Baked Eggs for Any Lazy Morning

This morning I am lazy. We are nearly done unpacking and making dinner more often than eating out. Last night, we drank a bottle of wine and sat on the couch, stretched out and in a comfortable silence. 

This morning, I give you another non-recipe. Another easy, no fuss attempt to make your mornings a little easier. These baked eggs are my solution to a no-prep, delicious alternative to another bowl of cereal with my third cup of coffee.

Directions: Preheat your oven to 350*F and grease any oven-safe pan (While my personal favorite is to use Lodge's Mini Cake Pan, you can use ramekins, muffin tins, or even a small casserole dish). Crack  your eggs into your pan, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, a tablespoon of leftover pasta sauce, and a pinch of dried tarragon. Bake for about 14 minutes or until whites are just set. Remove, eat immediately.

A Simple Bread for a Simple Life

The dogs always seem to want up before the sun. I'm not sure what it will be like when we get chickens, but I hope my sluggish eyes can keep up with their demands. The sun rises right over the white barn that sits at the edge of our neighbor's property and blinds us by 10 in the morning. The house needs curtains. We are not shut-ins, but we need our own form of privacy from the world, the elements, the mailman, and the buzzards that circle and circle and circle the roadside.

We bought food in bulk before we moved in, things we thought we'd crave that weren't perishable. We have a sack of rice hidden in the back of the cupboard behind the dog food. Pasta sauce that doesn't look as appealing as it did on the store shelf. In the back of the cabinet, behind the clover honey and the tomato paste, I found a jar of kalamata olives that became the inspiration for this bread. 

While a quick bread is not my go-to, I love the ease and convenience of this Irish soda bread, cut into rolls and kneaded by hand. They are still delicate, crumbly, and can last for a couple days. Just long enough to enjoy for the weekend while watching the sun cast shadows on the house you own now.

Olive Irish Soda Rolls

Ingredients:

• 4 cup AP flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 4 TB cultured butter (or unsalted butter), cold
• 1 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg, room temperature, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup chopped kalamata olives

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375*F and grease a 12 inch cast iron skillet or casserole dish 
2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients
3. Using your hands, pinch your butter between your fingers into the dry mixture until fats are the size of peas
4. Create a well in the center of your ingredients and, using a wooden spoon, slowly stir in your buttermilk and egg
5. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead until dough is springy (will be sticky at first)
6. Knead in olives
7. Cut into eights and roll into balls
8. Place into greased skillet and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown

Variation: Beer-Poached Pear Cobbler

The snow drifts; it has no concept of space-time. The dogs sleep and wake throughout the day, all three of them in huddles and heads propped on the others' backs. They are all paws and tails when we come home, a mix of cries and nerves. 

We went to a charity dinner last night, for the ASPCA and Your Safe Haven. We spent the night at my parents' instead of driving home. And I missed it, the place in Ligonier that has a barn and field and where we've slept in the same bed for the last week. It's finally feeling like home, a transition I wasn't sure would happen so quickly. 

It's peaceful and quiet and I am left alone most days. I keep the TV off. I read in my spare time. A year ago it wouldn't have been like this. Here, I can forget the world and the past. Here, I have no concept of space-time myself and I can drift off into a sleep or pile up in a thousand blankets and take more moments for living instead of remembering.

Beer-Poached Pear Cobbler

This recipe is warm. It's beer and spiced pears and warm biscuits and cool cream. It's baked in cast iron and lasts for days. It's a variation, a riff from this cake and lovely in its complications and its delicacy.

Ingredients for Beer-Poached Pears:

• 4 pears, peeled, cored and halved
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup clover honey
• 1 vanilla bean, split in half
• 2 cup beer (I used Yuengling)
• 1 orange, juice and zest
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup orange juice
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoon ginger, peeled
• 1/4 cup AP flour

Ingredients for Biscuits and Cobbler:

• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar, extra for sprinkling
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 TB unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• 3/4 cup buttermilk, cold
• 1 TB vanilla extract
• 2 TB candied ginger

Directions for Beer-Poached Pears:

1. In a medium saucepan, bring all ingredients (except the flour) to a boil
2. Reduce heat, simmer for 15 minutes or until just tender
3. Take off heat, remove pears
4. Put in a small mixing bowl and sprinkle with flour while it cools

Directions for Biscuits and Cobbler:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F
2. Prep your cast iron skillet with butter
3. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl
4. Using your hands, mix in butter by pinching into your dry ingredients until fat is the size of peas
5. Create a well in the center of your mixture with a wooden spoon and pour in buttermilk and vanilla extract
6. Stir until just mixed
7. Pour pears into pan and drop biscuit dough on top of pears
8. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar
9. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown

Assemble: Scoop out a pear with a bit of biscuit on top. Whisk together mascarpone or greek yogurt, a bit of honey, and some vanilla to top. 

White Cheddar Pimento Mac 'n Cheese (and a small update about our new house!)

It's official, we moved in. We're on day four of the new house, a 5-acre farm in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. We're 50 minutes from my parents and it's just familiar enough that I do not need the GPS to get to the grocery store, to fill up my tank. 

I purposefully let myself wander the other day. It was night time and I passed large houses and houses on cinderblocks. Roadkill and a family of deer. I heard my dogs bark before I saw in the window. I let the water run too hot when I ran the bath. I got a splinter on a stick I was throwing to Milo. I drank a six pack because it was the first Saturday I took off in over a year.  We've gone to bed at ten every night this week and I wake up rested. The fog greets me and its chill lingers at the baseboards of the dining room. 

The dogs play for hours and then sleep for hours more. They bark at a wake of vultures that sun themselves on the fence, crucified in the morning light and as still as gravestones. They haven't seen each other in over a year and now they are back together and share a water bowl. It is comfortable here; we promised them it is the last time we move.

I started baking again, feeding the family I formed and broke up and reformed like kintsugi. The first dish I made was mac and cheese. Comfort food. The kind you build a family around.

White Cheddar Pimento Mac 'n Cheese

Ingredients:

• 16 ounce macaroni noodles
• 3 tablespoon butter
• 3 tablespoon AP flour
• 2 cup whole milk
• 16 oz white cheddar
• 2 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 cup pimentos, drained and chopped
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prep a 13" skillet with butter or oil
2. In a large pot, cook your macaroni to box direction and drain. Return noodles back to pot
3. In a sauce pan, heat your flour and butter on medium-high until mixture has thickened and browned
4. Using a whisk, continuously stir while pouring in your milk
5. Cook down for about 6 minutes or until thickened
6. Take off of heat and stir in cheddar, mayonnaise, Worcestershire, salt, pepper, and paprika
7. Pour cheese mixture over cooked noodles and stir to coat
8. Add pimento and fold into mix
9. Pour into your skillet and top with breadcrumbs
10. Bake 40 minutes or until cheese is bubbling and top is golden brown

Want updates on the new house? Sign up for my newsletter (form is on the right) and you'll be the first to see the place!

Cranberry Oatmeal Snack Cake Cake!

My plates are put away, my silverware too. I haven't had time to bake, too many phone calls and delays. Customer service reps and bundle packages. We are trying to figure out how to live on our own again, deer-legged and stumbling a bit. It's different to be back in Pennsylvania; I expected it to be easier because I've called this place home. It's harder than I had thought. Taking longer. It's not like how we rented in California, or Texas, or any other place I ran away to. It's taking the time and energy I don't want to give it and then I get frustrated when things are last minute.

Tomorrow we move. Not officially, but slowly at first. Boxes in my SUV and the dogs meet for the first time in a year on Tuesday. It's not to keep them away, it's to shelter them from any disappointment. We all moved across country a year ago, our family piecemeal as we tried to figure out how to live together again. To forgive again. To move forward again, in a direction that wasn't always backwards.

And even though I am throwing away half-empty bags of flour and plates that got chipped in one of the many moves along the way, I still go to the grocery store and pick up more ingredients. Cranberries were on sale last week, so I made a cranberry cake. Sweetened and tender and warm. The kinds of adjectives I hope to use for this new house of ours.

Cranberry Oatmeal Snack Cake Cake

This recipe is based off of Molly Yeh's Peanut Butter Snack Cake and is so moist (in a good way) with a good crumb and so easy. It really is just a two-bowl-get-er-done kind of cake!

Ingredients: 

• 2 cup sugar
• 1 ½ cup AP flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup quick cooking oats + 1/3 cup for topping
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup greek yogurt
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup flavorless oil (canola)
• ¼ cup melted butter + 2 tablespoon for topping
• ¼ cup peanut butter
• 6 tablespoons water
• ½ cup cranberries
• ¼ cup dark brown sugar for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prep a ½ sheet cake pan with parchment paper and butter
2. Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl
3. In a measuring cup or separate mixing bowl, vigorously whisk together eggs, yogurt, vanilla, oil, peanut butter, butter, and water
4. Create a well in your dry ingredients and, with a wooden spoon, slowly stir as you pour your wet ingredients into the center of the well. You will have a rich, thick batter that is easily spreadable and pourable
5. Fold in cranberries
6. Pour into your cake pan
7. In a small bowl, mix together remaining oats, brown sugar, and butter and top your batter with this
8. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. This is a moist cake, so a toothpick will come out crumby but semi-clean
9. Allow to cool slightly before serving