Curry Fried Egg and Toast with Honeyed Goat Cheese

After over a month of waiting, we got our first beautiful, pale pinky-brown egg. I have a story about the outer condition of the egg but that is a story for another day when I won't be writing about eggy food things. 

 By the way, this eggy food thing is delicious. So delicious that when I first discovered it I had to have it daily, sometimes twice daily, sometimes at 1 a.m., causing friends to speculate that I was pregnant (not yet!).


 I was inspired by this post about Curry Fried Eggs on my friend Miranda's wonderful food blog. She no longer blogs much, but has some amazing posts and tasty recipes.

This is the most perfectly complete breakfast imaginable. The tang of the goat cheese offsets the heartiness of the eggs, a hint of sweetness comes through with the jam (or honey), and Ezekiel toast is the perfect nutty foil to it all. Did that sound properly foodie-ish? I'm just trying to give this amazing dish the laud it deserves.

 Curry Fried Egg and Toast with Honeyed Goat Cheese

One egg, lovingly raised (free range / pastured will make all the difference)

Honey or fruit jam

Ezekiel bread 

Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Curry powder 

Soft goat cheese (a basic chevre will work just fine)

Make a good old fashioned fried egg. I like to let the whites set, then "pop" the yolk so it will cook through, but if you like a runny yolk go for it. Before you flip the egg, dust the top with curry powder, salt, and pepper.

Meanwhile, toss a piece of Ezekiel bread in the toaster. When it is done, smear it with a generous amount of honey or fruit jam, then top with an equally generous amount of goat cheese. Slide the fried egg on top. Take a bite. Declare to your husband that this just might be as good as sex. Eat a second round against your better judgment. Be full and very happy.

Double Challenge // Week 4 Real Food Pledge // Cooking Black Beans from Scratch

We made it through this week of DOUBLE challenges! I won't say it was double fun. But we made it and that feels great. We did give ourselves one cheat meal (WINGSSSSS! and Dr. Pepper (me) / Sweet Tea (Josh))  but other than that, our meat consumption was limited to that leftover ground beef + a couple hot dogs from Earth Fare.

We even turned down seductively-scented barbeque meat at Josh's mom's house. Luckily she had plenty of good sides for us to chow down on - stuffed potatoes, corn on the cob, baked beans, squash casserole, and as many cupcakes as we could stuff in our face.

I felt extra kitchen-accomplished this week because I cooked my first batch of black beans from scratch! It took awhile, but the end result was so much cheaper (and I think healthier?) than buying canned. Have you ever tried cooking them from scratch? All you have to do is:

1. Soak beans overnight (2 cups of water per 1 cup of beans)

2. Drain and rinse

3. Cook beans in water (I started with 3 cups water per 1 cup beans and then added more water as they cooked down) and add in any flavorings you want (I added Mexican spice mix plus salt** and pepper)

4. Cook until tender (took 2 hours for me)



So simple! Why was I ever intimidated by this? My 1 cup of dried beans (which I think probably cost about $0.50 - they're about $2.50/lb in bulk) turned into about 4 cups of cooked beans - the equivalent of 2 cans of beans which would have cost $3 total just for the Earth Fare brand!

I think this method will work for just about any kind of dried beans you may find.

**Oops, I just read that it is best NOT to add salt to the cooking water - it prevents the beans from absorbing water and getting tender. That could be why I had to cook mine for so long! (it should have taken more like 1 hour to cook). So if you do this, make sure to only add salt AFTER they are already cooked.

Anyway, on to this week's challenge:

No fast food or deep fried food.

We can totally do this! Especially since we're getting stricter about our budget so I've already got some tasty things planned for us to eat at home, saving money from eating out.

We're also continuing with all the pledges from previous weeks, mostly. It definitely feels good to be reducing our meat consumption by a whole lot (I've got one meat dinner planned this week and four vegetarian dinners, yum).

This week we will be eating:

Dinners
Vegetable korma and homemade garlic naan (yesterday)
Roast carrots, parsnips // quinoa  // Roasted Chicken Leg Quarters
Earth Fare vegetarian pizza

Crispy potato & black bean soft tacos

Lunch
BBQ tofu over cheese grits (yesterday)
Dinner leftovers
Sandwich with cream cheese, sprouts, onion; tortilla chips; broccoli and hummus
Turkey rollup with garlic herb cheese

Breakfast (any combination of the following)
Frozen smoothies (blueberries, raspberries, vanilla protein powder, flax seed)
Gluten-free bagel with cream cheese
Apple and peanut butter
Sausage patties (Italian seasoned sausage from our 1/2 pastured pig!)

Chickens, y'all.

Moving day is Saturday! And though we had planned on waiting awhile on chickens, we got a steal of a deal on craigslist - chicken pen, brooder for chicks, and gravity feed waterer - and went ahead with it.

So with the chicken house came the most important question - what breed(s) to get? We would like to have both a small laying flock and to raise meat birds. While we could go the route of getting two breeds - one laying breed and one meat breed - we'd rather keep it small and simple with just one breed. We also knew we didn't want to go the industrial broiler route - the current standard meat breed is the Cornish Cross, a very sad breed that grows quickly but has many health issues due to its fast growth.

While talking to my friend Brittany, who has her own little backyard chicken setup, I was reminded of a chicken breed that I was very interested in a couple years back, way before I could actually

start my own flock. Dominiques are a great dual purpose breed and are one of America's first breeds. Early American colonists used these chickens for their eggs and for their meat. Several top breed benefits are:

-- Gentle and docile

-- Good mother

-- Good foragers - can "eat their living" from pasture

-- Good layers

-- Good meat, though smaller breasted than industrial chicken breeds

Plus they are just so darn pretty. They also have an interesting breed history, dating back to when America was just a British colony.

It also just so happens that a hatchery in middle Tennessee sells Dominique chicks, as well as many other rare and heritage breeds. Hopefully we can get set up to get some chicks in the next few months - the tentative plan is to raise a small batch (5-10) of meat birds and a small starter flock of laying hens. Plus maybe a rooster, so we can raise our own chicks!

And wouldn't you know it - the folks we bought our chicken equipment from have processing equipment and have generously offered to help when we are ready to process the meat birds. It's amazing how God provides when we aren't even looking for it. And the helpfulness of like-minded farmers really never fails to impress me.