A Fresh Start

As you may know already I'm getting married at the end of June (so soon! so excited!!). Getting married of course means getting all kinds of new stuff. The shower gifts are opened and starting to get used and the wedding gifts are starting to arrive.
Sitting in my new kitchen looking at all the gleaming new pots and pans I set myself a goal. I am going to use each piece that people gave us for the wedding this year. I know it's going to take a lot of effort but you all went though a lot of effort to get us really nice things and we should use them. So this year I plan to take you on a tour of my new kitchen tools and the china and whatnot that we received.
My plan is this: every Sunday we will be using the fine china. We have it, why not use it? So family and friends please come visit us on Sundays. Let me know you're coming so I have enough food, either way we will be here eating off fine china and crystal stemware.

To start of my year of wedding gifts I'm reaching for the low hanging fruit. We registered for Italian Countryside dishes from Mikasa and they're awesome. My future in-laws have them too so we knew the quality already. They're really simple off white with a nice scroll patter on the edges.

We're also already using our new glassware. We registered for the Libbey Imperial glassware set.

These turned out way cooler than even I expected! We liked the look online but we were concerned because we had not seen them in person. The picture on Macy's website was a bit deceiving but not for the worse. We thought the taller glasses were wider than they turned out to be, more like the short glasses. It turns out that it's better for the tall glasses to be a bit narrower so they are easier to hold. They seem pretty durable and are dishwasher safe (yay!)

As part of my yearlong quest to use everything we registered for I also want to think each person that purchased the gift for us. I really do appreciate all the effort, time, money, and thoughtfulness that went into each gift. So to my soon to be Mother and Father -in-law, my aunt Joan, cousin Christine, and my sister's In-Laws Don and Lois thank you and we can't wait to see you all at the wedding!!

I'm Back!!!

Ok I know it's been forever since I posted last but it's been a little crazy around here with weddings(mine upcoming and my sister's this past October), babies being born (not from me, I'm an aunt again!), sadly a funeral, and I've moved.
But I'm back. And I'm putting in a good effort again to keep up with keeping you in the know about all my food and food related adventures both in the kitchen and in restaurants.

Today I'd like to talk about a very simple often overlooked food item. The incredible edible egg! I love eggs. Frankly I eat one every day with my breakfast (I know I'm boring right? But it work time wise and that's what matters). Even though I eat the same thing every week day for breakfast I still love it!
Turkey bacon (I'll explain later), one English muffin, and one egg.

I fry the turkey bacon and the egg in one pan so to do that I need the perfect egg ring and I had one for quite a while. But it recently kicked the bucket and I'm on the hunt for a new one.

My original egg ring was actually not an egg ring at all. It was a cookie cutter with a rubber ring around the top so it was easy to handle and pull off the pan when the egg was done.

I bought one with a wooden handle like this.

I found 2 major flaws. One: the handle sticks up all over the place and I can't get a lid down on the pan (which I find is essential to cook the top of the egg properly, thanks McDonald's for that little trick). Two: do you see how they fabricated the metal part? There is a huge seam where the handle attaches. Do you know what uncooked egg does when it finds a seam? It runs right through it. Meaning that your perfectly English muffin shaped egg starts looking like an amoeba, and no one likes to eat amoebas for breakfast, they're just not very filling.

Today I saw one at Bed Bath and Beyond that was really cute however pretty impractical for my uses. This little guy

My only concern is that it's made of silicon and it's not dishwasher safe. I have a thing about silicon cookware. I know it's perfectly fine and a ton of people use it every day but I really like working with metals. But the bigger issue for me is not being able to throw it in the dishwasher. I'm way too busy to be worrying about my egg ring in the dishwasher.

I may resort to a metal biscuit cutter, although they usually have the handle over the center, and that's where i pour the egg.

So I'm still on the hunt. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Oh I almost forgot! If you're using non-stick pans (which why are you using non-stick pans to begin with, use butter or Pam, but I digress) be very very careful about using metal utensils, including egg rings. You will scratch the surface and instead of non-stick you'll have all-stick.

My note on turkey bacon: The only reason I use turkey bacon over normal pork bacon is that it doesn't spit hot bacon grease at me while I'm in my nice dress clothes for work. I suppose I could make up a whole batch in the oven and heat it up every day but that takes planning and I'm not quite there yet (although maybe I'll try it next week and let you know how it goes).

One more note to my loving and patient fiance: I promise to start cooking again once things settle down again! And now we are cooking with gas! Yay heat control! Now I just need to relearn how to use it.