Monday morning eggs

I may not be a chef yet.. and I may not be an extroardinary cook yet either; but I know how to poach a damn egg. It is the one thing I have perfected. I know what it physically takes, I know what is wrong if I happen to murder the egg, and I never need a timer, EVER.

It gets overwhelming, you know, watching Top Chef and Iron Chef America week to week and realizing, 'Oh my god, I don't even know what sweetbreads really are...' and 'How the heck am I supposed to come up with my own signature dish, if I ever want to be a famous TV show host, a la Giada De'Laurentiis?'

At least I can poach an egg. That I can do. And the rest, it will come.

8/31 Monday breakfast- I decided to make a mock eggs benedict with my last whole wheat english muffin, some sliced tomato and avocado, and an emulsion of olive oil, lemon juice, honey and tabasco. And of course, my poached eggs. It was delicious.
BTW, nothing is sexier than breaking into a perfectly poached egg.


8/30 Sunday dinner I had a big salad of romaine, leftover rotisserie turkey breast, strawberries, blueberries, herb goat cheese, celery and balsamic and olive oil. Love, love, love the combination between berries and balsamic.


8/30 Sunday lunch I had chicken salad in lettuce cups with some of my leftover bean stew I made on Friday (stew, or soup, almost always better after a day or two of all the flavors bathing together.)


8/28 Friday dinner- So we had all kinds of nifty beans and local peas and onions from the farmers market a few weeks back and I needed to get rid of it. So I made a soup in the crock pot, which I don't use too often, but I managed. ;)
In it was celery, red potato, dry white beans, fresh purple peas, fresh lady creamer peas, 'noon-day' red onions (must be a Texas thing), and garlic and a variety of spices. It wasn't quite ready by the time I ate dinner unfortunately, but I still ate it. I had a small green salad on the side with turkey and some strawberries and almonds.



8/28 Friday lunch I had canned tuna in a mock tuna nicoise salad, with red potato, celery, tomato, avocado, lemon juice and olive oil. Carrots and a plum on the side.

tuesday-friday

Residing in a small town where the closest thing to real civilization is two hours away in Dallas; I have gotten used to living without certain common luxuries I am used to having day to day in Arizona. Did you know Dallas has a Buffalo Exchange? I got to inform my new Texas friends that Buffalo originated in Tucson... Little did they know... :)

Dallas also has multiple Whole Foods. The one thing I really, really miss is my Whole Foods. I cannot find anything here worthy of comparison, and going into the local grocery store or WalMart, searching for 'heathier' foods, I have learned to improvise.

BUT the good news is that Tyler does have a health food store, Whole Health. Tuesday afternoon I drove over in that direction and made a few purchases, which I normally would at my local Whole Foods. I got the best almonds I've ever tasted, raw and really dark and rich. I also got a package of frozen Acai, Fage greek yogurt, ground grass fed beef, ground turkey, organic peanut butter, and rolled oats.

8/28 Friday breakfast- So this morning I broke out one of my $2.60 6 oz containers of greek yogurt and really made it pretty to eat. I ate it with my pumpkin granola my mom sent me, frozen local blueberries, 1/3 of a banana and some of those really tasty almonds on top. Any other yogurt is sad in comparison. Greek yogurt is so light and fluffy, yet extremely thick and creamy at the same time.


8/27 wed dinner- I made egg salad because I hadn't had it in a while, and ate it with a little piece of Rosemary bread, carrots, tomatoes, and grapes on the side. (And some leftover Americano from our earlier trip into Tyler.)


Thurs 8/27 lunch. Sylvia, Jen and I decided to make a little trek to Tyler for the day just to relax a little bit. We saw Julie and Julia at the theaters, which only added to the blogging inspiration. We ate at Rudy's for a BBQ lunch. Coming from the West Coast, and especially in Tucson, AZ BBQ isn't very typical, so for being a chain in Texas, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't anything Guy Fieri would probably come across, but it was authentic barbecue, to say the least. We all three got pulled pork, and I got a taste of the green chili stew, and cole slaw on the side.


8/26 wed dinner- We had some boneless rotisserie turkey breast in the fridge, and I decided to eat it with a corn and cherry tomato salad with balsamic, a small taste of homemade potato salad and tsatsiki sauce.


8/26 lunch- The last of the chicken salad! I added grapes that we had, and had cut veggies, a plum and a few pita chips (A la Kristin Hucko ;)) with it.


8/26 Wed breakfast. When there's bakery bread and a panini maker, Lord knows you can't keep me away from it... So I fired up a mini panino for breakfast with 2 poached eggs. I made the panini with honey, cream cheese and cinnamon. And ate it with the eggs and a side of fruit.


Tues 8/25 lunch and dinner- I still had quite a bit of that chicken salad I made, so I still ate that. It may seem like it gets old, but chicken salad, a hundred different ways, I could never get sick of. With a side of carrots, or over lettuce, with a pickle. Mmm. Sign me up.

chicken salad and desserts

2 of the desserts we ran for this weekend's menu: I got to make my espresso caramel bars, except I used a shortbread crust instead of graham cracker and I cut them in triangles instead of candy bar shape. The other is a lemon sabayon cake, that is made of 2 different cake layers, a layer of blackberry puree, and two other layers of lemon curd and lemon sabayon.







We had so much leftover rotisserie chicken meat piling up at the kitchen so I took AALLL of it off the bone, and used all the white meat for lots of chicken salad. So I've been eating it for lunch and dinner the past few days.


Chicken salad with spinach, romaine, tomatoes and plums with oil and vinegar.



Chicken salad with carrots, celery, side of plain yogurt and local peach.



My mama sent me my favorite granola, that I can't find anywhere here! Nature's Path pumpkin flax. Yum. So I had to have a bowl with a peach right when I got it in the mail.




Chicken salad with side of romaine, celery and tomatoes.

Leftovers put to good use

All this is from the week of the 17th. =)
I brought lots of sauces and chicken, etc home from the restaurant that would have gone bad. One of the ladies made roasted tomato salsa and I used it on a variety of things here. We also had many things that we got from the farmer's market the week before, like fresh fruit, veggies and local eggs.

For dinner I had shredded chicken salad with the roasted tomato salsa,and I sauteed yellow squash, red potato, red onion and celery in some olive oil, honey, ketchup and a variety of spices. Tasty! (Although it didn't really go well with my mexican flavored chicken salad.)



This lunch of mustard tuna salad, a light pasta salad with spinach, cherry tomatoes and tomato salsa, and Israeli cantaloupe salad with plain yogurt, blueberries, local honey, and poppyseeds.



A gooood breakfast: leftover honey jalepeno grit cake with 2 poached local eggs, local peaches and blueberries. Grits are one of my new old favorite foods. So addicting.



Breakfast for dinner! Scrambled eggs (1 whole egg, plus 1 white) with spinach, onion, garlic and tomatoes, and a black bean corn avocado salad on the side with the same roasted tomato salsa on the side.



Lunch of pesto chicken salad, carrots with white bean puree and a few tortilla chips.



Dinner of spinach salad with carrots, corn, black beans, chicken, tomatoes and a vinaigrette.

Picking up the pace!

Work has been crazy. After 4 weekends open, the restaurant is picking up the pace definitely.

These are just a few things I've been eating on my days off from the past 3 weeks....
Egg salad with cucumber, carrots and a chocolate rice cake. haha Love those!

I had this I think on a Monday night a few weeks ago, grilled chicken with and orange olive oil marinade, and salad with a few strands of whole wheat pasta.

Salad with tuna and pasta and carrots on the side.

Chicken salad with celery and apple and almonds and raw veggies.

Grilled chicken with salad and a few corn tortilla chips.

Salad at the restaurant one day when I got a break. Spinach, tomatoes, pecans and canned tuna from home with a lemon mustard vinaigrette.

I pureed extra veggies from work to make a little chilled soup, with grilled chicken and tzatsiki sauce. Yummy!

Leftover slow roasted chicken tortilla soup from the brunch menu. So good!

Chicken salad with carrots for lunch.

The other day I brought local eggs into the restaurant and poached them and had them with raw vegetables and some local white bean and artichoke puree that I used as a dip.

Chicken pesto salad with chicken and pesto I snagged at the restaurant with white peach and local grilled corn and tomatoes.

Chicken curry salad with the other half of that same white peach, carrots, tomato, and some more of that bean puree/dip. (Sort of hummus style. )

fine dining and my duties.

some of the items on the dinner and brunch menu. i mostly do salads & desserts. =)

Restaurant life

Some of the items I have made in my spare time, while I have a few minutes free during work, seeing as thats alllll I've been doing.

Egg white omelet with spinach and homemade spicy green sauce, yum.

Green salad with corn, tomatoes, red peppers, spiced pecans, mustard vinaigrette and chicken.

Oatmeal with blueberries for breakfast. :)

Spinach and cabbage salad with spinach, vinaigrette, pecans and poached eggs on the side.


Stuffed gordita (masa) with chicken, green sauce, cabbage, queso fresco.

Yogurt with wheat germ, bananas, almonds, blueberries and granola.

Homemade soup with oven roasted tomatoes from the restaurant and tuna on the side.