All is lazy on New Year’s Day
For me, New Year’s Day has always been the one day a year specifically dedicated toward complete and utter laziness. All other holidays have activities — hell, even Saint Paddy’s Day involves the technicalities of green food coloring — but New Year’s Day?
Wake up late. Make leisurely breakfast. Watch TV. Veg out. Watch movie. Go to bed. End of day.
That’s it.
Of course, sometimes we cook. A few years back, down in Portland, we had friends over and made a killer spread of dim sum we devoured during the Food Network’s Iron Chef marathon.
This year we kept things simple. Chopper’d worked late the night before (no holiday rest for employees of the hotel industry), and we hadn’t had time to pick up more than a few essentials at the grocery store, so for our New Year’s Day?
Football, and the perfect lazy breakfast utility food: the tortilla española.
For our version, Chopper included:*
- 2 Whole eggs
- 3 tablespoons mashed potato
- 1 Red bell pepper, sliced into rings
- 1 Shallot, sliced thin
- 1 Garlic bulb, cloves peeled and sliced thin
- Salt and pepper to taste
And you know what? I’m still in lazy New Year’s Day mode, so I’m not even going to post the procedure. (And I call myself a food blogger. Hah.) Just go over here and read all about these simple-to-make, tasty puppies.
Oh, do I dare point out that I’m writing about New Year’s Day a day late? How much more lazy can I get?
Well…
I’ve got one of those ubiquitous end-of-year, looking back/looking ahead posts half-finished and lazing about in Word.
I totally blew off cat, dog, and herb blogging this last weekend — though I did entertain the brief notion of throwing both pets into the rosemary bush, snapping a quick pic, and covering all three activities at once.
Oh, and hey, because I’m a bum, a lazy bum (if just for one more day, I promise), I’m going to send everyone elsewhere for yet another activity: Paper Chef Ingredient Nominations, now open over at Tomatilla!
We’ll be back in gear shortly, if only because Kitty Kaga’s eying us from her favorite pillow and sharpening her claws.
January 2nd, 2006 at 6:59 pm
OK, I’ll be first.
That is such a good photo. You give me ideas (but you don’t give me talent, dammit).
I never thought of doing a tortilla with mashed potato. I think I can figure it out, though. But really, was it an entire bulb of garlic to just two eggs? I think I can figure that out, too. Cook the bleep out of it, gently. Oh, wait. Were the two whole eggs hard-cooked first and added to some raw eggs?
Have I confused me?
January 2nd, 2006 at 7:11 pm
The questions, they perplex me!
Seriously, this is what happens when Chopper’s got to run off to work and I say “type up and send me the ingredients now, dammit!” and then he does and I toss them up on the site without looking at them to see if they make sense. Damn that Chopper.
Here’s my guess: the eggs and the potato are per-tortilla. Everything else is per several tortillas. The eggs, they are beaten like for an omelet and then mixed up with the mashed potato. Everything is added in the skillet.
I think.
Now, I could be wrong. Which is why I send people elsewhere for the details this time. Damn that Chopper. Off cooking fancy food for fancy people, yet again.
Anyway, aren’t people supposed to be eating peas or ham or some john hopping thing this time of year and not Spanish Tortillas?
January 2nd, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Actually, I think they’re supposed to be having a glass of Jackie D and soda over ice right about now!
Say (uh-oh, another question), is Chopper named for the bike or for his kitchen skills? I was gonna say “hog” instead of “bike,” but that would have really perplexed things.
January 2nd, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Ah, well, I’m a day behind anyway. Or probably more than that, considering my complete bafflement at this whole hopping john thing. Seriously, I am such a northerner, I’d never heard of it till I started reading everyone’s New Year’s posts. But then I see people in the North discussing this curious bean soup, so now, it’s like, dude… I’m the guy at the water cooler who forgot to watch Seinfeld.
But I digress. Um, Chopper used to own a chopper, but then he had to sell it, and then he went to culinary school and had an accident with a chopper that broke a window and landed something trecherous on the street five stories below, barely missing pedestrians. Does that answer your question?
January 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I should mention that as soon as Chopper gets home from work, I’m going to whomp him upside the head, get the right proportions of ingredients per tortilla, and then correct that cute little recipe box up there that has no business looking all pretty and accurate. Sheesh. People cook off of each other’s blogs? We just post randomly generated ingredient lists because we’re bored. :-P
January 2nd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
(Whispers:) Hoppin’ John is made with *rice* and black-eyed peas. I don’t like it. Mine was just some dumb soup thing with mold in it.
But then, you know all about those eula-thingie fishies. (Whence the term “hooligan.” No kidding. I Wikipedia’d it. Well, maybe not “whence” exactly.)
Chopper! You got some ’splainin’ to do!
Oh, BTW, it was Elaine who guffawed at the recital. Just to bring you up to date.
January 2nd, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Hey. Eula-roly-poly-fishheads are damn tasty! (And entirely lacking in mold.)
Chopper just got home and ’splained. I will update the recipe box accordingly. :-)
January 2nd, 2006 at 10:27 pm
I’m having as much fun seeing you and Cookie exchange comments as reading some of the posts I’ve seen today. Thanks!
January 2nd, 2006 at 10:57 pm
OK, that’s a lot better. (Hi, b’gina.) But I still don’t understand about the broken window part.
And don’t let Jerry guard the aquarium at the Christmas party.
January 2nd, 2006 at 11:13 pm
I missed the thing with the thing, and the drink and the coat and the tapping and the … damn. Stupid VCR.
Oh. Hi b’gina!
So, windows. Hmm. Well. Ever seen what a loose buffalo chopper thingamajig does near old, single-pane glass?
January 2nd, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Well, see, I don’t know what a loose buffalo chopper thingamajig is. And I hope I never see one. (Joyce Kilmer did not say that.)
I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things.
January 3rd, 2006 at 12:25 am
Well, Chopper does have back problems.
Ahem.
The Buffalo Chopper, poetry in motion. When the thingamajigs are all functioning. Otherwise, not so lovely.
Chopper just gave me a long, detailed description involving that hingy thing in the middle and the fact that there’s a bowl that spins, and something that had to do with him unhooking and lifting something that was, unbeknownst to him, quite broken, which, naturally, proceeded to fall backwards toward that previously-mentioned single pane window.
Yeah, like I understood it. It’s twelve freaking twenty in the morning. I gotta go to bed and read me some Lucky Jack on the high seas adventures. (What? Not reading cookbooks in bed? Please. Books where people dine on soused hog’s face and suet pudding are far more exiting.)
January 3rd, 2006 at 11:05 am
Oh, you coulda just said “the Hobart.”
(Ahem!)
Hey, did we scare everybody else away?
January 4th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I think I scared myself away for a full day.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Nah, I think it was b’gina’s fault.
January 5th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Happy New Year from Panama! Reading this post I learned that you are LI. Please take a moment to visit the following link at Verdant’s blog. He wrote it a few days ago on the same subject: http://verdantsf.blogspot.com/2006/01/raw-dairy.html
Hugs,
Melissa
January 5th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Cookie: I think you’re right. We must plot our revenge.
Melissa, thanks! And thanks for the link! That’s quite interesting. I know some of the farms around here used to sell raw milk — though I don’t know if it’s allowed anymore — but if I can find some, this would a worthwhile (though slightly scary) experiment.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Talk about food porn - that picture looks simply divine!
January 6th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Thanks, Sweetnicks! The game was pretty good, too. (We’re Packers fans in Seahawks land, so, happy the Seahawks have home field advantage in the playoffs, and happy the Packers didn’t end the season with (yet another) loss.)