I’m not a foodie or a cook. My wife is, and she is AMAZING at it. Seriously, she is God’s gift to people who have gluten allergies. But every once in a while, I am one of those annoying people who will take a picture of their breakfast/lunch/dinner and put it on FB. I’m sorry, I love food.
So if you are irritated with pictures of people’s food you can stop reading this post… now.
Now that the tomato plants are gone, I could actually see that I had some very ripe, although small, jalapenos! Wahoo! So I took 7 or 8 of them in with me this morning, which was all that I got out of the garden today.
Let me give you a brief overview of my normal morning eggs, because quite frankly, they’re great. I put some butter in the pan and douse it with Louisiana hot sauce. I put that on high and let the butter melt and everything start “shhhhhhh” around the pan. (Bare with me, I’m obviously a very technical chef here with lots of big words…. ahem).
Then I put my eggs in.
I have to say that the fresh eggs from the organically, home raised chickens are so different, I can never go back. My eggs this morning were laid YESTERDAY. I love that.
Anyway, I don’t use a spatulas because, like I said, I’m pretty much a mess in the kitchen and break yolks when I use them, so… I do that little wrist flip thing that flips the eggs over. Lots of practice on that one, but I don’t break yolks when I do it. So, that’s how I normally do eggs.
But this morning, I diced up a jalapeno and added it to the butter/hot sauce mixture, along with some fresh basil, then added the eggs. While that was cooking I diced up the last little tomatoes and put them on top when the eggs were done. The result… is what I call Garden Fresh Huevos Rancheros. Not too spicy and a LOT of great flavor. In hind site I should have added a touch of sour cream, but they were REALLY good anyway.
Here’s the obligatory picture.
That’s it. Don’t expect cooking or recipes and stuff here on a normal basis, but I just had to share this one because of the garden goodness involved.
The Jones Garden Blog 
Yes – if everyone had chickens and fresh eggs they’d never go back to the store type, and your breakfast looks delicious. Ironic – you said your tomatoes were done and I haven’t had my first tomato yet.
Our seasons here are a little skewed from most. We start tomatoes inside in December and plant in March or April with fruit end of May, first part of June. Then they finish up pretty quick in July from the heat. I pull mine when they get past due in order to make room for fall/winter, which is our biggest gardening season with all kinds of yummy crops.
Oh yum!! Spicy and GF… Makes me hungry. Now I just need to wait for my garden to give me food and my girls to start laying. 😀
Thanks, I was actually thinking about it a lot today. Kind if pathetic I know. I was hoping for round two tomorrow but the girls only laid three eggs today. :(. Not enough for my wife and I to have two each. Of course I do get up first… just kidding! Chivalry is not dead.
That looks fantastic. I’m totally with you on the eggs. I can’t ever imagine going back. Hmm…think I’ll have an omelet for breakfast tomorrow.
I agree about the fresh eggs. Eggs from stores can be up to ninety days old.
There is no Southwest cooking that matches the cooking you get when invited to dinner in the Southwest, and get the cooking of a local “Mom,” (or, occasionally, “Pop.”)
It isn’t the heat of the peppers, but rather the flavor, that is often lost when others try to duplicate Southwest cooking. (The same can be said of curry from India.) This is not to say some versions of a local Mom’s chili don’t make the sweat bead on your forehead.
One time, during the four years I spent bumming around areas north of you, I was invited to a chili pepper roast during the chili pepper harvest. The people had a huge cast iron skillet, lots of cold beer, and a bushel basket of freshly picked chili peppers. They roasted the peppers in the frying pan, and ate them, one after another.
I didn’t want to lose face or appear squeamish, but I was completely out of my league. I was like an Eskimo handed an ear of corn, who had no idea of what to do with the danged thing. Worst was that all the guys were watching me, smiling slightly.
I did it wrong, and had to be humble and accept instruction. Initially I assumed you would throw out the seedy middle, as you do with a bell pepper, but they only threw out the stem and outermost skin. They’d hold the pepper by the stem, pop it in their mouth, and suck all the pulp and seeds from the skin, and then toss the skin and stem aside.
The peppers were hot, but not overpoweringly so, and the flavor was wonderful. I confess I did give every pore on my skin a work out, and cleansed my system in other ways as well, but the flavor was delicious, and taught me the secret of peppers: “It’s not the heat; it’s the flavor.”
That is definitely true. My wife is a phenomenal cook. Others try to duplicate, but are rarely successful. I’ve made the same dish following her instruction and it was just missing… something. I don’t know.
I had a friend growing up in TX. His grandmother lived in Mexico but would come up for visits. She would cook all day. Fresh, homemade tortillas, and slow cooked beans. I could eat a dozen at a time, they were so good. I don’t know who got more excited when his grandma came to visit, him or me.
As far as the chills go, I’m not very hardcore myself. I’ve had some of the hottest of the hot, that burn you three times, but I agree, I like good flavor. The heat ads something to the flavor, but too much heat overwhelms the flavor and that’s no good.