Eggs for breakfast, lunch. . . and dinner?
Sure! Because it’s only in French that one egg is “un oeuf.” (Tee hee – get it?)
Once in a while, when pressed for time and feeling a longing that only bacon can tame, someone in our house suggests breakfast for dinner. And what better companion to bacon than the humble, but oh-so-versatile, egg? We usually add blueberry pancakes and a fruit-yogurt smoothie, then call it good.
My food conscience–the one that chants “Real. Good. Food.”–doesn’t chide me on breakfast-for-dinner nights, even if the plate is light on vegetables. That’s because our bacon is nitrate-free, made in Whatcom County from animals raised their whole lives on local pastures. The blueberries in our pancakes and strawberries in the smoothies are those we handpicked ourselves at Everson’s Blue Heron Lake Farm. (Over the years it has become annual tradition to pick and freeze 100 pounds of their organic berries in summer, to carry us into the following spring.) The yogurt comes from Grace Harbor Farm’s Guernsey cows. We make our own pancake mix in bulk from local whole-grain flours and organic buttermilk powder, so it’s always on hand. The mix becomes a wholesome batter when blended with farm-fresh organic eggs from pastured hens — like those from Spring Frog Farm, Osprey Hill Farm or our friends at Misty Meadows. What’s not to love?
The Loire farmhouse where we ate well, indeed.
Our familiar breakfast-for-dinner menu welcomed a new item a little more than a year ago. Feeling homesick for France, I was reminiscing about a charming gite — i.e. a rural B&B — in the Loire. Our hostess there made a lovely dejeuner featuring eggs from her hens, and in my reverie I had the sudden notion to recreate my favorite part of that lunch. So I turned to Julia Child and Jacques Pepin for advice on making ‘oeufs en cocotte’ — eggs baked in ramekins — and it has been my family’s favorite way to eat eggs ever since. Two ramekins each, with a salad or steamed vegetables, and you have a simple but elegant –and absolutely sublime –breakfast, lunch or dinner. Directions and photos are on the Recipes page. This is another busy weeknight favorite, so it’ll be flagged as ‘Fast, fresh and local.