The Garbage Plate, A Real Mess

Going out to breakfast.

Doing brunch on a Sunday.

Meeting for coffee and scones.

Taking the family out for pancakes and waffles.

All of the above!

I used to wait for Friday evenings. When were were dating, he took me out for oyster shooters and steamed clams with linguine at places with dark oiled wood and copper pots hanging from the ceiling.

I now wait for Sunday mornings. Our dates have become family weekend breakfast outings where smiley faces are put on pancakes with whipped cream, chocolate chips and maraschino cherries and we determine where to go by the durability of the crayons that come with the kid's menus.

And we do a lot of living on our Saturdays.

Something happened to me in between the Friday Night and Sunday morning - besides becoming a wife and a mother. I became an advocate for survival. Well, not just our survival. I want us to thrive.

Saving money.

Eating less sodium, processed foods, preservatives.

Hibernating inside our home after long, over-scheduled weeks.

I can do that myself, maybe even better.

All of the above!

We've been doing our Sunday breakfast outings in lately. We've spared ourselves the long wait in restaurants and pricey meals to simply stay at home, watch Sunday morning baseball, and decide only between cinnamon rolls or pancakes. And why shouldn't we? To have a fabulous weekend breakfast meal at home, all you need is a good sense of humor, a few market ingredients, and the learned skill of removing eggshells after toddlers insist on cracking eggs, that irresistible culinary task of young chefs everywhere.

This past Sunday morning, I didn't decide between anything. I made it all - all being everything I had in the fridge and pantry at the time (only ingredients I missed were sausage, toast, and gravy).

I made a Garbage Plate. A mess of breakfast foods on one platter, cooked on the same griddle, one thing after another, a delicious marriage of going-out-for-breakfast flavors, all in one bite. I've ordered this several times in diners, and seen it done on Food Network. Well, Saturday night, I saw a show that served their patrons the prototypical Garbage Plate, the tell-tale mess of piled-high eggs, potatoes, cured and salted meats, cheeses...and I fist-pumped my sous chefs, saying only, "10 a.m."

And at 10 a.m. the next day, we took it on. Peeling and grating potatoes, sharp cheddar. Whisking eggs and grinding fresh pepper. Chopping up bacon into small bits and I am not ashamed to say, cooking the eggs in the residual grease (aahhhh, memories of my childhood).

If I'd had any leftover coffee, I would have made a red-eye gravy. If I had corned beef, I would have made a hash. If I hadn't used all of the tomatoes in the salad the night before, I would have made a salsa.

Next Garbage Plate, another mess.

We do so much living, we need to compensate with a lot of eating. The satisfaction of a hearty breakfast Sunday morning makes surrendering those Friday nights easier.

Of course, Friday nights are how we got into this mess in the first place.

GARBAGE PLATE

5 Russet/Idaho potatoes, peeled and shredded

1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, or canola

coarse grain salt and pepper to taste

dash of Tabasco

8 slices bacon, chopped

12 eggs, whisked - salt and pepper added

2 cups grated cheese

Preheat a griddle or large, flat pan over medium-high heat.

In a bowl, toss potatoes with oil, salt, pepper and Tabasco.

Put potatoes on griddle and let cook about 5 minutes per side, until the potatoes are browned evenly and cooked through (may need longer depending on your stove and pan).

Slide your big hash brown onto a platter big enough for a big mess.

Cook bacon next, until done.

Top hash brown with bacon.

Drain most of the fat off the griddle, reserve about 1 tbsp. of fat for the eggs.

Add eggs to griddle and cook until done.

Add eggs onto mess on the platter.

Top eggs with grated cheese, it should melt right away.

EGGS.

The egg is so simple. But so pleasing and versatile. I just love them.

When the kids got tired of toad in a hole (one of the best breakfast dishes of all time, recipe below), they started asking for shapes. I'll get breakfast down their gullets any way I can, and I have a drawer full of just cookie cutters for toast, eggs, scones, and oh yeah, cookies. Fine, I said, here is a hearty take on egg and toast.

When springtime rolls around, their Greek Yia-Yia holds the title for egg decorating. She uses leaves and herbs from her garden, and dye from Greece. I could never top these eggs, so I don't try. When I was young, it was PAAS pastels and the scent of vinegar to beckon the Easter Bunny. The Greek Easter eggs my mother-in-law makes are on a different level, I hold them in my hand and appreciate their smoothness and deep color, and wonder how she gets them so perfect.

Just give me a flame-warmed tortilla, a sunny-side up egg, and fresh salsa, this is all I require to appreciate the egg. The compact, convenient, dependable egg. When I don't have time for eggs in purgatory, I do this (below). The meeting of a tangy tomato salsa with cilantro and the runny yolk, wrapped inside of a soft tortilla, the masa's earthiness activated by the flame...that is how I make myself happy with this yellow and white refrigerator staple that counts as protein.

QUICK EGGS IN PURGATORY, ON THE BORDER STYLE

pat of butter

2 eggs

1 cup salsa

1 corn tortilla

In a skillet/pan over medium-high heat, melt a pat of butter.

Crack eggs into pan.

Pour salsa around the eggs.

Cook eggs until done, and slide over tortilla.

TOAD IN A HOLE, OR EGG IN A BASKET

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

coarse grain salt and pepper to taste

1 egg

1 slice bread, a middle piece cut out and set aside

In a large skillet/pan over medium-high heat, melt butter.

Add bread slice, and the middle piece you cut out right next to it.

Crack the egg into the hole of the bread slice.

Sprinkle over salt and pepper.

When you can smell the bread and butter, or after about 1 minute, slide a spatula under the bread and flip it over, carefully (the middle piece too).

After about another minute, the egg should be done.

Slide into plate, and use the middle piece to break the yolk.

Clam Chowder...Homemade, from Scratch, and Deeply Psychological.

I have no idea how soup became the food at which I am best at cooking. All I know is, anytime of year, I am simmering away at the stove. During the hottest days of summer, for the coldest days of winter, when the slightest hint of autumn hits the air, and in spring, when vegetables beg to be sweated in good olive oil and a pat of butter.

In summer, I do gazpacho type soups with our California avocados and coastal tomatoes, and whatever the fishermen have pulled out of the Pacific. Either that, or chicken tortilla soup. You can't live where I live and not know how to make chicken tortilla soup, and once you make it, you'll never order it in a restaurant or buy a plastic tub of it at Costco again.

In the fall, root vegetables reign, so I bring together pumpkin and acorn squash soup with acini de pepe, and add a hint of curry. If I am in the mood to food mill potatoes, I make potato and cheddar soup, or slow cook some lentils and add chicken and basil sausage.

In winter, come on. We're fighting colds and such, so I bring on the scratch chicken noodle soup or avogolemono. I usually jones for a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup about this time of year, so I roast tomatoes with garlic and thyme, then puree it with some chicken broth and maybe - if no one is looking - a touch of heavy cream, baby.

Springtime. Our current season. So many moods. Warm and sunny today, cool and blustery tomorrow. Outside recreation - like tidepooling - beckons us. But the wind whips us and freezes the little hands that touch the still cold ocean water, so clam chowder makes sense.

It is not as hard as you think. You only need to make it once or twice to get clam chowder mojo. Then people from all around will talk about your restaurant-quality (or better) clam chowder, that you have to be from, like, New England or something. Really? Me? No, I just love seafood, scratch cooking, and for some reason I need to read Carl Jung about, soup.

And I love my people who love my clam chowder. That is truly the only reason that matters.

Here is a great clam chowder recipe. Dig in.

CLAM CHOWDER

4 slices bacon, diced

3 stalks celery (with leafy tops, especially)

1 small yellow onion, grated or chopped fine

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

3 Russet/Idaho potatoes, peeled and diced

(6) 6.5 oz. cans chopped clams, strained RESERVE THE CLAM JUICE!

* Open cans of clams over a fine mesh strainer and save the clam juice, set clams aside *

(1) 8 oz. bottle of clam juice

1 cup heavy cream

2 cups whole milk

1 bay leaf

3 tbsp. all purpose flour

optional - chopped parsley

Over medium-high heat in a large pot, melt butter and add the raw, diced bacon.

Render fat out of and cook bacon and until browned.

With a slotted spoon, remove bacon and set aside on a paper towel lined plate.

Add celery, onion and garlic to pot and sweat veggies until soft, about 3-4 minutes.

Add potatoes and toss to cover with the rendered bacon fat (it smells sooo good about this point).

Add the bay leaf, strained clam juice and bottle of clam juice to the pot.

Bring to a boil.

When potatoes are cooked (check after 4-5 minutes), add the heavy cream and milk to the pot.

Reduce to a simmer and whisk in flour.

Stir consistently until soup thickens.

Add clams and if using, the chopped parsley.

Remove bay leaf.

I dug up this clam last summer at Coronado state beach. Had to fight a pretty nasty seagull off, too. But I'm okay now.

Clam chowder photo from foodnetwork.com.

If Life is a Journey, Parenting is an Adventure

The pediatrician told me something yesterday I would have just nodded my head and forgot about afterward, had she said it a month ago.

"Parenting is an adventure." That sounds so simple doesn't it? Small talk almost. But it has different meanings, like the Life Is a Journey, Not a Destination thing.

Read the definition of adventure, according to www.dictionary.com -

1) an exciting or very unusual experience.

2) participation in exciting undertaking or enterprises.

3) a bold, risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome.

4) a commercial or financial speculation of any kind; venture.

5)

a) peril; danger; risk.

b) chance; fortune; luck.

At one time or another, being a parent fits all of the above criteria. It's crazy, optimistic, expensive, risky, and even benefits and requires luck sometimes - to name a few things you can say about having and raising children.

It's easier just to say "It's an adventure."

In the movie Parenthood, Jason Robard's character Frank, the imperfect, pragmatic and seemingly remorseful patriarch says that the caring involved in being a parent "never ends." He says something like "You never cross the goal line, not when your kids are 30, or 40 or 80."

You never know what you're getting in to when you talk about having children, but from the second you know they're in there, you're only certain that you love them. Everything else that comes thereafter is subject to variables.

Forgive me for stating the obvious. I'm in the process of changing the way I think. Being a parent has recently moved me from the mindset list and prepare for all that could go wrong to the attitude of things will happen, meet life head on.

It's not like I'm waiting in line for a roller coaster and still have time to change my mind and turn back. I'm on the ride now and it never, ever ends.

Grandma in Parenthood says - "I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it."

In my personal experience on roller coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain, Disneyland, and Disney's California Adventure (adventure!), roller coasters aren't as scary, are easier on the stomach, and much more fun when your eyes are open and you surrender yourself to enjoying it.

My life would be less of an adventure without children. Without them, my life would have been one of those bus or train rides around the park, from which you sit and watch other people - families - living their lives to maximum, exciting, capacity.

I don't think the bus or train ride is adventurous enough for me.

sing with me...when you're sliding into first and you feel a sudden burst...

Is That an Earthquake, He Says

Have you ever been in an earthquake?

Me, and earthquakes, we go way back. To my infancy.

I was born in the San Fernando Valley, where we lived until I was a toddler. I was 3 days shy of being 2 months old when the "Sylmar Quake" hit.

Earthquakes have a lot of different effects on people. After that quake, my father doesn't sleep naked anymore.

Because when that 6.6 hit, he ran to get me out of my crib. And ran out into the street.

Naked.

Incidentally, he left my mother behind to get her own self out of the apartment complex, but she can scream louder than any earth rumbling, and has, and she wasn't injured in the quake at all.

When I was 2 1/2, we moved to Seattle, where my Dad got his Masters at UW and it rained, but we didn't fear tsunamis and figured Rainier was dormant. When I was 5, we moved to San Diego, where life is good, right? Away from the San Andreas fault, more blue skies than gray, I mean, what happens in San Diego besides that groovy, Southern California sunshine-y living?

I was 39 when the 7.2 hit San Diego, just north of the Baja California epicenter. Stronger than the Haiti quake. Two deaths reported, 25,000 misplaced because of structural damage.

My parents didn't move us up and down the Pacific Coast to avoid natural disasters. They were following higher degrees and satisfying careers.

I've been in San Diego ever since I was 5, and felt only tremors from the San Andreas now and then.

What happened on Easter Sunday was no tremor.

I was in the kitchen, two of my kids were in the living room, my daughter was in the backyard.

"Is that an earthquake?" said my husband. We have false earthquakes that are usually rationalized and explained away as sonic booms, or a jet from nearby Miramar (yes, the Top Gun Miramar, but now it's a Marine Air Corps base).

I dismissed my husband's question until the windows rattled. And kept rattling. And kept rattling. And still, after the seasoned-native-third generation-Californian arrogance of "That's hardly an earthquake" cynicism passed, kept rattling.

I ran to get my daughter who was outside climbing a fence, or a tree...or, something.

The dog accompanied me the whole way to get her and pull her down to safety from whatever tomboy thing she was doing. Once I had my family assembled and ready to get under the dining table, the quake subsided.

"Would you calm down?" my husband asked. Why is it, no matter what, a man has to tell a woman to calm down, even when she is composed and self-possessed? I had to round up my ducklings, I'm a Mom! And I was simply acting upon one thing I do know - earthquakes can start off as Matthew Broderick and soon be all Charles Bronson.

Secure your troops, assess the damage, move Grandma's fine china before the aftershocks start and send hubby to the store for 10 packages of bottled water, band-aids and rubbing alcohol, and also soup that doesn't expire until the year 2054.

Just in case.

That is what Californians do. Right after they update their Facebook status about the earth-rattling drama.

Earthquakes effect people differently. They are one of those things that make you realize you've forgotten what you thought you already knew. All those things you thought you knew? Well, you just had a loud, rumbling, Wrath of God type refresher course in them.

I have been so reminded this past month. There are a hundred blogs, stories and chapters inside my head, because you know who the best author is? Life. More random and surreal than any piece of visual or literary art.

I haven't been calm the whole time, but I am near it now.

A 7.0 killed hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti, a 7.2 won't even be front page news in San Diego tomorrow.

By nature, I hate cliches, despise overused terms and statements, and one of my least favorites is "It's not a question of IF but WHEN the BIG ONE strikes."

DO NOT say that to me. LIFE is the proverbial "BIG ONE." What snese does it make to wait for something bad to happen? Since you don't know when it will, keep your heart open, your spirit hopeful, and your precious things close. (And your insurance policies STACKED, just in case.)

I looked up the quake epicenter on the USGS website soon as it hit and realized so many little quakes happen all the time, and I don't even notice.

So many little disasters are averted, or never come to pass, and we continue in our lives, unaware - or too aware - of the potential danger.

One of those things I knew, that I forgot, and just learned all over again.