The first time I tasted eggs, I must have hated them.
There are childhood photos of me slumped before a plate of scrambled eggs that I was refusing to eat. I hated the smell. I hated the texture. I hate the look of uncooked egg white. I didn't learn to appreciate eggs until I ate a stuffed egg, which was probably around age 9.. Why I chose to eat a stuffed egg, remains a mystery given my antagonistic relationship with eggs. It was probably the novelty. My mother called them deviled eggs. I find stuffed eggs visually appealing, and still think of it as a fun looking food, almost humorous. How can one not be happy looking at the cheery yellow fluffed yolk sitting in its own bowl of egg white? After eating stuffed eggs I came to realize I loved the yolk, but not so much the rubbery white.

My mother did not know how to fry an egg. She cooked them fast and a heat that was too high.She often served them with the whites undercooked and the fried edges were like plastic. Yuck. It was in college when I started going to diners with a boyfriend that I learned to love fried eggs, served with bacon and home fries and whole wheat toast, with a cup of coffee, please and thank you very much.It was cheap nutritious food.

There is a fun restaurant here in Portland called the East Ender that serves a trio of Deviled eggs as an appetizer. These eggs are served with shaved venison sausage, or mustard whipped into the yolk or sweet pickle or tiny cubes of salami. The toppings are entirely the chef's whim. I find these hard to share. These eggs are a really great snack with a beer.

I recently read a book called "An Everlasting Meal" by Tamar Adler, which challenged me into eating more of the food in my home and wasting less. The premise of the book is that delicious meals can be made by exercising frugality and utilizing and transforming all parts of our food like the peels, the bones, skin and left overs into delicious , nutritios meals. I find myself eating more eggs as a result. I recently made myself a meal of a fried egg served over leftover asparagus.

For breakfast this morning I made one of my favorite meals. I fry diced shallor and tiny cubes of pancetta in olive olive. If I have chorizo I will use that instead. I removed this from the oil when the bits are all crispy and delicious, that point when the pancetta still has a little chew and the shallots are sweet. After removing these ingredients I add a dollop more olive oil and gently crack into the hot oil an egg. I then spoon the hot oil over the egg, constantly bathing it until the whites are tender but cooked and the yolk develops an opague sheen. The egg yolk is still runny but under an opal lid. I then transfer the egg to a plate and re-add the shallot and pancetta and stir in a Spanish smoked paprika. I stir this until everything is imbued with a ruby tint. I then spoon this back over the egg and sprinkle on some smoked sea salt and serve with toast cut into strips for dipping or slices of baugette if I have it. This meal takes only minutes and truly satisfies me.

Little green apples harvested from a tree outside an antique school house.

Sometimes there are just leftovers. Some cold asparagus with lemon olive oil drizzled over it and freshly ground black pepper served with a fried egg with crisp little cubes of pancetta, was very satisfying after being away from home for the last 2 weekends.

FIGS

FIGS I recently stayed the weekend with long time friends on Boston's north shore, while attending a conference in Boston. As always we eat great food. This particular night we celebrated the end of summer with fresh figs wrapped in thin slices of Serrano ham which was held together with a jammy tangy sweet layer of reduced balsamic vinegar.My friends Josh and Carolyn and their daughter Naudia worked together to create these. A nice French rose was sipped by Carolyn and I. Josh amply sampled the ham. He was hungry. I cut the veggies for ratatouille and made a Caprese salad salad with burrata. I told Carolyn the first time I tasted fresh figs was in my early 20's. I was vacationing in the Berkshires with my future husband. It was late summer. One afternoon we drove by a farm stand with a sign that said fresh figs. Ever epicurious we stopped.On a rusted round table were 4-5 small green cardboard berry boxes filled with plump, sticky black figs. Swarming around them were wasps.The old man selling the figs came out and swatted the wasps away with his gnarly bent hands.Taking our money, he stuck the figs in a brown paper bag. Later we ate them with some cheese, a baguette and a bottle of wine on a blanket in a field.I marveled at how sweet and tender fresh figs were.These were nothing like the dried figs I had growing up, in my father's favorite cookie, Fig Newtons. A fresh fig is a marvelous thing. I love holding them in the palm of my hand. When they are ripe they are surprisingly heavy for their size and the outer flesh is tissue thin. I cut off the stem and usually cut them in half. The middle is fleshy pink and sweet with hundreds of small seeds that are crunchy.I love them served with Gorgonzola dolce or wrapped with Serrano for a summer appetizer. They are also very good on a grilled pizza with fig jam, thin slices of prosciutto, fresh figs quartered, Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts. Carolyn shared that she remembers her mother's home in the south of France having a fig tree at the end of the driveway. That was the first time she tasted figs. When was the first time you tasted figs? I would love to hear your memory! Leave a comment below.....