A great breakfast you'll never see

a newsletter without photos

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter! If you’ve found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:

This morning I made breakfast– a thing conceptually I am familiar with, but as a practice, is very new to me. I took some brothy beans that I had cooked late last week and warmed them up in a skillet, crushing them with the back of a wooden spoon so old and strangely whittled that I wondered how much “spoon wood” I had eaten over the years. They became a sort of refried bean texture, creamy bits studded with whole beans and bits of ham hock that had been shredded into the previous incarnation. They tasted fabulous, though they looked like hell. I scooted them to one side of the (very large) skillet and cracked three large eggs into the vacant side.

As an aside, I get my eggs from the farmers market, which are undeniably better — and now cheaper — than the ones at the grocery store. Maybe cheaper eggs at the farmers market will encourage more people to shop at farmers markets? I don’t know! Show me an upside!!

I seasoned the uncooked eggs with salt and pepper. As they were setting, I broke them up with that same spoon that’s probably shedding wood into my food– once, twice and then three times, to give myself a sort of barely-set, rustic scramble. On another burner, I heated a large Caramelo pork fat tortilla (the best money can buy that also delivers to your home) in a cast iron skillet until it was pliable and warm and blistered in a few spots. I placed it on the cutting board and spooned some of the beans onto it, then some of the barely scrambled eggs. I looked at an onion on my counter and thought, “This would be great with some finely chopped raw onion” because this burrito reminded me of how good a bean and cheese burrito from Taco Bell is, and when I think of that burrito, I think fondly of the tiny bits of raw onion. But it was 8:15am and I was also concurrently pumping and I thought “you’ve done enough,” so the onion remained un-chopped.

I rolled it up and then made another one for me. While my husband got the Tapatío from the fridge, he (jokingly? I don’t know) asked if I wanted to take a picture and I said no. This was an ugly burrito, not a thing anyone needed to see. We started talking about all the foods I’ve been making lately and how little photographic evidence there is of said food. Sometimes because it’s genuinely hideous (see: ugly burrito), or sometimes a stunning plate of perfect spring pasta goes “unlensed” because it’s too dark in my dining room or I forget or I’m too hungry or I just am tired of taking photos of everything I cook or eat. A shame, really, because this little burrito was so good. Like Taco Bell good. And not for nothing, the spring pasta really should have been documented, as it was both delicious and fabulous to look at. It had everything: ramps and pea shoots cooked in butter, tons of green garlic and so much lemon it was almost tart.

People really do love ramps

When Dining In came out, a lot of people told me “I love that roasted cauliflower and dates recipe, but I didn’t make it for so long because there’s no photo. Why isn’t there a photo?” I won’t bore you with the details, but sometimes there are choices you have to make in the layout. At the time, in my mind, someone would rather have the recipe without the photo than not have the recipe at all, but now I think, maybe not! If a tree falls, etc. I guess this is your reminder to try that recipe if you have that book.

Anyway, because of course we need that photo (!), on Friday after I go to the farmers market and buy the pea shoots, you’ll get that spring pasta recipe in your inbox. Plus: ideas for how to use the rest of that quasi-niche spring produce, because now is the time.

Yes, I will tell you what to do with this flowering rapini 🌱🌼

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