Creamed Eggs on Toast

When I was a little girl we used to have biscuits and gravy for dinner sometimes (actually we had it when I was home over Christmas last year too). My mom makes fantastic baking powder biscuits and her sausage gravy always turns out better than mine does. It's pretty fantastic. When I went away to college (and actually occasionally before that as well) I would make biscuits and gravy or talk about them and people would always give me the weirdest looks as if they had never heard of putting gravy on biscuits before. It turns out this is must be some kind of Mid-western food that people on the west coast don't eat that often, or something. Weird. But I've made my peace with it and I feel like more people are familiar with biscuits and gravy.

What continues to amaze me are the variations on this meal that people are missing out on. Yesterday I was in my kitchen trying to figure out what to cook for dinner and found out that it is that awkward time in fridge-land when I need to go shopping and thus have a limited selection of foodstuffs. So since about all I have in my fridge is eggs and milk I decided that some nice creamed eggs on toast would be the perfect meal. Except why would I eat my creamed eggs on toast when I can have them on biscuits? So I made biscuits and then proceeded to make me some creamed eggs. At this point my roommates all got super confused. Think--biscuits and gravy only with hard-boiled eggs instead of sausage. It's fantastic. You don't even know what you're missing out on. And after you get used to the idea of creamed eggs on toast we can expand your horizons even more to chipped beef on toast. Apparently I really am a girl from the Mid-west even though I haven't claimed that in more than a decade. My favorite though was when I could hear one of my roommates trying to explain to her boyfriend that I'd made creamed eggs on toast for dinner. She was just so incredulous. I assure you it's not that weird. 

Cherry Tea Ring

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the cherry tea ring that my mom makes for breakfast on Christmas morning. She always makes it the night before and then it rises in the fridge overnight (in theory it least). By now you're probably wondering tea ring? What's that? Does it really have tea in it? To which I answer no. It has no tea in it (think coffee cake). But a tea ring is similar to cinnamon rolls only a different shape. Basically you make cinnamon rolls but instead of slicing them completely apart you only cut them partway and it makes this lovely ring. And we put chopped up candied cherry pieces inside and on top.

Before I cooked it.

The candied cherries always cause a bit of consternation in our household. If you have ever gone on the hunt for candied fruit in this country you know the trouble it is to find it. Granted at Christmas time it is a little bit easier, but it's still hard to find small packages of just cherries. Mixed fruit is much easier. And no matter what you find they're incredibly expensive. So a couple summers ago when I was in England I stumbled upon small pots of just candied cherries for 79p. You can't beat that price. Even if the exchange rate is 2:1 $1.60 is about a third of what you'd pay for candied cherries in the States. So I quickly snapped up two packages. I still had one left at Christmas this year but completely forgot to take them home and so I decided that it was time for me to use them up. Mine didn't rise as well as I'd like, but I blame that on my poorly heated house. But it tasted fantastic.

Check out that gooey deliciousness.

Howl's Moving Castle

In my unemployed state I find that I have a lot more time on my hands than I might wish and this past week I've been using that time (probably quite unwisely) to watch Howl's Moving Castle, the movie by Hayao Miyazaki.  It is fantastic. Before a couple weeks ago I had never seen it, though I had heard of it. (It played at the IC once or maybe even twice while I was at BYU, but for some reason I had missed it.) But, this is one of those movies that I could watch over and over again. In one sense it reminded me of The Legend of 1900--the way that I was prepared to watch it again almost as soon as it was over. It is just a fantastic film, I love it so much.

Books

I just have to tell you how much I love books. They just make me so happy.