egging me on

We were feeling sort of lazy last Thursday, so rather than going on an all-out walk we just picnicked behind Steve’s apartment. The view was nice:

Well, from a distance. Once you zoom in, you see all the crap floating in that poor creek.

As usual, lunch was a nice li’l collaboration. High on veggies, which is good because it was one of the less healthy potluck Thursdays.

Veggies from him: sweet potatoes, roasted to soft, sap-dripping perfection. From her: farmer’s market tomatoes, never refrigerated (huzzah!) with olive oil, balsamic, and salt and pepper. Sublime.

His is big spoon spud, mine is little spoon spud.

Rounding out the meal, I brought some avgolemono soup my mom had made. Homemade chicken stock, egg yolks, rice, lotsa pepper. All I need in this world.

 

Work we continued a fun thing we've been doing with our families: Cultural Cooking. Basically, a child’s parent (or relative) makes something from their native country and comes in, giving both a lesson about their culture and a delicious snack of some kind.

This is a pastry from Argentina. It’s the bomb.

So potluck. Steve hosted this week, and came up with the theme of “Eggstravaganza”.

So I made lentil soup.

I always do this. I’m craving something and want to make it and then they announce a theme that has nothing to do with it… and then I make it anyway.

But I did come up with a really killer tie-in.

Began by sauteeing onion and green pepper (it was meant to be red, to imitate a truly phenomenal soup I got at the farmer’s market, but all the teeny tiny Oriental Grocery on the corner by Steve’s had was green).

Threw in some curry powder for Indian flava.

Then yellow lentils!

Then homemade broth, then KALE!

And after that’d cooked for awhile, the ultimate: COCONUT MILK! I’ve been seeing kale-lentil-coconut milk combined EVERYWHERE. My cousin sent me a recipe, it was in the farmer’s market soup, I read it in a blog. You cannot ignore when you see things in threes!

Now, see that egg yolky yellow tinge the soup had taken on? Here is the true brilliance: I reserved the coconut cream (the thick layer on the top of the coconut milk can). This lowered the overall cholesterol of the soup and gave the option of a BRILLIANT garnish: white”yolk” in the middle of the yellow “white”= INSIDE OUT EGG!

I know, I’m brilliant.

Many other examples of culinary creativity displayed.

Several people, like me, elected to do the things that look like eggs thing.

Kyle’s creation, pear stuffed with bleu cheese and walnut, was exquisite (and I came up with the idea of slicing the pear this way :D Oh smug smug Ileana)

Patricia’s peanut butter cookies with marshmallow on top were SO GOOD. I would say melted marshmallow and peanut butter were a revolutionary combination, except me and Steve’s s’more fiesta the other month introduced me to it. It’s awesome.

I was lucky enough to have an extra special guest of Maya, the Collegiate Gourmande! Well she never blogs anymore. And I am not a great blogger either, as I neglected to take her picture, eesh. Anyway, both she and her friend Genvieve (sp? Sorry Maya!) are dependent on a dining hall kitchen so they both ignored the theme (rightfully so). Maya brought beverages, and Genvieve (sorry if I spelled your name wrong not once but twice!) brought hummus and veg, which was sort of a necessary healthful component.

The rest of the evening was eggs eggs eggs.

French-toasted (Erin makes AMAZING french toast. And I enjoyed the toppings bar. Love me some berries)

  

Carolyn’es delicious green pepper salsa creation (with hot sauce, obvi)

 

And of course our host. He went all out on the eggs theme, because he goes all out on everything.

As with most of Steve’s recipes, it began with the ingredient that gives them their signature deliciousness: great deals of butter.

 

An exquisite mixture of butter-drenched mushrooms and onions, spinach, oodles of feta and cheddar cheeses, and in one the addition of ARTICHOKE hearts, yielded extrawdinary quiches.

With homemade crust, no less!

People went crazy on these.

 

My (first) plate. As usual, a highly misrepresentative look at all I consumed.

Also included on my plate was a muffin made by my baby sister, who joined us at potluck, which was oodles of fun. Don’t know exactly what was in it except three kinds of cheese… and almonds… and pesto. Great stuff!