Total Pageviews

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Busting the Budget- Spas Out Splurge!

Okay. Okay! I know I am supposed to be budgeting- I know! Yes, all of my credit cards are almost maxed out, and yes I spent all afternoon perfecting the $50 food budget I made for the week. But then I saw the perfect book (some of you know how often this happens to me). And I mean come on! This title? "Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen"? Amy Pennington was speaking my life in that cramped aisle. I had to have this book. And the enabler totally agreed. And then there were the perfect Christmas cards...Sigh. So anyway. The budget went out of the window- but it's okay! Because I was still able to have enough money between cash and credit card to get  the books, (the other one was just two dollars--stop judging me!) cards, and ingredients for one of the recipes in the book to try it out.

Baked Eggs with Kale & Crusty Bread
2 to 3 strips of cooked Bacon (I used 4)
Olive Oil
Half an Onion thinly sliced
2 cloves of Garlic, crushed
1 bunch of Kale cut into ribbons crosswise starting at the stem end
Pinch of Red Pepper Flakes ( I used cayenne)
Salt
3 Eggs
Toasted Baguette, rubbed with raw garlic clove



Preheat the oven to 350.

So you only need one skillet for this dish- score! You start off cooking the bacon, then take it out and drain the bacon grease ( I reserved this for a later use). Then I just put in my olive oil- didn't even wash or wipe it out- who can resist bacon grease? FLAVOR! Then I added my onion and garlic -walked out of the kitchen and nearly burned it too hehe. Didn't take me the 10 minutes she allotted but then my stove gets crazy hot. Then I put my Kale in three batches letting it cook down each time. It was about the last batch that I realized I didn't have any red pepper flakes so I just threw in a bit more than a pinch of my trusty cayenne pepper. Whew! And the salt after that I let it cook down for a few minutes, added my inch of water, and put the lid on to let it saute until tender- for me this was about 5-8 minutes. I don't mind a bit of a bite though. Then I drained off the excess liquid.

When I turned my pan to medium high I was really nervous because as I said my stove gets hot! I had to move quickly here so I made three holes in my kale all the way to the bottom and dropped my three eggs into them lickety split. It was so pretty! Then I let them set before popping them into the oven. I always forget to preheat the oven so I didn't turn it on until the kale was already cooking because I glanced down and saw they needed to be in the oven soon! So I put them in at 275 (blush) for 10 minutes (the recommended time was 6-10) with the bread on top of my open skillet (wasn't sure the lid was oven proof) because I also forgot to toast it- Yay!
My bread hanging out waiting to go in the oven
My favorite part was of course next. I popped them out of the oven- they were so CUTE! 
and rubbed my bread down with a crushed clove and added a drizzle of flax seed oil- I gotta be healthy lol. and topped with my crumbled bacon.




It was beyond Delish! Make it! Tell me if you loved it! Go buy her book! And tell me about that too!


"Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable & Seasonal Kitchen" By Amy Pennington

No comments:

Post a Comment

There will be a comment post delay to account for spammers :)