Biking to School

This is one determined 10-year-old

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

This bicycle may be the best purchase we've ever made for our daughter. After bringing it home from Target on Saturday, she couldn't wait to get on it, so we took it out for a road test, riding 3.25 miles to her new elementary school.

Daughter's new school just happens to be located near one of the highest points in the city. Fortunately, we already live in an elevated portion of the District known as Columbia Heights. Still, as we mapped the route to school it was clear we would face a challenge: the long uphill grade of Massachusetts Avenue affectionately known in these parts as "embassy row."

In fact, it's one of the most beautiful parts of the city, with wide lawns fronting the embassies and tall oaks giving shade. We pass the grounds of the British embassy, as well as the vice president's residence at Observatory Circle before crossing over Wisconsin Avenue into the Glover Park neighborhood.

Daughter was whooping and cheering as we pulled into the elementary school lot. I took her to a nearby burger joint for lunch, then she rode her bike all the way home again. For the rest of the weekend she complained her "butt cheeks hurt." But we were astonished to hear her propose that we repeat the trip at least twice a week, starting today.

This morning she was out of bed at 6:30 am, bathed, dressed and ready to go at 7:15. We took a few extra rest breaks on the Massachusetts Avenue climb this time, but still managed to beat our previous time by 10 minutes. We showed up at the schoolhouse door at 7:55, ready for breakfast.

Breakfast after biking 3.25 miles

And here's what they were serving: "toasty turkey ham and cheddar on a whole wheat English muffin," according to Chartwells.

"Can we have something special for dinner?" daughter wanted to know.

I think that can be arranged.

Breakfast

Swiss cheese omelet with Canadian bacon and onion tops.

Preparation: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

A high quality Emmentaler cheese brings a great deal of flavor and a bit of saltiness to this omelet. I also dice some Canadian bacon stored in the fridge. This time of year we are growing onion in seed trays for transplanting in April. As the slender leaves get very long and begin to topple over, I cut them back and scatter the trimmings over my eggs. They taste like chives, but even stronger.

For a high-protein breakfast, add a couple of slices of your favorite bacon. We like ours from Benton's, but when that runs out the slab bacon from Whole Foods makes a worthy substitute. Or perhaps you've found a bacon you like at the local farmer's market? I roast the bacon on a parchment-covered baking sheet in a 350-degree oven. Save the grease for frying and sauteing.

Breakfast

Poached eggs with fresh sausage patty and braised greens.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: None

A high-protein, low-carb breakfast for me means two eggs. I prefer them poached to avoid the greasy cleanup from fried eggs. As you can see, I also like my yolks runny.

In the past, I used toast to sop up the yolks and I was mighty frustrated for a time chasing the yolk around the plate without that handy piece of browned bread. Then it occurred to me to add some greens from our own garden to the plate. They do an excellent job of mopping up all that delicious yellowness, so full of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids as they come from eggs laid by hens that forage outdoors on a local farm.

My method of poaching eggs is to heat water in an iron skillet, season with white vinegar and bring to a strong simmer. I crack the eggs and release them gently into the water. Fresh eggs will hold together very well. (Old eggs tend to break apart--not good for poaching, better for hard-boiling.) After a few minutes, I remove the eggs with a slotted spoon. You can pat them dry with a paper towel--or not.

The greens were harvested last year and blanched before being frozen. After defrosting, I simply cook them in salted water until tender, then dress them with a bit of vinegar. Two years ago we helped slaughter pigs on our friend Brett's farm and came away with many pounds of sausage and sausage meat. The meat had been at the bottom of the freezer. We made several different kinds of sausage that year and I'm not sure which this is. I neglected to label it. A sandwich-size package made six patties that I baked off in the oven and have been eating over the last week.

This is the kind of breakfast that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Breakfast II

A previous commenter suggested adding toast to fill out our breakfast. Well, we can do lots better than toast. We can add homemade corn bread.

This is the "Company Cornbread" from Bill Neal's classic tome, "Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie." I made it using stone-ground white cornmeal and buttermilk from our South Mountain Creamery delivery. I had also made a big pot of smothered okra the day before (the okra are going crazy producing new pods on a daily basis this time of year) and when breakfast time rolled around walked out out the front door and picked a big, ripe Mortgage Lifter tomato.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

Breakfast

Sauteed beet greens and sliced tomato.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Shopping: none

Our favorite part of harvesting beets from the garden is eating the beet tops. They must be fresh, fresh, fresh. Then simply give them a rinse and toss them wet into a hot saute pan with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and maybe a splash of red wine vinegar. They are meaty and delicious. A big, fat Mortgage Lifter tomato seasoned with grated Parmesan makes a great side.

Breakfast

Sour cherry cobbler with farm-fresh half-and-half.

Preparation time: five minutes

Shopping: none

Here's a real treat first thing in the morning: fininding sour cherry cobbler left over from Sunday's dinner.



Quick! Get me a bowl!

I heated the cobbler in the microwave, then doused it with some of the sweet half-and-half we get delivered from South Mountain Creamery.

Bar the door and hold the cholesterol! It doesn't get any better than this, scooping up warm biscuit with tangy cherries and sweet syrup, all swimming in that creamy goodness. Takes me back to my childhood....

Breakfast

Fried eggs with last night's liver and onion scapes.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

Our onions lately have been sending up flower stalks, or scapes. You might read more about garlic scapes. But onion scapes are equally delicious, chopped fine as a garnish or as an ingredient. Pesto from scapes seems to be all the rage these days. We are happy to cut them off the onion plant and eat them, which forces the onion to focus more on what it does best--making onions.

In the winter we get eggs in our CSA box from our farmer friend Brett. Brett's chickens roam around a movable enclosure, pecking at weeds and bugs. In the warmer season we sometimes visit Brett's stand at a Saturday farmer's market a couple of miles away, specifically for the eggs.

You can identify eggs from free-roaming chickens immediately by the deep orange color of the yolk. That's the beta carotene from eating all those weeds. Industrial eggs come from chickens that are crammed together indoors. They feed on corn and soy. Instead of protein from bugs, they get theirs in a feed mix from all kinds of industrial sources: feathers and other chicken parts, beef fat, bone meal. Their yolks are pale yellow, absent the beta carotene.

Needless to say, eggs from pasture-raised hens are more nutritious. They have more in vitamins A and E, more folic acid, lutein and beta carotene. They are also dramatically richer in omega-3 fats.

Freshness and better nutrition are among the reasons we will sometimes make a special trip--and pay more--to get our eggs from a local farm. We also like the idea of supporting a local farmer.

Liver and egg yolks have the highest concentration of biotin--a B vitamin--of any foods. Biotin is vital for the digestion of fat and protein and also promotes healthy hair, skin and nerves. So next time you're thinking about liver, include an egg. Or, make chopped liver the old fashioned way--with chopped eggs.

Breakfast

Whole wheat couscous with grilled chicken and green grapes, left over from making client meals.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

There are more traditional and elaborate ways of making couscous but we just let it make itself. Pour boiling water to cover the couscous in a mixing bowl, then cover with a tight-fitting lid. Wait till the couscous absorbs all the water.

This dish would be a perfect way to use leftovers from a roasted chicken. Just tear up the meat and stir it into the couscous. Add halved green grapes and just about anything else you like. Here you see sauteed red bell pepper and red onions. I could easily see chopped parsley or mint in this dish. You could also add nuts: almonds, walnuts, etc. Season with extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar or lemon juice, salt to taste.

Our local health food store sells whole wheat couscous (Whole Foods used to as well, until they got more corporate). But if you can't find whole wheat, conventional couscous, quinoa or millet would work just as easily.

We love our whole grains.

Heat Wave Breakfast

Leftover quinoa pilaf with peas, fava beans and edamame, plus leftover chicken casserole with carrots in peas.

It's peas squared!

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: None

Just the thing to heat in the microwave after spending the very early part of the morning harvesting the rest of our peas, removing the pea plants and getting the vegetable bed ready for bush beans and climbing lima beans. It's forecast to be near 100 degrees here in the District of Columbia for the next several days. But with the humidity it will feel like 110.

Oh, we are pining for those cool, wet days of April and May. Seems like we have skipped right into August.

Stay cool, everyone. Be sure to wear a hat and sunblock if you must be outside. Otherwise, do your gardening at first light, before things heat up.

Breakfast: Greens Squared

You knew it was coming, didn't you?

The mustard greens we braised on Thursday are even better two days later. Turns out my 8 1/2-inch square baking pan makes nine portions of lasagna with rutabaga greens. So this morning, I am looking at greens every which way.

And the best part may be, these were all planted last fall and they're still feeding us. Let's hear it for overwintered vegetables!

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

A here's the kicker: there's more where that came from.

Breakfast

Leftovers: sweet potato galette, greens and sauteed mushrooms.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

The sweet potato galette is delicious any time of day. The greens arrived last week in our CSA box. Typically I do not wrack my brain over how to prepare them, but simply boil all the various greens together then use them as a side dish with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, or as an ingredient in frittatas, soups, etc.

As for the mushrooms: I am always buying more than we really need. I cook them down to keep them from going bad, then they are handy for a meal on short notice.

Breakfast: Poached Egg & Praties

I'd been saving the potatoes recently harvested from our garden (yes, potatoes in February) for the arrival of some fresh eggs in our CSA box. Poaching works best with the freshest possible eggs, before the egg structure begins to deteriorate. This egg could not have been more than a couple of days old. It slid into the simmering water and held its shape in textbook fashion, then perched atop the previously boiled potato pieces. Season with a little salt, a little pepper, and a generous grating of Parmesan cheese.

After nibbing around the edges, the moment came to break the yolk. Deep, orange deliciousness oozes out and spreads among the tatties.

But the potatoes resist mopping up the yolk. After examining this scene for a moment, it occurs to me that my spuds need to be smashed. My fork does the job. Now I have a nice chunky mash of potato and yolk. Eggs and potatoes are wonderful things, and work quite well together.

Chicken Giblets for Breakfast

High on my list of personal foibles is my lack of fortitude when it comes to dealing with chicken organs.

You know what I'm talking about--the little bag of body parts--neck, heart, gizzard, liver--that comes with the chicken, usually stuffed inside the cavity. Our farmer friend Brett takes great pains to include a Ziploc bag with chicken parts when he sends one of his chickens with our weekly CSA box. I carefully remove the bag, place it in a small bowl and put it in the refrigerator with a promise to myself that I will--this time--find a use for my chicken offal very soon, to make good on all the work that went into harvesting them.

Days pass. I glance at the bowl of chicken parts each time I open the refrigerator. The promise to myself turns into guilt. I try to put giblets out of my mind, pretend they're not there. But soon they take on a metaphysical weight--a real presence in my thoughts--like something out of an Egar Allen Poe story. The beating chicken heart...

Eventually, my wife will complain of an odor eminating from the refrigerator. I pretend to not know what it is, and bury the chicken parts in the trash at the first opportunity when no one is looking. At this point, the guilt has become HUGE.

Well, I just hate to waste food and I keep telling myself that I will never collect enough chicken necks to make a stock. By now, if I had saved all those necks, I would have enough a couple times over. So this week after receiving another chicken from Brett, and the bag of organs, I was more determined than ever to make good use of them. Since I know no one else in the family will have anything to do with chicken offal, I decided to have giblets for breakfast with some of Brett's pastured eggs.

Here's what I did: First, place the neck in a freezer bag to finally start your collection. Put the bag in the freezer. Nex, cut the gizzard and heart into small pieces and sautee them in a hot skillet with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt and black pepper. When they are cooked through, spoon them onto a plate and set aside. Now cook the liver in the same skillet, either whole or cut into two pieces. Be sure to brown it on all sides. When that is cooked through, remove it to a cutting board and when it is cool enough to handle, cut it into small pieces.

Let the skillet cool a bit off the heat, then return it to the burner set to moderately-low and pour two farm-fresh eggs, beaten, into the skillet where the eggs can pick up all the brown bits off the bottom. Scramble the eggs as you normally would, mixing them around with your favorite usensil, and when they're about half-way cooked add the chopped giblets and mix them well with the eggs. Season with salt and pepper as needed.

Serve this immediately on a warm plate, perhaps with a piece of toasted, rustic bread. If you have any leftover giblet gravy in the fridge, now would be a good time to use that as well. We had some fresh chervil in our CSA box this week, so I chopped some of that to garnish the eggs.

I happen to like strong, gamey flavors, so this is a dish I could easily wake up to on a more regular basis. But my advise is, do this early in the morning before the rest of the house wakes up, so you don't have to listen to all those disapproving voices telling you how much they can't stand chicken giblets.

Breakfast

Turkey tetrazzini, reheated in the microwave.

Preparation time: 3 minutes

Shopping: None

But wait! you say. Isn't that the same turkey tetrazzini I made a week ago from our locally-grown, self-butchered, Thanksgiving turkey?

Right you are. And the noodles were handmade too, by my daughter and I. There was a whole pan of it. My wife and I had it for dinner once. The daughter refused (she was really disappointed that we added the turkey and onions and peas and stuff to perfectly fine noodles that would have been delicious just plain--in fact, she had us wash some in the sink.)

Well, the only person around here who likes to eat the same thing more than one day in a row is me. So turkey tetrazzini has been my breakfast for the last week. I don't mind. If it's delicious on day one, it's delicious on days two, three and four, far as I'm concerned. I do the same thing with stews, soups, rice dishes, cooked greens, pizza, you name it.

Any of you others out there belong to this category of secret repeat eater?

Breakfast

Spinach and mushroom lasagna.

Preparation time: 3 minutes

Shopping: none

Months ago we made a pan of lasagna to take to client dinners just in case someone requested a vegetarian entree. I cut the lasagna into large slices and stashed them in the freezer. Up they popped during my recent freezer clean-out. I figured they were too old to pass as client food anymore.

I moved them to the fridge to defrost. Now they serve admirably as a quick breakfast after a couple of minutes in the microwave. It was a very simple lasagna with no particular recipe: sauteed mushrooms, frozen spinach, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, a bechamel sauce and nutmeg.

Quite delicious, even months later.

Breakfast

Poached egg with greens and grated Parmesan.


Preparation time: 10 minutes


Shopping: None


We ate unconscionable amounts yesterday. There was no question but the thing to have for breakfast was something simple and reassuring.



Poaching an egg is as simple as bringing a small pot of water to a simmer. Add a tablespoon of white vinegar to help hold the egg together. It's always best to use the freshest possible egg for poaching. Old eggs like to fall apart. In this case, the egg is laid by a pastured hen and comes in our weekly CSA box.



The greens also come in the CSA allotment and were cooked ahead, just waiting in the fridge. I heat them separately in the microwave and season with coarse salt, ground pepper and a splash of white wine vinegar.



When the egg is ready (meaning the white just barely cooked and the yolk runny--my preference), remove it from the water with a slotted spoon, place on top of the greens and grate Parmesan cheese all over. Give it another grind of pepper.



The yolk and greens go so well all mixed together. The only thing that could improve this might be a wee glass of Chablis to treat the head from last night's festivities.

Breakfast

Fried fish, baby beets and fingerling potatoes, boiled greens from the CSA box.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: None

We rarely eat out downtown, but our friends Eva and Paul were in town with their two children. We all made a field trip to the Spy Museum, then lunch at the nearby Legal Sea Foods. Paul was anxious to order mussels. The kids got the fish and chips. That's where this lovely hunk of fish flesh came from. I'm ashamed to say I never inquired what kind of fish it was.

Legal Sea Foods is no great shakes as far as restaurants go, but I do think they pay some attention to sustainability issues, or, according to the "core values" listed on the company's website, "to be precedent-setting in our responsibility to sustainable fishing, the seafood industry, the environment, and the communities in which we do business."

That would set Legal Sea Foods apart from many of the high-end restaurants here in the District of Columbia where the credo seems to be, I'll eat whatever I damn well feel like, thank you.

The potatoes and beets have been staring at me for some time from a plastic-covered bowl in the fridge. We typically get a mix of Asian greens, mustards and collards in our CSA box. I usually throw them all in a pot and eat them just like this, with a splash of vinegar, or perhaps chopped and added to a frittata or a soup.

Breakfast

Leftover Basmati brown rice, Brussels sprouts, and Savory cabbage with parsley and chives from the garden. Season with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

The wife admonishes against eating Brassicas shortly before leaving the house to meet with friends....

Fridge Scrounge for Breakfast

Brown basmati rice with local greens, cannellini beans, red pepper flakes and pecorino cheese.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

Notes: Heat in microwave, season with extra-virgin olive oil, coarse salt, freshly ground black pepper.

I am big on cleaning out the fridge for breakfast. Does anyone else serve beans right out of the can? Next best thing to soaking dried beans. The greens were a mixed lot that came in our CSA package. I typically cook them down in boiling salted water, chop them up, then use them as an ingredient--breakfast, soup, bruschetta, frittatas. Whatever opportunity presents itself.

Steel Cut Oats

It's official. Yesterday in recognition of the cooler weather settling in I replaced the usual granola in a client's breakfast with steel cut oats.

This whole grain cereal may be one of the healthiest foods on the planet, but I like it particularly for the nutty texture. Still, many consumers have never heard of steel cut oats, sometimes labeld "oat groats."

More popular are the ubiquitous rolled oats, which are oat grains hulled, then pushed through steel rollers to flatten them. For instant oatmeal, the grains are first cooked, then rolled out super-thin. Steel-cut oats, on the other hand, start with the whole grain--meaning the unadulterated bran, germ and endosperm, where all the nutrition is--then are cut into small pieces with steel blades and left unrolled so they look like little nubs of brown rice.

A single serving, or 1/4 cup dry, of steel-cut oats contains 150 calories, no sodium, very little fat, and plenty of dietary fiber.

Oats grow especially well in the cool moist climates of of the British Isles. Not surprisingly, oat porridge is practically the national dish of the Scotts. In this country the steel-cut variety is available from Quaker Oats and others, notably the McCann's company, which packs its product in a metal container with a distinctively old-fashioned and classy looking label. But you can also buy steel-cut oats in bulk at health food stores and groceries such as Whole Foods.

As you might imagine, the cooking time for steel-cut oats is longer than what you may be used to if your only experience is with rolled oats. Some recipes call for several hours of cooking to achieve a really creamy porridge. I recently saw a blog post recommending cooking steel-cut oats in a slow cooker with dried fruits. Apparently you can also prepare them in a rice cooker. Mine usually simmer on the stove for about an hour.

You can cook steel-cut oats in milk or in salted water. One method recommended by McCann's is to soak the oats overnight. Bring four cups water to boil, add one cup steel-cut oats and stir until the water is absorbed. Leave to soak overnight, then bring the cereal back to a boil in the morning and cook until tender.

A better breakfast than cooked outs with some raisins, chopped walnuts and brown sugar is hard for me to imagine.