Absentee Brunchin'

We took a little road trip in our new-used RAV4 last week. Mill Valley was the destination with a possible trip further north to Mendocino (didn't happen due to major rain). Our close friend, Puff, always welcomes a visit from us. Usually I cook up a storm leaving him with leftovers and recipes. We missed our Sunday Brunch but I remembered one we did when we first got back from the "LA-VA" days when Steve was having a hard time tasting things and his saliva was diminished.  It was based on a San Francisco classic "Joe's Special". This is what I wrote about that brunch.

                                                January 17- Our first attempt at a real brunch!
I had the bright idea to try one of Steve’s old fav’s from Marin Joe’s, “Joe’s Special” and adapting it to a brunch dish. He seems to be able to eat chunkier things and this is pretty chopped up stuff. I never liked this dish but Steve liked it for dinner sometimes at Marin Joe's restaurant so let’s try it for brunch!

I looked up “Joe’s Special” San Francisco and sure enough there were several versions. The blandest is the one I am sure they made at Marin Joe’s but thankfully the one from Original Joe’s on Broadway was right up my alley. Of course I did embellish it a little..

Here is the recipe off the internet:
2T. Olive Oil
2 # Gr. Beef
2 Med. Onions, chopped
½ # Mushrooms, sliced
1 ¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. gr. Pepper
¼ tsp. dry oregano
1 10 oz. box frzn spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
-or- ½ # fresh spinach chopped
4-6 Lg. eggs, beaten
Grated Parmesan

Here’s what I did: Basically I cut the recipe in half in places.
½# gr beef, 1 onion, 2 cloves garlic, chopped ¼# mushrooms
5 oz. Trader Joe’s chopped frozen spinach, defrosted (yum), 3 large eggs ( 2 of which were double yolkers-love those farmer’s market eggs!) to which I added 2 Tbsp. whipped cream cheese(any soft cheese would be nice),  along with 1 Tbsp. water. Beat it up until combined and frothy.
Heat olive oil in skillet and add gr. beef. Cook until browned. Toss in chopped onions, mushrooms and garlic. Saute about 5 min. Cover skillet for 5 more min. This releases the juices from veges. Add spinach and seasonings and heat through. Fold in beaten egg- cream cheese mixture. When eggs start to set I folded in 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese. This should be a relatively loose mixture with lots of flavor ( hint, hint, MJ’s). Top with grated Parmesan cheese.
It was a big hit as he could swallow it and it wasn’t too dry. I always have a pitcher of warm "brunch salsa" on the table too.

I served a bowl of fruit: blueberries, strawberries, mangoes, kiwi and banana with yogurt and brown sugar folded in.

Since I had a Garnet Yam kicking around I decided to oven fry it. Cut into wedges, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and chipotle chile powder ( a little or alot). Spread on a parchment lined baking sheet and roast in the oven at 350 for about 30 min. They will be soft-crispy wedges of goodness!


WooHoo-Trader Joe's "Crement du Bourgogne" is back. We like the Orange label as well as the Purple label. Not so crazy about the Blue label. Good bubbles, dry and creamy. Perfect with the food I serve for our brunches.

We both toasted to how thankful we are to be back home with Steve on the mend from his radiation treatments. The throat is coming around but he still doesn’t have his taste buds back as well as saliva. He needs to gain weight big time too.

Now that a year has past, we have had wonderful brunches celebrating life each day. The saliva has started to return and he can distinguish flavors and tastes again.

Love in a Frittata

This retirement stuff is tiring! The week was full from Monday-Saturday with medical appointments, an EDD workshop, purchasing a new-used car (RAV4 Sport), yoga, dinner for my yoga partner and her husband, Friday evening at Schooner’s Wharf with the Cayucos gang, a 2 hour beach walk on Saturday with 2 girlfriends. We scored lots of sand dollars, shells and heart shaped rocks plus went shopping afterwards with a stop into a new  wine tasting bar. This rolled into dinner when we caught up with the husbands. Whew! Now it is time for our pre-valentine’s day brunch as we are leaving tomorrow for Mill Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Needless to say I was a little under the weather today but had a plan already in place.

Pre- Valentine's Day Frittata 

I love this frittata as it is packed full of veges. Margaret Fox’s “Morning Food” is the reference book for it. You can add or substitute any vegetable that would taste good baked in an egg bath.

1 Tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup each:
Red bell pepper, diced
Green bell pepper, diced
White onion, diced
2 large or 4 small Cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 tomato, seeded and diced

1 Tbsp. chopped Italian parsley
1 tsp. other fresh herb chopped ie basil, marjoram or oregano
¼ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. fresh ground pepper

4 large eggs, beaten with 1 Tbsp. milk and a few dashes Tabasco sauce
Add:
1/2 c. grated cheese ( I always have Trader Joe's 5 cheese blend on hand so I used 1/4 c. of that as well as 1/4 c. grated cheddar that was kicking around in the frig.)
Save for the top:
1 Tbsp. grated parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in a nonstick 10” skillet. Toss all chopped vegetables into it and saute until soft. 5-7 min. Season with salt, pepper and the herbs.
Pour egg-cheese mixture over the veges and stir to combine. Cook over med-lo heat until the bottom is set, pushing the sides towards the center to let the raw egg seep underneath. After about 5 min. when the bottom seems lightly browned, sprinkle parmesan cheese over it and pop the skillet into a 350* oven. Cook about 10 min. until puffy and cooked through. You can slip the frittata onto a heated plate and cut into wedges.
Today I used my heart shaped cookie cutter and cut it into shapes
I spread a little of our “brunch salsa” into the center of the plate and centered the heart shaped frittata on top.
 We declared this one of the best frittatas ever. It was hot, creamy and flavorful. Serves 2-3.

Valentine's frittata



To complete the brunch I baked off 3 Pain au Chocolat. These are chocolate filled Croissants that we received from my brother Jim’s family for Christmas from the Williams Sonoma catalog. I have known the Pastry Chef for alot of years and can't believe he now supplies Williams Sonoma. I keep forgetting that they need  to defrost overnight so this time I wrote a big note! I baked off three because they are frozen tightly together and I couldn’t separate them without breaking them up and these three were loose. As it turned out we could only eat 1/2 of one of these babies.

Applewood smoked Bacon and chicken breakfast sausages sprinkled with my brown sugar-chipotle chile mixture were baked off ( basically 1 Tbsp. brown sugar:1 tsp. chile powder, I make a jar full to have on hand).
A pretty sad little fruit “hash” today as I am using up everything before we take off.  There was a piece of mango, one little kiwi, a few fresh organic blueberries, 1/2 banana, a chunk of pineapple, but, luckily I keep a container of frozen mixed berries in the freezer and that saved it.

Laetitia Brut Rose sparkling wine tasted divine with this brunch. This is a local winery that makes amazing sparkling wine as well as syrah, pinot noirs and other varietals.

Off to 46 East in Paso Robles today to Eberle winery for a celebration of life for one of our friends. We will see people we haven’t seen since she got sick two years ago. Ovarian cancer took her way too soon. I am sure we will laugh together about the good times we all had which is what she would have wanted as well as support the husband left behind. RIP Wilma...



I'm baaack!!!!

This month has been crazy. I haven't made brunch for the last two Sundays. Steve, husband, worked for a friend at his winery one Sunday and I filled in at my old job this past Sunday. Along with that we have been entertaining family the entire month. I decided I better post something since I have two years worth of brunches documented in Microsoft Works and I wanted to post once a week anyway.This one is from September, 2009 the month that sort of changed our lives when we found out Steve had throat cancer.  It was emotional to look back at that time but at the same time so nice to have it behind us.

What a week..I took a sick day on Wednesday as Steve was called down to LA for the neck biopsy and supposedly the larynx biopsy on Friday. Thursday was my birthday.
Neck biopsy didn’t go well. The Dr. or NP spilled the beans that the cells were “atypical” ie cancerous and she didn’t know where they were coming from so she took many samples. She mentioned that they may have metastasized . Of course Steve asked the questions and I wasn’t in the room. That was a real downer.
The VA put us up in a Travelodge near the hospital. Clean but dumpy. When they are booking the rooms, they call it "booking a bed"! Exactly! There was one electrical outlet that was so old my computer plug wouldn't stay in the socket. Since it was on their dime we made do.

We went out for a walk and ended up at the Westside Tavern on Pico Blvd, a nice walk down Overland St. The place was written up in the L.A. Times and we liked it so we came back for dinner.
The menu was nice, corn and heirloom tomatoes everywhere. We chose salmon on a bed of roasted corn with mushrooms and tomatoes, Burrata salad which is a fresh cheese with cherry tomatoes and balsamic viniagrette. Flat bread with a smokey cheese and guess what??? Heirloom tomatoes. Very good.

Thursday we had a free day and it was my Birthday! Off we went to Malibu with the top down on the Celica! We stumbled upon an area north of Malibu called Paradise Cove. I read about the mobile home park there. Some are going for $1mil each! It is so cool! We went into the parking lot to the beach restaurant and I saw a sign that said $3 for 4 hrs. get your parking ticket validated, perfect. We sat at a table in the sand and had 2 beers and just enjoyed the shit out of the little bay. I left the waiter $20. He validated our parking ticket. On the way out the parking attendant asked for $3. We wondered why when we had a validated ticket, he said "look at the sign", so we did: Parking $25 for 4 hours, $3 validated parking ticket with a $20 purchase in restaurant. We certainly had a good laugh over that one. Good thing I didn’t leave the waiter $19

Lunch was in order so we went back to the Malibu Pier as I had read about the renovation of the Beachcomber Café and the Malibu Pier restaurants. We sat on the deck and ordered a Turkey Club and a glass of wine from a “local" winery, Rosenthal, plus a beer for Steve. The views were great. It was a clear blue beauty day. Good people watching too.  Parking was $14 upfront with a $10 refund when the ticket was validated. What a riot but we were not only in Los Angeles but Malibu to boot.
 As luck would have it the Rosenthal Winery tasting room was nearby on the PCH. The waiter from the restaurant steered us in the right direction. There were 3 guys working the bar, 2 of them used to work at Wine Warehouse and sell Peachy Canyon wines, the 3^rd knew our winemaker friend in Paso Robles, Hank Donatoni from the old home winemaker days. We were more than welcomed there. They explained that there is a Malibu AVA and they have all 250 acres of it. We saw the special Malibu shale that is similar to limestone. The wines were great and we took 2 home as well as cards, a poster and some Merlot chocolate sauce that was killer good. On the way back we got a call from Steve's brother, Scott, that he and  his wife, Paula, were on their way up to L.A. to celebrate my Birthday. We had planned on an early evening taking in a movie so Steve would be rested up for his surgery the next day. Oh well. It would be a good diversion.

Back at the Travelodge we got a message on my cell phone from Dr. Duong, that the biopsy on his larynx was cancelled. He said they had enough information from the neck biopsy to make decisions. Both of us went ballistic. Steve broke down and cried because he thought they were writing him off and not giving him a chance to fight whatever this is. It was so sad and I tried to reassure him that they didn’t want to put him through undo pain when they didn’t have to. He took a shower to calm down and get cleaned up for dinner.
I called Scott and Paula and explained the situation. They agreed with me about the decision of the surgeon.. My brother Bobby called and Steve talked to him too. Bobby is a cancer survivor and knows what it is like to be kept hanging about the prognosis.

Steve was feeling a little better. We walked to the Best Western on Sepulveda where Scott &  Paula were staying. THAT was a hike ,but we needed it. They welcomed us with open arms, wine and lots of reassurance that he wasn’t diagnosed yet and it may well be a benign tumor (it wasn't) etc. He felt a whole lot better. Napa Valley Grille was the "birthday dinner" of choice restaurant. It was fabulous. The waiter, Phillip had been there for 7 years.  I worked for the restaurant company that opened it 9 years ago. Phillip said  he remembered me ( sort of ) and treated us very well, comp appetizer, no corkage and a signature "Lava Cake" with a candle for my Birthday. I had the best corn Agnolotti with Chanterelles ever! Scott had Turkey Ragu papperdelle , Steve & Paula split a very good hamburger. Best Birthday, under the circumstances.
We drove back home the next day with future appointments at the VA the next week.

                                        September 13- A Somber Sunday Brunch

On Sunday, Steve didn’t want to me to go too much trouble for Brunch but I insisted it would be o.k. and I would keep it simple. 

Omelets! It is a rerun of a former brunch, one that we loved. 
Heat a little oil and butter in a small skillet. Saute 4 sliced Mushrooms, 1/4 c.chopped onions, 1 minced jalepeno pepper. Add 4 quartered cherry tomatoes and 1/4 c. diced ham. Shred leftover pieces of cheese: Jack, Jalepeno Cheddar and some goat cheese to equal about 1 c.

I think I finally have it down thanks to my go to "Breakfast Book" by Marion Cunningham.  For each omelet, heat non stick skillet, add 2 tsp. butter, when foam subsides add 2 large, organic if possible, eggs which have been whisked with s&p , Tabasco and a little milk. I like to add milk because I think for some reason it tenderizes the eggs. I set up 2 bowls of the egg mixture ahead so I can do one after the other.

Let eggs set 5 sec. Draw back the edges with a heat proof rubber spatula and let the egg run underneath to set. When just about set, strew 1/2 of the filling and some cheese,over 1/3 of the omelet. Flip one side over with a spatula, tilt the pan and flip it, rolling it onto a heated plate. Sprinkle more cheese on and keep warm in the oven while you make the second omelet. Wahoo! They came out perfect. 

To round out the brunch I made one of my typical fruit compotes splashed with the bubbly we were about to pour and served English muffins with peanut butter and  my homemade peach jam. ( another recipe to come).
Sparkling wine du jour was Trader Joe's Crement Rose, a lovely sparkling from Burgundy, France.



We were in for the journey of our lives but I still had several more weeks of brunches left before we moved down to Los Angeles for Steve's treatments and we were going to make the most of them!