Pig in Boots

Hello Spring!

If rainy spring days mean piggies in boots, then I'll take them all with a smile.

Eggs. Have we discussed my love of runny-yolk eggs? There's just something about the buttery texture of an egg yolk. Poached eggs, over easy eggs, soft-boiled eggs. As long as I can cut into the middle, watch the yellow center flow, and dip my toast in it, I'll take it. When we were little, my mom used to make us soft-boiled eggs. She'd put them in these little egg cups (only ours stood on two little feet wearing shoes and striped socks instead of a pedestal), crack off the top like a little hat, and sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the yolk-y inside. We'd eat them with these little plastic reusable spoons. 

                                             

I thought this was a normal egg dish until one Sunday morning I asked Adam if he wanted one and he looked at me like I was crazy. We have some different family food traditions (sugar cream pie, potato chip cookies, chocolate sprinkles on toast), and I figured this was just another one. Though I guess I should've been clued in by the fact that all of my family food traditions are different because they're European. 

So today I'm browsing this site I've found called Domestic Sluttery, and I see that they've posted something about egg cups and eggy soldiers (see the egg cups link above). Intrigued, I googled "what is an eggy soldier" and came up with this recipe. So in England (and probably Holland), my thing for soft-boiled eggs wouldn't be weird. 

Eggy Soldiers are super easy to make. Bring a pot of water (enough to cover an egg) to a boil. Gently slide in your egg. Let it cook for about four minutes. Turn off the stove, and, using a spoon, take the egg out of the water. Set it in an egg cup. Now the egg is really hot, so be careful on this next part. Using a butter knife, tap the egg about one inch from the top of the narrow end. When the egg shell cracks, continue to cut through the entire top of the egg. You'll end up cutting off a little hat. Salt and pepper the inside of the egg and enjoy with a slice of buttered toast, maybe toasted in a teapot toaster.

                                               

Soon I am going to bake my eggs in tomato sauce.

I Lurrrve You

A list of my Right Now Loves

• Conan O'Brien's tweets, particularly "I just learned that retweets of my Bieber tweet mentioning Bieber actually help Bieber. Bieber, you're a worthy foe. Bieber." I also love Conan's new beard. Oh what the hell, I LOVE CONAN O'BRIEN!
• Spoon's SXSW show (
• Lady rocker Rachel Flotard and her band called Visqueen. Please take a moment to enjoy "Hand Me Down." 
• Spring having sprung! Warm weather is here, though who knows if she'll stay. Windows are open, Mira is sunbathing in any and every sunny spot she can find, long walks are being taken, bike will be fixed up.
• Six days until our Raleigh visit! I can hardly believe that two and a half years have passed since I moved from Raleigh back to Indy. This visit is long overdue. Hilary, Bette, and I will be reunited. Adam will enjoy North Carolina so much that we will not come home. (At least that's how it goes in my mind...) I don't have a whole lot of places to revisit or things I very much want to do. I just really want to see my friends, eat some Cookout, and go to a few choice bars. The fun I remember having the year I lived there really comes from just having really awesome friends.
• Molasses chip cookies, which I would like to morph into cherry molasses chip cookies. (recipe to follow after jump.)
• Plans to run the Race for the Cure this year instead of walking with the girls. 

Gotta Get Me Going

I've made it to another Friday! In a short nine hours I will be in Chicago with some of my favorite girls in the world. I cannot wait!! Sushi, Indian food, Olympics, girl time.

I haven't cooked much this week. Last weekend was spent chiefly in the kitchen (much to my happiness I'll add). Instead I've been trying to find the perfect morning pump up music. Driving to work is a chore, despite the cup of coffee I've already downed by then. I need good music to get me going for the day. Something that I can turn up, sing along to, or just listen to and feel motivated. Sometimes I just scream loudly, but that makes my throat hurt. So far, I've found these bands to be successful.

Guster. Always Guster. Playing Lost and Gone Forever makes me feel home. It's hard for me to recommend this band to you for any concrete reason other than they are awesome because they've just been my favorite for so long (10 years to be exact). I love how goofy they are, I love the drums, particularly the bongos of their earlier years, and how they've evolved with each album but not so much that they lose who they are. Here we have Adam and Ryan playing drums (they play guitar and sing. Brian is the drummer and he's AAAAHMAZING in my opinion.)

And here we have "Happier" from Lost and Gone Forever

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have also been good pump me up music. Karen O is their singer. She's awesome. They played at Lollapalooza last summer (a last minute sub for the Beastie Boys) and I fell in love. I might put that show in my top five. Very high energy, and of course being in downtown Chicago on a gorgeous summer night never hurts either :) I love Karen O's voice - powerful without getting out of tune. That girl can scream. Two songs here. 

"Maps" on Fever to Tell

"Zero" on It's Blitz!

So what gets you pumped up when you need a lift? I'm always looking for recommendations to add to my morning playlist.

I'm also going to mention the Broderick, a band from dear Bloomington. Four dudes singing solid rock. Check them out, they're up and coming.

http://www.myspace.com/thebroderickband

Now onto food! Last Thursday I made a black and white cappuccino cheesecake for our cheesecake competition at work. It was very tasty and made my stomach scream out in protest of too much cream cheese. Cheesecake is a lot of work though, and I think only appropriate for special occasions. So I'm going to give you a better and easier sweets recipe: Meyer lemon bars, which I made Friday night. Meyer lemons are smaller than regular lemons and sweeter, which I like because normal lemon bars can be a bit too tart for me. Between the lemon bars and the leftover cheesecake Adam and I had good Valentine's dessert. We also had magical dinners. Sunday we made au gratin potatoes, the recipe for which I'll have to post sometime, Dover sole two ways, and snow peas (mmm I love snow peas for their crunchy sweetness). Saturday night was the real star though in my opinion. Lasagna. In a Dutch oven no less. I think you should ideally use a large and deep casserole dish of some kind, but I don't have one. The Dutch oven worked just fine. The lasagna was flavorful, filling, and cheeeeesy! 

OK, so what follows, in case you missed it from all that rambling, is Meyer lemon bars and lasagna. 

Today's Letter is "M"

I think today's Wednesday. I kind of don't care to keep track anymore because I'll only be reminded how many more days stretch ahead before the weekend. And once the weekend gets here, how few days are left before the inevitable return to work on Monday. Sorry, that's kind of negative, I know, but seriously. We've gotten a bunch of snow in the past five days. Every morning this week I've woken upon hoping for too much snow on the road to go into work, but the damn city has kept our roads snow-free. So I've been spending most of my week daydreaming of North Carolina. Oh and yesterday I spent my day watching the Bonnaroo line-up be slowly and painfully announced on Bonnaroo's MySpace. Who does that? Anyway, it looks pretty good. I usually feel that Bonnaroo's line-up is a pretty good preview of Lollapalooza's. Hopefully will get to at least one festival this summer!

Mira was somewhat suspicious of the tiny snowman we met on one of our walks.

The snow did kick in a serious hibernation switch on in my head over the weekend. I decided that I needed to cook and bake a lot just in case I could never leave my apartment again. Friday night I made these bombtastic baked chicken meatballs. My only problem was that my tomato paste had been in the fridge for awhile, and some nice fuzzy, white stuff was growing on parts. I just went ahead and used the non-fuzzy, white parts. A few hours post-meatball consumption, I felt off. Amazingly enough, still ate leftovers the next night, and even more amazingly enough, felt slightly off again. HAH. Anyway, the meatballs are super tasty for few ingredients (which is my favorite. The less money I have to spend, the better.) I made them bigger (got about ten balls I think), and ate them with spaghetti. I bet they'd be the perfect party appetizer if made smaller.


Then came the muffins. These whole wheat apple muffins have been my go to when I've had extra apples lying around this fall and winter. They are DELICIOUS. Nice and warm spicy (you know, like cinnamon), moist for days after, and partially healthy. This was probably the fourth or fifth batch I've made.

I got Tiger'd

A few weeks ago Adam called and left me this voicemail.

Hey. This is Tiger. I need you to do something for me. It's huge. I need you to change your...number....voicemail... (Justin, his roommate cracks up in the background, says something probably along the lines of "you idiot, you messed it up!" Adam laughs as well, breaking his very serious tone and then tries to continue.) Call me back. Please.

Here's the actual voicemail that Tiger left for one of his girlfriends. He says "Hey, it's Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and maybe calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. Just have it as a number on the voicemail. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye."

My boyfriend is such a dork.