Brad's patient slow cooked scrambled eggs

If they're not famous now, they'll soon be. Brad spends over 10 minutes slow cooking these eggs (3 of them, to be exact), adding shredded cheese, butter, salt and pepper. The flame is on the lowest setting, and Brad is constantly stirring until they're at the perfect creamy consistency. This is one of his best dishes!

Coconut Macaroons with Stevia

I've been eating too much sugar lately, so I decided to find something that would satisfy my sweet cravings but still be sugar free. Enter Stevia. I took the recipe from this website:

http://www.candida-cure-recipes.com/coconut-macaroon-recipe.html

The macaroons had a wonderful texture, but they were too sweet. I didn't even add all the stevia recommended--I used about 3/4 of the amount recommended. Next time, I will cut the amount of stevia in half.

COCONUT MACAROONS WITH STEVIA

3 large egg whites
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups dried, unsweetened, fine shredded coconut (the finer the better)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon dried ground stevia leaf (note: original recipe says 1 tsp, but I thought it was too sweet)

optional – ½ teaspoon cinnamon


Whip the egg whites. I whipped them by hand instead of machine because according to Julia Child, you must be able to do it by hand in order to understand the "vagaries of eggs". Don't you love her? My arm got sore, so Brad and I switched off.



Fold in the dry ingredients.



Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet, about a tablespoon for each macaroon. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 325 degrees. (Mine actually took 25 minutes!). Macaroons are done when the tops are golden brown.



Voila!

Mayonnaise, Take 2

TARRAGON DEVILED EGGS AND BACON ON TOAST : TAKE TWO

I am not one to take defeat lightly, so after my mayonnaise failure yesterday, I was determined to master mayonnaise today. I made sure to add enough olive oil, and sure enough, it got thicker and thicker!



Once it was thick enough, I added chopped tarragon. This really makes the dish.



Next, add the chopped hard boiled eggs



Place on toast. Garnish with tarragon. I discovered that it is much better to chop the bacon into small pieces instead of leaving it as strips. It's just too clumsy to eat when the bacon isn't chopped up.

The finished dish!

Eggs Baked in Ramekin (Ouefs en Cocotte)

For breakfast today, while Brad was out surfing I made myself Julia Child's Ouefs en Cocotte, or Eggs Baked in Ramekins.



Here's the recipe in pictures:

Boil some asparagus until they are tender, then place them in iced water to stop the cooking process. Mince and add them to a buttered ramekin. Add a tablespoon of cream and some chopped parsley.



Put the ramekin in a pan of simmering water (3/4" water) until the cream is hot.


Add 2 eggs, then put one more tablespoon of cream, a bit of parsley, and a pat of butter on top. Transfer the whole thing (including the pan and water!) to a 375 degree oven for 7-10 minutes. (Mine actually took longer than 10 minutes--closer to 15 minutes!) Take the dish out of the oven when the whites are set but still tremble.



The finished dish! (I took a bite out of it.) Look at that runny yolk. :)



On another note, all of this cooking has its rewards! Last night Brad treated me to a delicious sushi dinner at Sakura for all my hard work :)

The $50 a Week Challenge

You know how Rachel Ray has her show "$40 a Day" in which she tries to eat all her meals in various cities for "just $40 a day"? Well, I always thought to myself, "Big deal--$40 a day is a lot of money for just one day. She should try $20 a day. Or even $10 a day.." (Can you imagine that show? Hello McDonalds!)

Inspired by Rachel Ray, I originally wanted to challenge myself to cook every meal for just $40 a week. Then I realized that no matter how I stretch my dollars, that just isn't going to happen. I'd rather not sacrifice quality to save a few extra bucks, so I settled on the more reasonable goal of $50 a week.

Friday is my grocery shopping day, and since I've been cooking a lot (all 2 weeks worth :P), it's been sort of crazy. I go to at least 3 places to get all my groceries: Whole Foods for meats (organic when possible), Ralphs for veggies and fruits, and Trader Joes for the rest (butter, eggs, cream, etc--I prefer organic dairy, and TJ's has it cheaper than Whole Foods does). When I can, I also go to farmers markets and the Santa Monica Coop.

Today I bought $110 worth of groceries for both Brad and I. That's $55 each--not bad, but I didn't reach my goal of $50.. :( Maybe next week!

Today I came up with this simple but amazing desert:

BANANAS AND SOUR CREAM WITH CINNAMON



I remember seeing some recipes for sour cream banana cake and pancakes, and thought, "Why not just cut out the extra flour and sugar?" The resulting recipe is healthier, but still satisfies your sweet tooth.

Ingredients:
1 banana
A dollop of sour cream
a pinch of sea salt
cinnamon
stevia to taste

Slice the banana into coins, put a dollop of sour cream on top, a pinch of sea salt, cinnamon, and then finally sprinkle with a very light dusting of stevia. It is so good!

A close up of my second helping:



DEVILED EGGS AND BACON ON TOAST



I wanted so much to make mayonnaise by hand as Julia Child instructs in her cookbook, so I decided to make deviled eggs for lunch today. I'd made mayo before from scratch in the food processor; it was a piece of cake. However, Ms. Child said that one should really know how to do it by hand in order to gain a good understanding of the egg.

So to become "one with the egg", I whipped, and whipped, and drizzled oil, and more oil... I guess I stopped before adding enough oil, because the mixture never really gelled like it did in the processor. Oh well. I still made the deviled eggs with my runny mayo, and it was fine. File this mayo under "works in progress".

Ingredients:

2 hard boiled eggs
Handmade mayo made from 2 egg yolks, olive oil, mustard, pepper, salt, hot sauce
1 Niiman ranch bacon strip
1 slice toasted Ezekiel bread

The hard boiled eggs


The mayo "work in progress"...


LEAF'S SIDE SALAD

I did eat out once this week, at a raw restaurant called "Leaf". I got their side salad, which turned out to be quite large. It was surprisingly tasty--much better than their collard wraps. There are some crispy nuggets of raw nuttiness under all that yellow sauce.



LEFTOVERS FOR LUNCH

Yesterday's lunch: leftover boeuf bourguignon with added cauliflower and watercress. Oh, this dish just gets better and better the longer you wait!