eggs | Say Yes to Salad

19 September, 201328 October, 2015

Super Simple French Toast {Recipe}

This morning I was really craving French toast.

I had some delicious bread from Eataly, some farmers’ market eggs to use up, and some leftover organic milk from when I made yogurt last week. (Note to self: must make yogurt again!)

I actually made this same recipe a few days ago, and it was so good that it merited a repeat.

The Simplest Easiest French Toast

Ingredients

Stale bread (or not stale, but this is great for using up stale bread)
1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)
3 eggs
Butter/ghee

Directions

Mix the milk and eggs together. Soak the bread in the mixture for at least 5 minutes on each side.

Heat the butter or ghee in a pan. With heat on low, cook the soaked bread (poor any extra mixture that didn’t soak in right on top of the slices).

Cook for 6-8 minutes per side. I like to keep a lid on the pan for the first half (3-4 minutes) of each side.

Enjoy with butter and syrup!

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Note that you could add some cinnamon (either into the egg mixture or just sprinkled on as it’s cooking), but my husband hates cinnamon and I wanted him to eat this, so I left it out.

I can usually have a little more than a third of this recipe for breakfast – about 2.5 or 3 pieces. The next day when I only have 1 or 1.5 slices left (because Bobby also had a third or more), I will have it along with a yogurt.

What is your favorite breakfast?

I love French toast, waffles, pancakes. I won’t ever eat them in a restaurant because the restaurant can’t make them like my dad can. In a restaurant I will get an omelette or an egg platter – pretty hard to mess up eggs (though it has happened).

8 September, 201328 October, 2015

Simple Egg Salad Sandwiches {Recipe}

Every Sunday morning I go to the farmers’ market. There is one right on the corner of my block. Today I got delicious fresh bread from Bread Alone (Whole Wheat Catskill Bread) and eggs from my favorite organic stand.

In my fridge I have a jar of homemade dill pickles from Maria.

Of course I had to make egg salad.

We each ended up having 2x what you see here. (Bobby’s is the one with sriracha, mine is the regular.)

Simple Egg Salad Sandwiches

egg salad

Ingredients

5 small-medium eggs (if you have bigger eggs, 4 will suffice)
3-4 tablespoons mayo (don’t skimp – this is what makes it good)
2 teaspoons mustard
1/4 cup finely chopped dill pickle
< 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 teaspoon salt (you don’t need much; the pickles have salt)
pepper to taste
1 teaspoon rice vinegar (optional – if you want more tang)

Directions

To hard-boil the eggs: put eggs in a pan in water with ~1 inch of water above them. Turn the heat to high. Once boiling, let it boil for one minute. Remove from heat and let them sit in the hot water for ~15 minutes. Then dunk in ice-cold water for 3-5 minutes. (This makes it easier to take the shell off.) Crack the shell and remove it.

Chop the eggs in small pieces. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

Serve on top of fresh bread.

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Do you like egg salad? What do you put in your favorite version?

5 September, 201328 October, 2015

What I Ate Wednesday

I had to keep track of what I ate for a day for something, so I figured – why not take pictures and post a What I Ate Wednesday?

Breakfast:

This is 1 scrambled egg with some swiss (Jarlsberg) and sauteed onions. I also had a slice of whole grain toast with butter, a pear (some of it is unpictured – I was snacking as I prepped the plate), some sliced tomato (from Maria’s garden in NJ – Maria is my Grammie’s caretaker), sauteed onions, and sauerkraut (homemade by Maria).

It was really delicious. I have been eating a lot of sauerkraut lately because Maria gave me a big container of it.

I also had an unpictured 1/2 cup of coffee with coconut creamer.

Lunch:

This was from a place called Essen. They have a hot/cold bar so I got a little bit of everything – salad, fish, chicken, cauliflower, and a piece of a turkey wrap.

Unpictured lunch dessert: iced coffee with cream + 1 mini reeses cup.

Afternoon snack: the picture came out terribly, so I will just explain – I had some veggie sides from an organic store a few blocks from my office. A couple squashes (kabocha and acorn) and a small scoop of curry stew.

Dinner: was with Bobby and a friend at Bareburger. (The friend recently got a job at my company and he wanted to take us out.) I got the “California” burger with a farmers quinoa veggie burger. It came in a lettuce wrap with avocado, cheddar, watercress, and tomato (hold the onions). We all shared the rings & fries side with assorted ketchups. (These are not my pictures; I didn’t really want to bust out the camera in public.)

(source)

Dessert: was a couple small peaches from my Grammie’s peach tree. Another NJ find.

By the time we got home it was late and B and I both crashed into bed. Another productive Wednesday 🙂

What is your favorite kind of burger?

Mine is anything with avocado / bacon / cheese!

28 March, 201325 November, 2014

{Macrobiotic March} What is a Macro Plate?

A Macro Plate is the quintessential macrobiotic meal.

ozu-macro-plate

It’s a perfectly balanced plate of macrobiotic foods. My favorite macro plate consists of…

Brown rice
Beans or tofu
Seaweed (hijiki is probably the most common)
Steamed greens (kale, collards, chard)
Steamed broccoli
Steamed carrot or sweet potato
KABOCHA or other squash
Dipping sauce (I like tahini-based ones)

What does perfectly balanced mean exactly? This goes back to the concept of yin and yang that I touched on earlier this month. Foods (and everything, really) can have yin qualities (expansive, cooling, moist) or yang qualities (contractive, warming, dry). We should try to avoid things that are way off on either side of the spectrum. Let’s go through the list of foods in a macro plate…

Brown rice –> this whole grain has almost equal parts yin and yang.
Beans, tofu, and tempeh –> these foods are also in the middle of the yin to yang spectrum.
Sea vegetables –> in the middle of the spectrum.
Leafy green vegetables (greens) and round vegetables (I guess broccoli?) –> in the middle.
Root vegetables –> in the middle of the spectrum.
Kabocha / squash –> Do these count as ’round’ veggies? They are also in the midde.
Tahini dipping sauce –> nuts are in the middle, but miso (salty – which I like in dipping sauce as well) starts to veer to the yang side of the spectrum.

Overall, a very balanced plate. If you were wondering, fish is a moderate food, though other meats (poultry, red meat, and eggs) are yang. Dairy is on the yin side.

I made a semi-macro plate just last night. I say semi because it had a fried egg on it and as I noted above, eggs are yang. Eggs are even more yang than poultry because they compress all the energy of a chicken into one small egg. That makes sense, right?

semi-macro-plate

This was…

Sauteed greens
Brown rice (hiding)
Avocado
Kabocha squash
Fried egg + ground sesame on top (it had a runny yolk – it’s not popped in the picture though)
2 umeboshi plums (top right)
Tahini drizzzzzled on top

Tonight I had a macro-ish meal from the nearby Chinese takeout place. It was just scallops and veggies in a very light white sauce over white rice.

Even when I’m not trying, my dinners end up kind of macrobiotic-ish these days.

SO – Macrobiotic March is wrapping up. I have covered a lot of topics but are there any other questions at all that you guys have about macrobiotics that I haven’t answered yet? Even if I don’t know the answer I’d be happy to research it and give my thoughts.

But don’t worry – just because Macro March is almost over doesn’t mean I won’t be doing macrobiotic posts. I loved posting this month and I will definitely continue to talk about my macro finds.

P.S. I updated my Macrobiotics page – just in time for Macro March to end 😉

11 March, 201324 November, 2014

{Macrobiotic March Recipe} Sauteed Sesame Fern Bracken / Fiddlehead Ferns

A few weeks ago when my in-laws were visiting we ended up out in Flushing. Flushing (a town in the eastern part of Queens) has a huge Korean and Chinese population. We stopped into H-Mart (a Korean grocery store) just before heading back to the city and I ended up with quite a large haul. Queens prices < Manhattan prices.

One thing I picked up (it was on sale and I was curious) was ‘fern bracken’.

When I got home I discovered that ‘fern bracken’ is actually just another term for fiddlehead ferns. Fiddleheads always pop up at the farmers’ market around April. It’s good to know I can get them year round at H-Mart if I need to. If you’re familiar with Korean food, these bracken ferns / fiddleheads show up in Bi Bim Bap as well – they are the brown pieces of veggie.

Fiddleheads are high in antioxidants, and are a source of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. As most vegetables, they are high in fiber. They also happen to have vitamin A, niacin, vitamin C, riboflavin, phosphorus, and even iron.

Sauteed Sesame Fiddlehead Ferns (Bracken Ferns) – Macrobiotic Recipe*

Method (keep reading for recipe ingredients and instructions…)

We had our ferns with breakfast. I opted for eggs, ferns, takuan (Japanese pickle), and avocado. I believe Bobby had the same but with white rice, too.

(Eggs technically not macrobiotic; don’t think the avocado is either – but it sure was tasty!)

*Inspired by {this recipe}.

Sauteed Sesame Fern Bracken / Fiddlehead Ferns

Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 3-4
Difficulty: easy
Recipe type: appetizer, side

Ingredients:

1 bag of boiled bracken fern (750 grams or 1.65 pounds). I know they sell bracken fern in a dried form, but I have not tried this recipe with the dried fiddleheads.
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper (or more, to taste)
1 tablespoon of ground black sesame (toasted pre-grinding). Feel free to substitute regular sesame seeds, and the grinding is optional.

Directions:

Drain the bracken ferns and thoroughly wash them.
Chop the fern pieces into 1-2 inch pieces. Add the garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well and make sure all the pieces are coated in the sauce.
Heat a wok on high heat. You do not need to add any oil, since there is oil in the ferns already. Saute on high heat for 5 minutes, stirring frequently (I like to use chopsticks for stirring).
Add about 3-4 tablespoons of water to the cooking ferns, turn the heat down to medium, mix again, and cover the wok. Let the ferns cook for 10 more minutes to get nice and tender.
At the end, there may be a little bit of water left – you can either continue cooking to let it boil off (uncovered again, and high heat), you can leave it in, or you can dump it out. It’s ok for this dish to have a little bit of water.
Turn off the heat under the ferns. Grind your black sesame.
Serve the fiddlehead / bracken ferns topped with sesame; mix before serving.

Have you had fiddlehead ferns? What’s your favorite way to prepare them?