Who needs to create their own recipe when they can borrow someone else's

I've been reading a lot of food blogs these last few weeks. Before I started getting my CSA box the end of last year, my only real source of inspiration for cooking interesting and diverse meals every night was myrecipes.com or epicurious.com. Don't get me wrong, I have a LOT of cookbooks, but when you're looking to create a meal with a specific ingredient like collard greens it's going to take a lot of cookbooks to come up with something perfect for dinner. I had no idea there were so many professional and ameteur cooks out there willing to share their creations in words and pictures.... and these are some beautiful creations! I find myself drooling daily over the food photography and recipes, and so many of them are way healthier than the cream filled, calorie filled recipes you find so many other places online. I admit it, I'm addicted. In the past month I've found probably 20 blogs that are not only easy to read, but so easy to follow using the blogger.com tools. All of them put my cheesy descriptions and crappy photography to shame. But they also give me something to aspire to. And who doesn't like that?

Looking for something interesting to do with collards, a new veggie for me, I decided to search some of these new found sites for inspiration and decided to replicate a mexican dinner fritatta from Coles Kitch. It was delicious and exactly what I was looking for. Being a lover of eggs with a kick, I added some Tobasco to the egg mixture before cooking, and next time I think I'd add even more.
With my new found "friends" on the internet, cooking with crazy ingredients is easier than ever and the other cooking sites out there have just lost one of their best customers... If someday people come to this site and get even half as excited as I do about others, I'll be proud.

Thanks Cole for the recipe and the inspiration.

Eggs Florentine

As I'm learning, when you get busy, taking the time to write about what you are eating gets difficult. I am inspired by all the women out there with jobs and families that still have time to sit down at their computers and help other home cooks by writing about what they are doing in the kitchen. This week I cooked lots of great meals, but didn't photograph all of them and didn't write about any of them. I'll try to catch up this weekend.

Eggs Florentine is definitely a special treat for us. It's turned into our special occasion breakfast, reserved for holidays, but I don't know why because it's delicious and it's not that hard if you have premade frozen hollandaise available... maybe it's the stick and a half of butter that goes into the sauce that keeps us from eating these regularly. We like to make a full batch, use about 1/3 of it and store the rest in ziplock bags in the freezer where it's easy to pull out and defrost.

Ryans Yummy Hollandaise
2 egg yolks
3/4 cup butter, melter
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch of cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Place egg yolks and lemon juice in a double boiler and whisk constantly until the mixture is just beginning to thicken, then slowly whisk in the melted butter. The mixture should be thick-ish... about the consistency of a heavy salad dressing. Simple but delicious.

Eggs Florentine
(this is ingredients and prep for one serving)
2 eggs
1 whole wheat english muffin, halved
4-8 leaves of spinach, depending on size
2-4 slices tomato
1/2 avocado

I get the ingredients prepped first, toasting the english muffins and slicing the tomato and avocado. When poaching eggs I've had the best luck using a large flat bottomed pan with about 2" water in it. I put the heat on medium high and add the eggs when the water is just beginning to boil (little tiny bubbles in the bottom of the pan). I read somewhere the best way to add eggs to boiling water so the whites don't separate is to break the egg into a large cooking spoon, then slowly lowering the spoon into the boiling water and easing the egg off the spoon.... I'm sure for an expert cook this is easy, but when I try to do it by myself I feel like I don't have enough hands, so I used Ryan's help. The eggs boil for 5-7 minutes, and I like the yolks runny so I pull them out as soon as a film develops over the yolk.

Assemble the eggs benedict by placing the english muffin slices on a plate. Layer the spinach, avocado and tomato on top of the muffin, creating a flat surface for the egg to rest on. Place an egg on the top of each sandwich and top with hollandaise sauce and paprika. Enjoy!