Microwaved Eggs

It occurred to me that often only the complicated dishes make it into published recipes. But I usually eat very simple meals that require no recipe. A standard dish for me is vegetables, meat, and spices sauteed in coconut, olive, or stock fat. I don't mind cooking, but it is by no means a passion of mine, and usually I focus on quick and easy dishes.

Like fried or scrambled eggs.

Only now I usually make them in the microwave rather than in a skillet. This is faster and it generates fewer dishes. There are two basic ways to microwave eggs. You can microwave a single egg in a bowl for around 40 seconds. If you don't break the yoke, the egg hardly sticks to the bowl.



Or you can microwave more than one egg, with or without additions. For example, yesterday I microwaved two eggs, sausage, and two cubes of cauliflower puree. First I microwaved the puree for around a minute to dethaw it. Then I stirred in the eggs and sausage. The edges tend to cook faster, so you have to stir it about every half a minute for a few minutes. This sticks more than does a single egg with an unbroken yoke. But it's still easy, fast, and good.

No-Sugar Cheesecake

For New Year's, Jennifer made a great cheese cake without sugar or any added sweetener. We topped it with blueberries or apples sauteed in butter and cinnamon, so of course that added the fruits' sugar. The texture of the cake was fantastic.

We used a low-carb cheesecake recipe, except we didn't put in the "artificial sweetener" (because, yuck). While I like it fine without any sweetener, we discussed putting somewhere between a quarter cup and a half cup of sugar in future attempts if we want a sweeter dessert.

One thing we got out of this recipe that will be useful for other things is the almond meal crust. We'll probably make this for quiche and mousse pies.

To make the crust, mix a cup of almond meal and two tablespoons of melted butter (Jennifer just used a fork for the mixing). We thought we'd increase the quantities by half next time. Press the mixture into the bottom of a pie plate, then bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until slightly browned.



To make the filling, mix in the following ingredients, one at a time in order, with a hand mixer, scraping the bowl with a spatula between each ingredient:

* 3 packages (1.5 pounds) cream cheese (room temperature)
* 4 eggs (preferably room temperature)
* 1.5 teaspoons vanilla
* 1.5 teaspoons lemon juice
* sweetener (if desired)
* 0.25 cup sour cream

After you add the last ingredient, beat the mixture for an additional minute.

We used a water bath to bake the cake. Ours worked great for an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It puffed up a bit and then settled back down as it cooled.

Here's the finished cake in the water bath:



Cooled, sliced, and topped:

Amazing Primal Pancakes

Somebody recommended Rick's Primal Pancakes, and they are absolutely amazing. These are honestly the best pancakes I've ever eaten. I think it's something about the flavors of the coconut with the almond.



I used the recipe as listed, except I doubled it. The given recipe consists of 1 egg, 1/4 cup Almond Meal, 1/4 cup of coconut milk, 1/8 t cinnamon, and 1/8 t vanilla extract. They were a bit runny, so I think you could increase the ratio of meal to milk. (I imagine you could also use cow milk.)

I wend shopping this morning at Sunflower before I made breakfast. I was going to purchase almond meal, but it can cost over $10 per pound. Before I left, I read Yvette Marie's suggestions for making almond meal. So I paid something like four dollars a pound for bulk raw almonds at Sunflower, then made my own meal. (I didn't sift the meal, as Marie suggests, but I don't mind it a little crunchy.) It turned out great.

Cookware

Jennifer and I bought a teflon pan a year or two ago at Target. It worked well, but recently I noticed that it had started to show chipping and scratching (even though we use only silicone spatulas). That teflon is wearing off somewhere, either in the wash or in the cooking, and I'm not sure I want to be eating it. Plus, everybody we've talked with says teflon wears out eventually with any pan, and we didn't want to keep buying new pans every year or two.



So we bought a stainless steel All-Clad fourteen inch deep-dish pan. It was pricy, but it performed well for an onion-beef-tomato dish I made. Unfortunately, it did not perform well as a griddle.

So we first bought an All-Clad double burner cast-iron griddle. But I didn't like it for two reasons. It didn't fit our stove's burners well, and my egg immediately ran into the "grease" gutter. So we returned it. I bought two Calphalon 10.5 inch cast-iron griddles at Target, and they work spectacularly. I made the best pancakes of my life in them. (Plus, the two round griddles cost less than the single double-burner one.)

So we now have cookware that works well and that should last the rest of our lives and beyond.