It's been an interesting weekend. One of my Confirmation students' mother was so embarrassed by her son's failure to bring in his paperwork on time that she brought me two dozen eggs from her chicken coop and the promise of the remaining paperwork within a week's time. All of the eggs were guaranteed to be not more than three days old. On Saturday, I got the notion to do some cooking and spent the better part of the day playing in the kitchen. I had some leftover rolls that were a bit past their time for sandwich making so I decided to make some bread pudding. Since I also had some dried Oregon Gold peaches on hand, I thought I'd do a variation on the usual bread pudding and make mine a Peach Melba Pudding. I chopped the equivalent of 8 peaches into a fairly fine dice and layered them with the trimmed and cubed bread and slivered almonds [2 layers of each] and then drenched the whole in the usual custard mixture [4 eggs, 3 cups milk, 1/3 c sugar, 1 tsp salt], let it stand for a while to absorb the fluid nicely and then baked it in a 325 degree oven for a little over an hour. Saturday night when I gently reheated it to serve as dessert, I fixed a quick raspberry sauce from some berries that were just a bit too ripe to serve with cereal Sunday morning. I had quite a few bread cubes left so I sauteed some celery, onions and bell pepper, tossed two chicken bouillon cubes in two cups of boiling water, melted 4 Tbs of butter and tossed the whole together to make stuffing. I had some skinless chicken breasts that I pounded very thin, stuffed, rolled up and secured with toothpicks, sauteed and then baked. And, voila, I had my main dish for Saturday supper. I took some left over boiled potatoes, peeled and mashed them, added some parsley, a beaten egg and some bread crumbs and made some ersatz potato pancakes as a side dish for the chicken roll-ups. But that still left me with a lot of eggs for a two person household. I figured lunch would have to be my favorite quiche: chopped tomato, caramelized onions and cheddar cheese. All well and good, but the tomatoes I had on hand were huge. I only needed half of one for the quiche. What to do with the other half? Chop it into small dice, add some virgin olive oil, dried basil [didn't have any fresh basil in the house] and some minced garlic ... then pop it into a zip-loc bag and refrigerate till the flavors melded nicely. Sunday, I served crostini as the first course for a lunch of left-over quiche. It was an easy and quick heat-it-up sort of lunch after the long Palm Sunday Mass. I started the weekend with 28 eggs and still have 18 on hand: I am guessing egg salad sandwiches are in my future and perhaps an easy late night supper of potatoes and eggs or a cheddar and onion omelet. All this eggy goodness!!! And I've done more serious cooking this weekend [as opposed to my usual slap-dash workaday cooking] than I've done in the last two weeks put together.
It's been an interesting weekend. One of my Confirmation students' mother was so embarrassed by her son's failure to bring in his paperwork on time that she brought me two dozen eggs from her chicken coop and the promise of the remaining paperwork within a week's time. All of the eggs were guaranteed to be not more than three days old. On Saturday, I got the notion to do some cooking and spent the better part of the day playing in the kitchen. I had some leftover rolls that were a bit past their time for sandwich making so I decided to make some bread pudding. Since I also had some dried Oregon Gold peaches on hand, I thought I'd do a variation on the usual bread pudding and make mine a Peach Melba Pudding. I chopped the equivalent of 8 peaches into a fairly fine dice and layered them with the trimmed and cubed bread and slivered almonds [2 layers of each] and then drenched the whole in the usual custard mixture [4 eggs, 3 cups milk, 1/3 c sugar, 1 tsp salt], let it stand for a while to absorb the fluid nicely and then baked it in a 325 degree oven for a little over an hour. Saturday night when I gently reheated it to serve as dessert, I fixed a quick raspberry sauce from some berries that were just a bit too ripe to serve with cereal Sunday morning. I had quite a few bread cubes left so I sauteed some celery, onions and bell pepper, tossed two chicken bouillon cubes in two cups of boiling water, melted 4 Tbs of butter and tossed the whole together to make stuffing. I had some skinless chicken breasts that I pounded very thin, stuffed, rolled up and secured with toothpicks, sauteed and then baked. And, voila, I had my main dish for Saturday supper. I took some left over boiled potatoes, peeled and mashed them, added some parsley, a beaten egg and some bread crumbs and made some ersatz potato pancakes as a side dish for the chicken roll-ups. But that still left me with a lot of eggs for a two person household. I figured lunch would have to be my favorite quiche: chopped tomato, caramelized onions and cheddar cheese. All well and good, but the tomatoes I had on hand were huge. I only needed half of one for the quiche. What to do with the other half? Chop it into small dice, add some virgin olive oil, dried basil [didn't have any fresh basil in the house] and some minced garlic ... then pop it into a zip-loc bag and refrigerate till the flavors melded nicely. Sunday, I served crostini as the first course for a lunch of left-over quiche. It was an easy and quick heat-it-up sort of lunch after the long Palm Sunday Mass. I started the weekend with 28 eggs and still have 18 on hand: I am guessing egg salad sandwiches are in my future and perhaps an easy late night supper of potatoes and eggs or a cheddar and onion omelet. All this eggy goodness!!! And I've done more serious cooking this weekend [as opposed to my usual slap-dash workaday cooking] than I've done in the last two weeks put together.
4 comments:
Well Riona, I for one am impressed. Confidant you won't waste them. :)
Every meal sounds delicious. What a great gift, put to yummy use!
YUM!! That is all.
mary in MN
What wonderful egg treats!!!
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