spud love

This lunch’s protein and healthy fat component was one of the more beautiful things I have created:

Inspired by the greatest brunch I’ve ever eaten at Masa in Boston, I made a bed of diced avocado and topped it with a flowing-yolk’d poached egg.

BLISS!

The rest of my lunch was the titular spud:

Pie-ified with plain yogurt and cinnamon.

And yes, I did have a sweet potato yesterday, too. What of it?

Actually, I think my clever body is craving what’s good for it: I am always flirting with anemia (particularly, ahem, at this point in the lunar cycle) and as such SHOULD be craving iron-rich (and, incidentally, delicious) foods like sweet potato and egg yolk.

It was gloomy so I felt like baking, so I made some pear muffins.

They were a variation on my beloved date nut muffins (in Favorite Recipes!). We were out of dates and I was looking at the grocery store and all the dried fruit was realllllly expensive (we usually get it at Costco in bulk) so I grabbed a can of pears. It was an experiment. They were just okay. And yet the pictures were good.

For dinner I made rockin’ taco filling out of leftovers and pantry staples. And yes, more potatoes were involved.

We still have a whole lotta ham leftover from Christmas that we froze. My mom thawed it when my sister arrived home, cause the girl eats pig like it’s her job. However, we still had a TON. I don’t love ham straight up, so I browsed some cookbooks for inspiration. I stumbled upon The Well Filled Tortilla Cookbook, which had a recipe for ham and potato tacos.

Potato tacos TOTALLY took me back to a blissful afternoon in Sand Point, Idaho. I was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, and we go back to visit from time to time and usually fit in a few days by the pristine lakes of Northern Idaho. Sand Point is this totally great, unexpected, hippie town, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon in a park listening to live music, watching nearby people enjoy… ahem… herbal refreshments? Anyway, there was a taco stand and we gave my sister the job of selecting us a nice snack and she returned with, totally perfect for Idaho, potato tacos. And they were awesome! So I endeavored to make them.

Base:

1/2 medium onion, chopped, 1 large red potato, chopped, and 12 ounces or so of ham, shredded

Pantry:

Veg oil, can o’ green chiles, apple cider vinegar.

Boom. Easy.

I preheated a big pan to medium-high, then threw in the ham and got it seared and jazzed. Stuck it in a bowl. Then in its drippings and just a bit of cooking spray I threw in the onions and sautéed them until tender. Then I deglazed the pan with about a tablespoon of the apple cider vinegar and tossed the onions and vinegar in the ham bowl. Then added a bit of oil to coat the pan and fried up my spuds:

Got ‘em golden on the outside, then threw in the green chilis to deglaze the pan. Reduced heat to low, covered, and let the potatoes finish cooking.

Threw the ham and onions back in the pan, et voila, taco filling:

The taco setup, with corn tortillas; the filling; cheese; and chipotle salsa.

I started with a taco straight up:

But then made a grab for the chipotle salsa. If you make this (which you should, cause it’s good, and a more innovative use of leftover ham than most, I like to fancy), definitely put chipotle salsa on top! It’s like a crazy twist on barbecue!

Finally, something fun from Asia (the stepfamily, no surprise, brought scads of edible gifts):

Remember how OBSESSED with peanut powder I was in Taiwan? These are coated in it! They are kind of a Taiwanese twist on donut holes? But with a whole different thing going on in the middle: