I could have been eating cold cereal out of a box Saturday morning. Instead I was eating a home made cheese and veggie omelet in a grilled croissant.
Can you see that cheese oozing out? That’s a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar. I asked Sam what this pleasant surprise was all about (she cooks a lot of dinners, but not a lot of breakfasts) and she said she wanted to make special meals for me all month for my birthday. Not sure how much of that was just made up on the spot, but I’m not complaining!
Saturday afternoon we visited Travel Town in Griffith Park for a friend’s son’s first birthday party.
Then on Sunday morning, Sam improved upon Saturday’s effort:
She used the same ingredients as the previous day, but added more veggies to the mix, more cheese and more eggs. Look how high that sucker sits and how much cheese is falling out. Also, the grilling of the croissant was mastered so every top and bottom had deep brown sear marks.
Sam didn’t know, but I used to eat fried egg sandwiches for breakfast on the weekends probably from age 12 to 27, so I’m a fan of the genre, and it’s hard to think of a better fried egg sandwich than the one I had on Sunday.
As we were eating Sam asked why I never blogged about the chili we made a month ago. You see, a month ago, on a Saturday morning we went to the kitchen and cooked up a big pot of bean-less chili with ingredients we’d purchased the night before. I entered it in the chili cook-off contest at my office and it took second prize. The prize was a crock-pot – which will be helpful in making it again next year if I’m still at the same office. Curiously, I didn’t get a single photo of the chili during the entire exercise. I have a blurry photo Sam took of me stirring the chili on my phone, but that’s it. (trust me, it was the best chili in existence, though)
On Sunday afternoon Sam got to work in the kitchen. She made chicken parmigiana (or something like that) with mushrooms and peppers. We both have a distaste for white meat chicken, so this fried chicken was all thigh. This made for a much more juicy and tender chicken on the plate that could soak up more of the tomato sauce. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s ordering one of my favorite dishes (which this is) at a restaurant and then getting a mouthful of crumbly dry white meat chicken… None of that at Sam’s house.
She was very unhappy with the presentation of the dish, but you get the idea:
It’s also worth noting that Sam made enough fried chicken to supply both of us with lunch for every day of the working week (and some dinner for me, too).
