With Eggs

Farmer Vicki told us (see below) that Spring is the time for things green (although Hat Hammond notes that there was a bit of purple this week as well.) A way my family enjoys these omnipresent spring greens is with eggs. A great natural partner, and many cuisines do the egg-greens combo thing. The eggs (good farm fresh like we get from Genesis Growers*) tap down some of the green's edge, and the greens boost the mildness of the eggs. Moreover, when you make the eggs strapazzatti, gently scrambled in large curds, you get wonderfully contrasting bites of egg and green.

This recipe started with Swiss chard, dropping the stems in boiling water a few minutes before the leaves. Some where in between, I added kale to the boiling water. You cannot have too much or too little greens for this dish. I lightly beat eight eggs with salt, pepper, and a good splash of heaven forbid non-local olive oil. Then, I sauteed the whites from three of this week's green onions in some olive oil--I used to bemoan all the spring onions Vicki gave, then I realized we needed to cook with the onion in season; green from spring through early summer, then the soft skin sweet onions (until they ran out) and finally, the rest of the year, the dry ones. The greens go into the pan to get introduced to the onions followed soon by the eggs. It's done over low heat. I don't use a classic French twenty-five minute scramble, but I do try to take my time. It's a recipe that will work with any green around, and like yesterday, especially good with something (my chard) that was on the tired side.

Of course, we were stayed as local as possible with a side of Michigan potatoes (boiled). Mesculun from last week (strong!) set us up for two local cheese from Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park: Prairie Fruit Farms moldorific ordorrific goat's blue called Huckleberry Blue and a slightly milder (anything would be milder) Amish edamish type of cheese whose name I cannot now locate. Had to stay local for the beverage, drinking hoppy (but too simple) beer from Two Brothers (nice post on them here.)

The box this week: the used kale, romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce (a variety called Waldmans), Napa cabbage, radishes, beets, spring onions and a jar of Vicki's home canned apple jam (although I would have preferred the spiced apples I spied in her kitchen the other day!).

*The eggs are a hoot. Because the chickens are different breeds and ages, it's a dozen "mixed", ranging in size and color. Not eggs to bake with, per se, but as delcious as anything.