consumed on 6/8/08
I’m on Whidbey Island for the weekend, driving towards Double Bluff when I see a simple, hand-painted sign announcing “EGGS.” I’m in a (modern day) foraging-for-food kind of mood so I pull up the drive.
I see a man in the window staring blankly out at me and wonder if I’ve got the wrong house. There are no signs indicating eggs, only a sign that reads “Hippies Enter Here.” I’m having a slow morning and it takes me a second to realize that it’s pointing to the only entrance to the house.
The first thing I see is an old, bearded man wearing a dirty wife-beater, tooling around in a Hoveround chair. The second thing my eye goes to is the naked lady wall calendar and I’m unsure if this is actually a place to by eggs. My attention is diverted back to the man when he says “I know what YOU want…”
My fight or flight instinct has been on the fritz lately and it kicks in. But before I have time to make a decision, the man follows up with: “EGGS! I got ‘em in dozen or 18-packs.” He then motors off into the back room with me calling after him “Eighteen please!”
I’m trying to avoid eye-contact with the lady in the calendar so I look up and find a really great collection of old beer cans lining the top shelves. I pointedly examine them until he returns.
He is carrying a styrofoam tray on his lap and smiling so much that I’m instantly disarmed and charmed. Before I can pay he opens the carton to show me a gorgeous array of pearl, green and brown eggs. He is obviously (and rightly) proud, which leaves me feeling honored that he is sharing his eggs with me. I hand over $7 and continue on to the beach looking for more adventures.
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The next morning I announce that I’m making fried eggs with hollandaise sauce. I was expecting enthusiasm but am met with silence. No one actually said “But, we don’t have any bread” or “That sounds weird” so I take their silence as permission to proceed.
Awhile back my mom found this great, fool-proof recipe for hollandaise that, oddly enough, is from a Cuisinart manual. It is SO easy, but I manage to fuck it up.
First my butter explodes in the microwave, coating every surface in a deluge of grease. Then the butter that’s still left in the dish cools too much, so when I pour it into the Cuisinart it doesn’t thicken the sauce. I switch to the stove top method, but with less than 5 seconds of heat it’s the consistency of spackle. My fried eggs are done at this point and since no one really wanted the hollandaise to begin with, I don’t attempt to fix it.
It turns out that crazy thick hollandaise still tastes great. Although it is weird to eat egg sauce over eggs with nothing else. The best thing was the color. The yolks were so fresh that they produced a hollandaise the color of marigolds. Beautiful.
My mom likes to tell the story of my first Christmas as a toddler, in which I nearly hyperventilated while jumping up and down in my Johnny Jumper at the first sight of a wrapped present. These days I can usually keep my excitement under wraps, but when Josh from Skillet sent me a jar of BACON JAM I could feel my heart rate go up and my breath quicken. I was in the middle of a conversation which I quickly broke off when I spotted the package on the mail shelf. I tore into the box to find a small jar of dirt-colored paste. Honestly, it did not look appetizing, but that didn’t stop me from opening the jar right there in the lobby. I took one whiff of intoxicating bacon and plunged my finger right in.
This stuff is GOOD. Packed full of bacon, but also tempered with caramelized onions and a vinegary counterbalance that reminds me of chutney. I tried it on bagels with a bit of turkey (YUM), as a pizza base (YUM) and even stirred it into cottage cheese as a snack (YUM). I can’t wait to head down to Skillet and try it on their burger.
Thank you Josh!
