A Spring Cape Cod Breakfast: Hangar B, Chatham.

More from the (sort of, maybe) hurricane. Being home all afternoon is rare for me, so I've been taking advantage of the weather, cleaning off my desk & paging through my sketchbooks. Apparently I have some catching up to do.
Here's one moment I found: a breakfast, on Cape Cod, early June, rainy Saturday, at the surprisingly (why surprisingly? Because we are both really good cooks & live in Massachusetts & have developed low restaurant expectations in general I guess) excellent Hangar B. 

6.11.2011: Breakfast in Chatham. 

I had a smoked salmon, goat's cheese & arugula omelet, with avocado slices & fried potatoes & toast & Owen had the famous Red Flannel Hash (Beets, Yukon Gold Patoes, Sweet Potatoes, Bacon), with toast & poached egggs & horseradish creme fraiche.
Mine was brilliant anyway, but the avocado slices but it over the top. Owen's was the best use of beets I have ever tasted. The toast was homemade & wonderful & there was housemade jam too. Good potatoes (which is both very important in a breakfast & not as common as you'd think).
I'm very into going out to breakfast as a thing & this meal made it into my Top Three Restaurant Breakfast List. It didn't quite beat out the amazing breakfast sandwich at the Sunny Point Cafe in Asheville, NC but comes in second before brunch at the The Green Bean & I do love the Green Bean,
Despite the rain, it was a lovely Cape Cod Saturday. After breakfast, we drove to the beach & collected seaweed & shells for our garden in a torrential downpour.
Standing on a beach on the bay on Cape Cod in red boots & a dress in pouring rain with someone you love & a hound dog, holding a bucket of ocean matter, after a really good breakfast is the kind of moment that makes for a satisfying life, I believe.
Here, in Northampton, in the present, the sun just came out.

A Summer Preview: Burrito Night.

We have lately been having these great summer-eqse days, bright hot sun, perfect for afternoons in the garden, getting sunburned & tricking oneself into believing that it is July. But of course, it isn't, it is May in Massachusetts. Right now it is 50 & raining & will apparently stay this way for the next five days.  

There is a while to go before pleasures such as swimming & sunbathing & eating garden tomatoes, for example. I love this rainy May weather too, but I'm just saying, one can get addicted to 70+ afternoons gardening in the sunshine. (With a hound dog napping on your napa cabbages). The problem is, after one of those afternoons, a girl wants actual GARDEN FOOD. & no luck yet, most things are just tiny baby seedlings. 

We have got some radishes, spinach, garlic greens, but we are a while from tomato basil city. 

What to eat then, leaving the garden muddy & delightfully hot & looking for satisfaction? On this particular Saturday, BURRITOS. 

First, I will admit upfront that I am a burrito snob. I am a Californian goddammit & you just don't get food like George's Drive-In here. You don't. Ali? Are I not right? That shit was off the hook. 

Every time I give in & try a burrito place here on this coast that's supposed to be "just so great, so authentic" I am deeply disappointed. Not naming names, but really, sorry Noho. Massachusetts does not equal burritos. Taqueria Cancun, Pancho Villa oh where are you? Oh right, still in San Francisco where you belong. I'm the impulsive idiot who moved back to New England & left all that food bounty behind.

5.7.11: Pre Summer Burrito Night.

I seem to have a lot complaints here. I'm not intending to. Describing what led to the creation of  a meal gets complicated sometimes (food shapes our lives). 

To simplify: it was unseasonably hot, we built raised beds out of mulberry lumber all day, & I wanted a good burrito. (Because I am a burito snob & never get one unless I make it myself). 

So, we broke the "no food out of season, especially tomatoes" rule & went to Stop & Shop & bought tomatoes & cilantro & avocados. Oh well. At least everything we needed cost next to nothing by some reduced produce miracle. Cause you know we are CHEAP.

I think both my summer produce longing & my burrito angst both come down to salsa, truly. Good salsa. Homemade salsa. Why why buy salsa? & Why is the salsa at any random hole in the wall place in Cali so divine & the salsa anyplace here tomato water? Why?

So yeah, I was reasonably tan for the first time in a year & I broke down & bought crap grocery out of season tomatoes & made my own salsa, to eat on a giant burrito (I make great salsa, FYI). Whatever. It still was delicious, helped along greatly by a jar of pickled jalapenos from last year's garden that I recently found in the back of the fridge.  Ah, the magical joys of food preservation. Better than unicorns.

They were steak burritos, with pinto beans & onions, grilled red peppers, homemade guacamole & salsa, chopped lettuce, fresh cilantro, sour cream, cheese, & of course, tortilla chips & Mexican beer (Dos Equis). 

Tons of leftovers, so I ate one wrapped in aluminum foil at work for lunch the next day & also felt like I was back in SF, heading out for lunch in the Mission (Sigh. ALMOST). 

This is the food one wants to eat when sunburned & pleasantly exhausted & starving from gardening. 

Things are just gonna get better. Our tomato plants are in the ground, people (one each of every heirloom variety we could order on the internet, & lots of the regular ones too).  Our basil & peppers seedlings are started. We are actually beginning to enjoy the delicious, incomparable pleasure of eating food we grew.

Bring it on, Summer!

Improv: Quiche.

A quiche made entirely from random free expired & semi-damaged shit acquired at work: Avocados (I am a huge fan of the cooked avocado), tomatoes, spinach, snow pea sprouts, raw milk cheese, in a homemade whole wheat pastry crust (by Owen, not me), with a baby arugula salad & Annie's organic buttermilk dressing. An exercise in the "work with what you have" model that we like to use around here, i.e. the Iron Chef Challenge Dinners invented by Rin & I.

1.30.2010: Free Dinner.

Eaten in bed drinking a 40 of King Cobra ('cause we classy like that) & watching Xenia the Warrior Princess on the laptop. Yes, really. Makes for an excellent Saturday night when it's January in Massachusetts & the weather is subzero. When will spring be here? End is pretty much ready for Farmers Markets & gardening.