Filipino Breakfast!

Does this count? I didn't make anything here. Also, this was days ago. Sunday, May 24th, for my ruthlessly precise, fact-checking readers. Yes, I'm behind, and slightly stressed about it. Is this why people stop updating blogs?














The Backstory
My Sweet Lady, Unicorn Girl (Henceforth, SLUG)'s parents agreed to take Ballz! the dog into their home. This meant a sudden trip to Falls Church,Virginia! Once I got the recycling bag taped up onto the rear windshield (yep, someone "accidentally smashed it about five minutes before I was going to leave [did I mention my bike got stolen too? It's been a rough week]) and threw some off-brand granola bars into the back seat, it was time to go.

Did they take him?





Yes they did! Here he is on his new hardwood floors. Let's just hope he behaves himself (not possible) and doesn't embarrass me (nope).

Ahem, well, what did you have for breakfast!

Lots of things! The tea was generic green tea, not bad at all. When I got upstairs from a deep sleep in the windowless guest room, the table was laden with all manner of foodstuffs, including a lot of cake. Now I know where SLUG's habit of eating cake for breakfast comes from! As I was picking through the pastry plate, SLUG's father said, proudly "and these are traditional Philippino desserts." To which SLUG responded, loudly, "You got these from Trader Joe's! Ha Ha Ha!" Hilarious! The fact is, there was a lot of Philippino stuff on the table; Empanadas, Coconut Sticky Rice, Weird Gelatinous Sweet Corn Brick. The first two were a huge hit, I'll take a pass on the third. Can you see it there, in the corner?



The best part of breakfast, though, besides the fact that Ballz! waited 'til we were hours down the road to start completely terrorizing them (and the fact that a real family of grown up people was running around their large and lovely home, yelling "Ballz! Ballz!") was the fact that SLUG's nunai (sp.?) was stirring a giant pot of cabbage and vegetables the whole time. We weren't sure what it was for, until we were about to leave and a big plate of fresh-made spring rolls were thrust into our hands. We ate them in the car, without napkins, wiping our greasy fingers on our pants, with the windows down going 90 on the interstate, listening to the same album over and over again. Another successful breakfast!

Revenge!

NO you cannot has sopressata.

After three days of HoneyBunches of Oats with Almonds (which doesn't even have that funny of a box [except that their origin story sort of suggests that it took one man ten years to figure out how to combine other post cereals into one]), directly relating to Mister Smelly, now formally known as Franklinbutt Ferdinand Booger Bullinsky, ("Ballz!" for short), I finally had time to make Italian Breakfast.

The first step was trying to think of an appropriate sauce for the now-not-quite-so-awesomely-fresh porcini tortellini (thanks a lot, Ballz!). I was going to make some sort of shallot cream sauce with fresh oregano (man, F*CK dried oregano!) and thyme, when I remembered that I had made some homemade pesto a couple weeks ago, which I hadn't used yet. It passed the smell test and the taste test! Awesome. Boil the water, boil the pasta, slice some sweet sopressata, make a smoothie, make some iced tea, stir it all up, and voila (how do you say voila in italian?) breakfast is served.


How Was It?
Pretty good! The pesto layered a nice herby freshness on top of the earthy mushrooms, and the sausage was delicious. The smoothie (which I don't remember [look, I'm a little behind on this thing, thanks to you-know-who)] was probably pretty good. The tea: Hmmm. The tea.

The story of the tea.
The tea. It should have been really good. I had a little Second Flush Darjeeling from Margaret's Hope, a very reputable biodynamic estate, which I had picked up at that same shop in Lyon. I decided to make a sun tea (the only way to make iced tea), figuring it would draw the apricot and floral notes. So I put a couple ounces in a plastic jug, added some cold water and set it in the sun while the water boiled. Then I got all stressey-pants again (seriously, it was crazy with this dog, he was so smelly that after I washed him my drunk roommate tooka naked shower with him and washed him again with laundry detergent, and he still kinda smelled! Plus noone was coming forward for him except the douchiest of craigslist creeps, he and Princess R*** Nopants would NOT stop wrassling on the floor, seriously I could not get a moment of peace) and let it sit for a little too long. Not quite ruined, but it got all tannic and bitter. Crap. Oh, and for some reason all I had was Wonderbread, which was not quite the perfect complement to the meal, but wasn't bad with some authentic super spicy Dijon (Lyon) slathered on it.

Franco-Mexi-Irish Breakfast!

The First Course
A bowl and a half of Honey Nut Cheerios each, whole Vitamin D milk for me, Light Soy milk for the lady. The dog licked both bowls. Meanwhile, I opened up the fridge and found only two eggs. Hmmm. Lately I'd been doing this kind of Soysauge Breakfast Sandwich thing, but that had two eggs each! It was time to improvise.

What was in the fridge?
Some weird "grilled" tofu was the only firm tofu at the store the other day. It was packaged like regular tofu, but at a deeply discounted price, and had black spots on it that were supposed, I guess, to suggest "grilling."

Some Mexican Farmer's Cheese!
Pomegranate Black Bean Salsa
Sour Cream
Garlic and Shallots
Mixed Baby Greens
A Lemon
Soysauge
Some F*ing Amazing Whole Grain Dijon (From France)
Whole Wheat Wraps

Breakfast Burrito with Salad and side of Sausage it is!
So I started to make the tofu scramble with two eggs, some tofu (drained, of course, under my roommates stack of vogue magazines [don't tell!]),one garlic clove and one shallot. Mixed it up good, put it in gramma's cast iron with a little butter. At this point I looked at the cheese. Suspiciously. It wasn't opened, but I barely remember buying it, which meant it was about two months old. But hey, cheese keeps sometimes, right?

Wrong!
It kind of passed the smell test, but had a distinct uric taste. Too bad. Unfortunately, the Parmesan was kind of moldy too, but that's a story for another time. That left me with this goddamn 5 pound block of Aged Irish Cheddar that I got from the Restaurant Depot a little while back, it's delicious but I'm getting a little tired of it. That's the drawback to buying bulk, I guess, but it went in the burrito nonetheless. Really, I'm just lucky I had that salsa kicking around. Once the egg tofu scramble cooked up nice, cheese all melted, we assembled the burritos.

The Salad
The greens with a little mustard vinaigrette sounded fine, but maybe I had one more ingredient to give it a little pizzazz? I rummaged around in the fridge a little more, and what did I find? A little package of radishes! Perfect! It was as though I had written a letter to myself, from the past, to the future! Seriously, how did I know that radishes were going to be the perfect thing?

The Smoothie
Banana, Strawberry and Blueberry with Ginger, Flax Seeds and Raw Honey.

The Tea
Oolong- Fu Yian (Biodynamic)
A nice little number I picked up at the Tea Palace in Lyon, a wonderful store in a city that otherwise has pretty much just Lipton and thinks that Twinings is gourmet.
This bad boy is about 70 percent oxidized, pretty dark, and has a real nice sweetness that emerges in the second steeping.

The Results?
Delicious!