Bungalow Ranch Style

Houston, we have eggs. Even when I’m giving them away to my mother, by the dozen, we’re awash in lots of delicious eggs. Our girls don’t seem to have any intention of slowing down anytime soon, which is much to our amazement, since we’re having reports from other fellow poultry keepers that their young chickens are going into molt and/or slowing down quite a bit.

I can always find more things to do with eggs, though. We’ve been eating lemon curd for breakfast pretty regularly. That will probably stop when the lemons start coming from South America or Florida, instead of California. But, there’s always boiled and poached eggs for salads, mayonnaise, Caesar salad dressing, souffles, omelets, and frittatas.

Making lemon curd is actually really easy, and I usually make it in double batches. It just requires patience to avoid making lemon flavoured scrambled eggs. Here’s the proportions I use:

3/4 cup sugar (or evaporated cane juice)
3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
3 whole eggs plus one egg yolk
3/4 cup melted butter

In a heavy bottomed 2 qt saucepan, combine sugar and lemon juice and stir until dissolved. Add lemon zest and eggs and stir until eggs are completely broken up and the color and texture is homogeneous. Slowly stir in melted butter. Cook over medium low heat, stirring frequently/constantly until the mixture begins to set and just starts to bubble. It should hold a whisk mark in the top when it’s ready.

Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and chill. Transfer to a tightly sealing jar or container. Curd will keep up to one week, refrigerated.

It’s also fall, and I’ve been making soups and squash-based dishes for our week-night meals. I generally prep things ahead, so I can throw things together pretty quickly during the week. Every other week or so, I make a vegetable soup base and a potato-leek soup base that also works well for chowders. I’ve been making split pea soup pretty regularly, and there’s a few meals worth of beef stew in our freezer. Yesterday, I made a pumpkin curry with shrimp and jicama; and I also threw together a turkey and pumpkin picadillo. Today, I’m working on another batch of pea soup, and I roasted some delicata squash that I will be stuffing with rice and ground pork – then freezing for a meal later in the week.

We ate some of the curry for dinner yesterday, and probably need to pace ourselves on the squash intake. So, tonight, for dinner, I’m going to make some bouillabaisse, even though all I have is cod, shrimp and some store-bought fish stock. Portland really needs a decent retail fish market.