WIAW 13
I’m cautiously hoping, here, that it might be spring sometime soon.
Yesterday, we went for a walk in the neighborhood, looking for budding trees – and found a few! None are blooming, yet, and the buds are tiny, but, if you look hard, you can find them. We even found the first shoots of flowers, in an area with full sun!
Most of the snow has melted… there are only a few piles, in the places it has been heaped, melting into odd abstract sculptures. (One even had a poor bedraggled Christmas tree at the bottom, if you want to know how long that pile has been there.) I can’t really say it’s been a long winter – we had a very warm fall, and the cold started late – but it’s been intense, for this area. We are more than ready for spring.
Because I blog, I have an earlier than usual harbinger of spring. Here in New York City, St. Patrick’s Day is around the time we expect spring to be underway… and I baked my brown soda bread last week, to write about it. Then it affected my meals on Monday.
Breakfast – my usual protein shake and oatmeal. But I had buttermilk from the bread, and used it in the shake – and liked it… I may continue doing that. Strawberries on the oatmeal – I don’t have them every day, now, but they are a nice treat. The oats themselves – I don’t know if I have mentioned – are the Irish style steel cut. I like the chewy texture better than rolled oats, and for years they were an occasional treat… but now that they are easier to get, I can enjoy them every morning! I usually eat them with a pat of butter and salt, instead of milk – again, Irish style – but when I have the berries I substitute just a drizzle of half and half for the butter.
Lunch was… interesting. New York. American. Multi-ethnic…
OK, I’d baked the brown bread the night before, and wanted to eat it. And I’d been experimenting with whipped feta (needs more experimenting before I share it) so I used that as a spread on the bread. Then, I’d made curried chick peas for dinner a couple of nights earlier and wanted to finish it – but it was one of those awkward amounts – not really enough to do anything with… So I heated the chick peas in a pan, poured eggs over it, scrambled it – looks unattractive, but it tasted very good.
Rich said I should put lox on the bread, to add another ethnicity, but I pointed out that smoked salmon on brown bread is very Irish…
Dinner was more leftovers – this time, the end of the Swiss Steak. I’d already used most of the meat, and all the tomatoes, but had enough beef left for a meal. I sauteed some onion, made a brown gravy with beef broth, and heated the beef and frozen peas in it. Then we ate it with the bread, and plenty of butter… A good, easy, and very quick meal.
I am again linking up to Peas and Crayons. I love getting ideas from other peoples’ meals…
