I love breakfast, and I love eggs. I yearn for big weekend breakfasts full of omelettes and waffles and pancakes, fresh fruit and endless cups of coffee.

I love cooking on the weekend when the days of endless possibilities are stretched in front of you and the morning light is hitting my stove just so, and so a couple weekends ago I decided to whip up eggs with home fries. It was Corelyn’s idea to make the poached eggs into Eggs Benedict, and it was the right choice.

I had never made poached eggs before, but you guys I’m here to tell you that once again Julia Child certainly had it right. Her advice for poaching eggs is this: poke a pin-sized hole in the large end of your egg(s), then boil in water for 10 seconds. Remove from boiling water, then let cool until you can handle.

When you can handle, poach your egg: allow the water to return to boiling, stir the water twice slowly to create a current, then crack your egg into the middle of that funnel toward the surface of the water. Cook about three to four minutes, or until the white is completely set. Make sure to watch your eggs, or they’ll get too rubbery – you want them to be loose, and you want the yolks to be runny!

Now, for the rest of the recipe. For the poached eggs, I recommend two per person.

Eggs Benedict
Serves: 2

Ingredients:

4 eggs
2 pieces baguette
oil or butter for toasting your baguette
2 oz turkey or ham
Corelyn’s Hollandaise Sauce (recipe below)
parsley (optional, but recommended!)

Directions:

1. Make Corelyn’s Hollandaise sauce (see below)
2. Poach your eggs (directions above)
3. Slightly toast your baguettes in oil or butter in a cast iron (or use your toaster)
4. Place your turkey on your baguette, topped with poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce. If desired, also top with parsley. Serve with home fries!

Corelyn’s Hollandaise Sauce
Serves: 4, keep excess in fridge

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks
1 lemon, juiced
dash of cayenne
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/2 cup butter, melted
salt

Directions: 

1. Combine egg yolks, seasonings, and lemon juice in a blender, blending for about five seconds to combine.
2. Pour in butter slowly, blending for about a total of one minute.

Now, to go with this Eggs Benedict you need some home fries, and luckily they are very easy to make. So easy it’s almost silly to give you a recipe, but I’ll give it to you anyways so you can recreate these – but remember you can have them however you want!

Home Fries
Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

2 lb red potatoes, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1 medium red onion, diced
olive oil
s/p

Directions:

1. Dice all your veggies.
2. Sauté onions about five minutes, until soft, in olive oil.
3. Add your bell pepper and potatoes, and cover. Allow to cook until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Remove cover and allow potatoes to crisp, about 5 minutes.

See? So easy.

So there you have it – a perfect Sunday morning meal to serve for a lazy day ahead – or to power you through errands all day. Or a morning hike. Whatever y’all are up to these Sundays.

What is your fave weekend meal? Do you go sweet or savory, or somewhere in between?

Recently, I wanted to make some kind of homemade granola bar because I am sick of buying ones that JUST miss the mark. First off all, I don’t really always love super hard granola bars, because my teeth just don’t like it. Secondly, I like the nuts I like, and I try to avoid eating almonds for environmental reasons (more here) which tend to be very prevalent in granola bars. Third, I don’t want my granola bars to be super sugary, so I like the idea of being able to control that myself. Also, what are all those other ingredients in granola bars? They seem shady to me.

Enter these bars. I took inspiration from all over the web, but mainly this recipe stuck with me as delicious. Of course, I changed up the nuts to remove almonds and add cashews, and I added pepitas (where does one get puffed rice? I feel like this is an ingredient I’d use once and then never use again…but what do you think?)

Anyways, here is what you do to make these yourself – but be forewarned: I didn’t want to get brown rice syrup but I think they would have made these come together better. These kind of fell apart (I put them in the fridge to set) which was delicious but not convenient.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup cashews, chopped
2/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 silvered peanuts, chopped
1/2 cup pepitas
1 tbsp flaxseed meal (optional, I happened to have some)
1/4 cup brown rice syrup (I used maple syrup, and they were VERY sticky)
2 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Line a pan with aluminum foil leaving a couple of inches overhanging on each side to make it easy to move said granola bars.

2. Chop your nuts, then add nuts, pepitas, and flaxseed meal into a bowl.

3. In a small saucepan, combine brown rice syrup (or maple), honey, and sea salt and bring to a boil, continually whisking until it thickens. Make sure you do this or your bars will just fall apart! If you’re worried about burning it, this should take about 2 minutes.

4. Pour syrup mixture immediately over nut mixture and stir to combine. Transfer into the lined pan and spread out into a layer as thick as you like your bars – I aimed for about an inch thick.

5. Allow to cool for about 30 minutes, then cut into bars (you can transfer on the tin foil to a cutting board if you think this’ll help!)

6. If you want to add chocolate, melt your chocolate over low heat on the stove, whisking constantly, then drizzle over the top! When your chocolate has set, store in an airtight bag or fridge, and enjoy!

These were great for snacks during the week, and if you’re worried about sugar you can reduce it, or if you’re worried about needless chocolate (which you shouldn’t be! Dark chocolate is the best!) then you can skip it. You can use whatever nuts you like, or all one nut if you want to get crazy. Cook with your heart! Do what feels right. Let me know what you come up with!

Happy Friday, kiddos! Here’s to an amazing weekend – we hope you’re cooking, wherever you are – don’t forget to let us know if you’re making our recipes with the hashtag #GMSForRealLife!

“Cakebarring” is the act of baking a cake and bringing it to a bar in the quest to find a suitable romantic partner in the often frustrating and confusing Los Angeles dating scene. Fantastic, right?

That’s because it was born from one fantastic, lovely and quirky woman, Audrey Shulman. It was a dating scheme to sit in bars with cake for one year and fifty recipes “trying to bake (her) way to a boyfriend”. But more than that it was a challenge to learn and grow.

Audrey is an inspiration in the “open yourself up to what life has to offer” department. Instead of bemoaning her chronic boyfriendlessness, she saw an opportunity to learn a bit about herself. She also saw the opportunity to offer cake to strangers.

Including me and Jennie.

As Jennie and I found ourselves in Audrey’s beautiful, airy apartment one hot Saturday morning we were privy firsthand to Audrey’s incredible generosity and panache.

This heartening Southern transplant has class, charm and spunk in spades. We spent the better part of the morning eating donuts, drinking coffee and waxing poetic about parking meters and Costco check out lines and quickly found that “stranger” doesn’t really have a place in Audrey’s vocabulary.

Her book, Sitting in Bars with Cake is no different. She is a gracious writer and invites you up to the barstool right next to her. She is also one seriously hilarious woman and makes sitting on that barstool with her a treat far beyond the cake she is offering you.

And that’s not to diminish the cake at all. Her recipes are unique, complex, traditional and daring.

The cake she made for us that Saturday was a Chocolate Prune Cake with Salty Frosting. In the dry L.A. heat it was heavenly. Light and moist without the density you would think, the salty whipped cream fresh in that way only homemade whipped cream can be.

“It’s almost cheating. It’s the easiest way to get a compliment ever,” Audrey says apron-clad, locking in her mixing bowl.

“People go inexplicably insane when offered free dessert,” she writes. Audrey is possibly one of the most sustainably quotable people I have ever met.

Sitting in Bars with Cake is remarkably laid out. Her Chocolate Prune Cake recipe is hilariously paired with an encounter Audrey had with “The Guy Who Claimed to be Full.” These anecdotes are then distilled down to the lesson she learned from that specific encounter, in this case: “’I’m full = ‘I have a girlfriend,’ because guys are never full.”

However, Jennie and I were categorically full by the end of our day with Audrey. This girl leaves you well fed and with more cake wrapped up in hand to take home to loved ones or a secret snack for yourself while binge watching Netflix in the dark.

Because Audrey’s ultimate conclusion to her daring experiment?

“Maybe you don’t need a boyfriend after all,” paired perfectly with, “Sometimes your best self is just your real one.”

Sitting in Bars with Cake comes out today (!) and it’s basically our new favorite thing. You should go buy it immediately. Full disclosure: I read it cover to cover in one sitting. It’s that good.

This post originally went up in March of 2014, but since Easter was yesterday, we know you probably have some eggs lying around that need to be eaten, no? Enter egg salad. This covers you from ending up with pink and purple eggs going to the trash can – plus maybe you’ll end up with a multicolored egg salad, which is fun to bring to work!

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Lunch can get boring when you work in an office. You usually don’t have access to a stove, and you’re reliant on a shorter break to eat and relax, and the last thing you want to do is spend 20 minutes preparing said lunch. Leftovers can be overrated (eating the same meal over and over again, even if it’s minestrone soup, can get old) and throwing together a salad day in and day out makes people dread lunch rather than enjoy it.

Enter egg salad. Egg salad comes together easily, can be dressed up or down all week long, and on a couple pieces of lightly toasted bread is a meatless lunch that’s still exciting, filling, and colorful.

Plus, let’s be honest, who else buys a dozen eggs sometimes and then realizes they have half a dozen at home that are close to expiring? Two birds, one delicious recipe.

Egg Salad Recipe
Time: 15 minutes
Servings: 3 sandwiches

6 eggs, hard boiled
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon spicy mustard

Instructions:

1. Hard boil your eggs: put in a pot, just covered with water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a rolling boil, cover, and remove from heat. Allow to sit for 7 minutes, then run eggs under cold water until you can handle.
2. Shell eggs and cut into slices, then mash in a bowl with a fork.
3. Add mayonnaise and spicy mustard until well combined.
4. Refrigerate until cold. When ready, serve on lightly toasted bread with a green; might we suggest kale or very crisp romaine.

The recipe takes 15 minutes, and you have delicious egg salad. Add curry, celery, chives, avocado, yellow mustard instead of spicy…whatever you want! I prefer to add my crunch with a green rather than right to the salad, but it’s up to you.

What is your favorite lunch that keeps you excited for a mid-day break?

I love runny egg yolks more than most foods. My favorite eggs are sunny side up, although in recent years I’ve switched to over easy because I worry about the number of raw eggs I eat, and the chances of me getting some kind of foodborne illness. (I still lick the spoon, rest assured.)

I recently poached and egg for the first time and it was heaven! What a blast. What fun with food! And, what delicious runny egg yolk all over my plate to sop up with bread or whatever I have lying around.

Enter Davidson’s Safest Choice Eggs. Guys, they are delicious, and their yolks are safe to eat because the eggs are pasteurized. There is more information here but suffice it to say raw eggs are most definitely (safely) back on the table.

To celebrate, I made some soft boiled eggs that were amazing, along with some avocado toast.

Soft Boiled Eggs with Avo Toast
Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 avocado
1 slice of bread
s/p

Directions:

1. To soft boil your eggs, you simply place them in boiling water for five minutes. If you want them a little harder with the yolk just setting, aim for six minutes. Make sure you have a small bowl somewhere around to put your eggs in, then run them under cold water for a minute or so to stop the cooking.
2. While your eggs are cooling so you can peel them, make your toast. Toast your bread to your desired darkness.
3. Cut your avocado in half, then into slices in the skin, then cut the other way so you end up with dices. Scoop the avocado out with a spoon and smash onto your toast. Salt and pepper lightly.
4. Now your eggs should be ready to handle – peel them gently, so you don’t crack into the yolk. Then, top your avocado toast with the eggs, and salt and pepper lightly here. Enjoy!

Giveaway Time

Because I know easter is this weekend, and because I know how delish these were, I want you to have some free eggs, too. So enter below to win 2 Dozen Davidson’s Safest Eggs (you’ll get a coupon in the mail!) and get at some runny egg action, or some cookie dough you can feel great about eating. Or, crack an egg into your smoothie in the morning, whatever floats your boat. I’ll announce the winner early next week – you have until Sunday at midnight to enter!

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