Robin's Egg Blue

Blue has been my favorite colour of mine for a very long time (yes I am wearing 3 blue items of clothing as I type). The love affair began very young and continues with blues ranging from brilliant to grey finding their way into my painting, home, clothes, photos.

A perfect, blue, Robin's egg has landed in our lives. We found it sitting in the middle of one of our vegetable beds one recent morning. Its brilliant blue was off-set by the rich brown of the damp soil on which it rested. It was too cool and too long gone from it's nest to be viable any longer; the lost booty from a night-time nest-raid.

It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever encountered. Not only in it's brilliant blue, but also the perfection of it's small egg-shape and the weight it carries when it rests in one's hand. There is the possibility of the life once held inside it and maybe a small baby bird embalmed within an insanely blue shell.

What keeps amazing me, is that something so utterly beautiful is freely given, costing not a cent. It is purely functional, yet brings such joy.

Fava Bean Central

Late 2012, one of my last gardening acts before boarding a plane for a southern hemsiphere Christmas, was to plant my first ever Fava Bean cover crop. One of the pleasures of winter gardening in Marin County is the free garden-watering-rain, but this wasn't the year for that. After 5 weeks away we got home to a decidedly brown lawn and barely surviving vegetables. Thankfully the Favas survived and then the rains began. They grew tall and lush and filled the vegetable garden with abundance. I used some Favas for their nitrogen fixing properties and so cut down a small forest of them shortly after they bloomed. (Prior to producing fruit the plant returns nitrogen to the soil, rebalancing nitrogen lost after a summer's worth of growth.) I left other plants growing and have been picking a steady supply for salads and soups. The favorite so far was a super simple salad inspired by Alice Waters (who else!) which goes something like this:

FRESH FAVA SALAD

Freshly picked Fava beans, preferably younger (ie not too huge and still bright green)
Olive Oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Parmesan cheese

Shell the Favas and boil for about 5 minutes to loosen the skin on the beans, remove from heat and drain the water off.
Once the beans are cool enough to handle, pop them out of their outer skin (dont let them cool too much, warmer means easier skin removal).
Toss them in olive oil with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a sprinkle of salt and a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

The only 2 problems with the salad are (1) the two times shelling of the beans to get the sweet green nugget from the center, but it is worth it and only happens once a year (2) there will be none left over

Thanks to my lovely husband and garden helper for the photo.

A Perfect Egg

Breakfast required more then the unusual rushed bowl of granola or slice of toast. On my kitchen counter was a bowl of freshly laid eggs (handed to me by a neighbor) and a loaf of home baked bread. (My biweekly attempt at a Tartine Country Loaf.) Thus inspired I poached the egg with a little vinegar in the water to keep its shape  while I toasted a slice of bread. Toast was buttered, the egg was dropped on to the toast with a sprinkle of fresh pepper and sea salt. A cup of tea was brewed. As I sliced in to the egg, its deep golden free-ranging yolk revealed itself still runny inside. It was so perfectly beautiful, I had to record it (very quickly before anything cooled)!