probably enough to actually warrant backyard chickens, though I’m always going to say no to that.

And fall means that we’re back into soups and stews, which means that ramen is a regular feature. I’ve shared my basic ramen recipe already, but, really, you should master the jammy egg first.  Why? Because while there are endless variations of ramen, all if it should be topped with a jammy egg. Because you’d be sad to make ramen without having mastered this egg first, practice it once or twice, serving the soft boiled egg with toast for breakfast.

Above, a jammy egg in a porcelain egg cup. I first saw a soft boiled egg cup in Bread and Jam with Francis as a child and always hoped to grow up to be fancy enough to eat my own breakfast this way. 

Ingredients and equipment

• As many eggs as you want to eat right away, cold from the refridgerator
• A pot large enough for all the eggs to fit, but not much larger
• Ladle or spaghetti server or spider skimmer
• Water to cover the eggs by about 1 inch
• Bowl to hold cooked eggs
• Ice or cold water

Directions

• Bring water to a boil.
• Using a ladle or spaghetti stirrer or spider slimmer, lower the eggs quickly but gently into the water.
• Set timer for 6 minutes and seconds. (If, after this attempt, you think the yolk is too jammy, add 15 seconds to the cook time. But don’t go past 6 minutes and 45 seconds or you’ve missed the point.)
• The cold eggs will immediately lower the temperature of the water, but it will increase back to boiling quickly. Don’t let it come to a full boil. Instead, maintain a gentle boil.
• As end of time nears, place ice into a bowl.
• When eggs are finished cooking, use the ladle or spaghetti server or spider slimmer to remove them quickly but gently from the pot and place them into the bed of ice. Add a little water to cover them. Chill for 2 minutes.
• If serving in an egg cup, crack from wide end, where the air bubble in an egg is.
• If serving sliced in half length-wise for ramen, peel gently.

Fall is when we get to turn perfectly nutritious fruits and vegetables into high-calorie, high-carb breads.

Nothing gets the kids out of bed on a sleepy Sunday morning faster than the smell of pumpkin bread coming out of the oven. (Okay, adding bacon helps.) Between the four of us, the first loaf disappears pretty quickly, so if I want something to toast the next day in a little butter (which I always do), I make two loaves.

If you make this and think that some other pumpkin bread is better, please contact me immediately to share your recipe. Because I can’t even imagine a pumpkin bread tastier.

• 29 oz can of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1/2 c. vegetable or canola oil
• 2 2/3 c. sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 c. flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two loaf pans, and either flour them or “flour” them with powdered sugar.
2. Beat together pumpkin, eggs, sugar, and oil until well mixed.
3. Combine remaining ingredients in a separate bowl. I sift them together, personally, but you could skip this.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet.
5. Divide batter between loaf pans.
6. Bake for about an hour (depending on size of loaf pan), until top of the pumpkin bread bounces back after you touch it.
7. Serve with salted butter, honey butter, and/or powdered sugar.

Strawberries have always been my favorite fruit. Maybe it’s because I was a strawberry blonde as a tot or because I have a strawberry birthmark on my shoulder that always made me feel like I’d be kissed by someone with strawberry-stained lips. Or maybe because my elementary school’s annual fundraiser was a strawberry festival, complete with the chance to win a 2 liter bottle of soda but, more importantly, to eat a piece of shortcake as big as your hand, covered in strawberries and a cloud of whipped cream.

Strawberries are also so precious because, like tomatoes, in-season and out-of-season makes them two entirely different experiences. That also means that I eat strawberries every day of May and June, before they disappear for another year. If I live to be 100, that’s only 100 strawberry seasons, which is seems like a tragedy.

Here’s how we’re eating strawberries today. This recipe is a riff on the Hard Cake recipe in Sarah E. Myers and Mary Beth Lind’s Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking with Whole Grains one of those cookbooks that I’ve used so much that it’s now held together with a rubber band.

Strawberry Shortcake

• 1 c. white flour
• 1 c. whole wheat flour
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/3 c. shortening (If this isn’t something you have on hand, you can use softened butter but will get a slightly different texture)
• 1/2 c. + 2 Tbs. cold milk

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees; grease a pie pan.
2. Mix dry ingredients.
3. Cut in shortening.
4. Add milk, stirring just until moistened.
5. Pat into the pie pan. Try not to handle the dough too much.
6. Bake for 25-35 minutes, depending on size of pie pan.

Serve topped with sliced strawberries and milk, sweetened condensed milk, vanilla ice cream, or–my favorite–sour cream with a little sugar stirred in. Call it dessert, or if you want to lie to yourself, breakfast.

This is a good recipe to make with kids because they can practice measuring without having to use a million different measuring cups or spoons, and they get to use a pastry blender, if you have one, which is a skill that other recipes we use with kids, like cookies and cake, don’t typically require. And patting it into the pan is fun since you get to get your hands.

Remember: Strawberries should never be refrigerated, so eat them they day you buy them. This is why we say that prayer “Give us this day, Lord, our daily strawberries” this whole month.

Thanks to my friend Angela for suggesting that we try egg curry. Regular readers here know that eggs are a big part of our diet. They’re cheap and nutritious and good for guests on low carb or gluten free diets, and we almost always have them in the fridge. In honor of springtime, we will be sharing our favorite egg recipes all month in this little series we’re calling “Good Eggs.”

This egg curry came together pretty quick in my InstantPot. As always, our variation skips measuring most ingredients in favor of washing fewer dishes. Since we almost always have hard boiled eggs ready to go, this comes together with just four dirty dishes (a knife and cutting board to cut the onion, a wooden spoon to stir, the pot to cook it in, and the rice pot.)

• 12 hard boiled eggs
• Ghee or oil
• Turmeric and salt
• Onion, thinly sliced
• Garlic (powdered, fresh, or paste), Ginger (powdered, fresh, or paste), small amounts (1/4 tsp-1/2 tsp) of each cumin, more turmeric, coriander, chili powder, and salt. Alternatively, use your favorite curry powder or paste. OR use a can of diced tomatoes, garam masala, bay leaf, chili powder, a cinnamon stick, cloves, and fengugreek.
• Basmati rice, for serving

Set your InstantPot to “Saute” and add a slug of ghee or oil. Poke holes in the eggs with a fork. Saute eggs in a mix of turmeric with a little salt. Remove eggs from pot.

Add sliced onions, ginger, and garlic or alternative spices if you are using them. Saute until softened, 3-5 minutes. If things get sticky, add a little water.

Return eggs to pot. Add a cup of water OR, if using, tomatoes. Add remaining spices. Cook on high pressure for 6 minutes.

Serve over rice.

We host a sometimes-annual chili cookoff that involves secret judges and prizes both silly and substantial as a fundraiser for the local food pantry. One benefit of hosting is that you get to try a lot of chili recipes (Lorna H.’s Floribbean Chili remains one of my favorites!) and find inspiration to tweak your own. We eat a lot of chili at our house in the winter. Here’s our favorite relatively straightforward (We won’t call it “traditional” because I have no desire to lose that fight with my Texan friends.) chili.

Straightforward Chili

1-2 lbs ground beef

3 Tbs garlic powder or a head of garlic, chopped

3 Tbs onion powder or 2 onions chopped (We often use onion powder if we are serving kids who think they dislike onions but who won’t notice complain if there is onion flavor but not texture in a dish)

1-2 tsp cayenne powder

2-3 Tbs chili powder

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp oregano

6 oz. tomato paste (one small can)

12-16 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes cut up

5-6 15-16 oz cans beans, unrinsed. We use a mix of what we have, but this typically includes dark and light kidney beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, and black beans.

1. In a Dutch oven, brown ground beef. If using chopped onions, add to the meat partway through the browning process; add raw garlic, if using, toward the end. Then, follow one of these two steps, depending on how ambitious you are:
2. Dump the meat into a metal strainer set over a metal bow, then dip out a few spoonfuls of fat to return to the pot. Heat fat on medium-low, then add remaining spices and herbs, including onion powder and garlic powder, if using.
3. Drain fat however you prefer and simply add the remaining spices and herbs, including onion and garlic powder, to meat.
4. Add tomato paste and crushed or diced tomatoes. Cook over low while you open all those cans of beans. We unapologetically use canned beans. If we ever master dried beans, we’ll let you know.
5. Add beans. If the consistency isn’t what you like, add water.
6. Cook on low on stove, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or longer. Alternatively, cook in the oven on 250 or 300 or 350 (depending on whether you are making some baked mac and cheese or some cornbread or baked potatoes to go with it). This will burn, so don’t ignore it.

We eat ours with cornbread, which is just some combination of a basic cornbread recipe plus either a little honey or green chilis or canned or frozen sweet corn or sour cream or creamed corn or half a cut-up bar of cream cheese, depending on what kind of leftovers we’re trying to get rid of and how deeply I want to horrify my Southern relatives.

Popcorn is the perfect snack because it’s an actual whole, unprocessed grain. And since you should make half your grains whole, the more popcorn you eat, the more non-whole grains you get to eat.

Okay, that part isn’t quite true. I mean, you can’t eat a pound of pasta just because you ate a pound of popcorn. And, anyway, popcorn is so filling that you wouldn’t want to. Scientifically, it’s perhaps the perfect snack. 

Today, Mr. Prickles shares with us his recipe for Movie Theater Floor Snack Mix, which has to be the most unhealthy way to eat popcorn but is a lot of fun to shop for and make.

****

Hi, this is me, here, now, explaining how to make this popcorn.

Step 1: Use the power of radiation and science to microwave an 11.5 oz bag of white chocolate.

Step 2: Throw a 17 to 20 oz bunch of candy into a bowl along with 5 oz of Fritos and 10 oz of mixed nuts.

Step 3: Throw the white chocolate onto the candy, violently.

Step 4: Mix it.

step 5: Put it on 4 cups of popcorn.

Step 6: Wait 15 minutes.

Step 6: Eat it, or give it to a pigeon, or an old friend trying to sell you mlms, or the CEO of Fritos. Just beware: anyone who eats it will become your best friend.

Hate meal planning? Us too. That’s why we skip it in favor of a not-a-meal-plan, which involves figuring out where you want to turn to find dinner (pantry, fridge, freezer). As long as these are well-stocked, you can make a meal. In this short blog series, we describe what we do when we look in each of those places. 

Which night do you take the garbage to the curb? That’s what we call COTR Night (pronounced like Ry Cooder’s surname. We do try to refrain from saying “COTR Night” in front of company.) That’s the night we Clean Out The Refrigerator. This night anchors our week, because by this night, anything that isn’t looking a limp gets eaten that night. Meals that help you COTR are quiche and egg casseroles (for cheeses and vegetables on the edge), grain bowls or winter salads (for vegetables you can roast in fun spice mixes), and soups (for those vegetables, plus any small amounts of meat leftover from other meals).

I’m Ry Cooder, and I approve this not-a-meal-plan. 

Hate meal planning? Us too. That’s why we skip it in favor of a not-a-meal-plan, which involves figuring out where you want to turn to find dinner (pantry, fridge, freezer). As long as these are well-stocked, you can make a meal. In this short blog series, we describe what we do when we look in each of those places. 

As we clean up leftovers each night, we put anything soup-worthy into a gallon freezer bag. If we have a large amount of something leftover (say, two entire ears of corn), they can go into their own bag, but, otherwise, celery, onions, carrots, peas, green beans, and okra, plus any leftover rosemary or basil or other fresh herbs go into a single freezer bag. When it gets about halfway full, these form the base of a vegetable or beef vegetable soup. Don’t add cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage etc.), which can be great in soup but make everything near them taste like they do.  And don’t freeze potatoes, which turn mealy in texture.