When lori, the boys, and I went to Kinderhook Farm last week, we picked up a dozen eggs and i was very excited to make some poached eggs. They are so easy to make, but I struggled for years with all these contraptions from catalogs hawking useless crap. Then a couple years ago i watched a Jacque Pepin show on PBS which was dedicated to making eggs of just about every kind. And I've adopted his poached egg process for myself ever since. 

Bring 2 inches of water to a soft boil in a sauté pan (medium/medium high heat). Add a tablespoon white vinegar and mix around. Crack an egg over a bowl (but keep the egg in the shell), and softly open the shell over the boiling water to ease it in. I then make a note of the clock as I want to cook this for 3 minutes. When i'm cooking multiple eggs, I always start at "12 O'Clock" and move clockwise around so i remember in which order to take them out). At about 2.5 minutes i use a soup spoon to gently tip each egg over to seal in the yolk. I then remove each egg with a slotted spoon. Perfect, every time.

The eggs from Kinderhook were very good. Much bigger yolks than I'm used to, which is the best part of eating a poached egg over some toast. We had ours with some salt and pepper and fresh chives. And of course bacon... i've gone meat-free for breakfast during the week for a few months now and am loving it, but on the weekends I want some good old country bacon. You can't take bacon out of the man. Or something like that. Anyway, great breakfast!

A salsa & black bean egg breakfast is one of my favorites, and this morning Lori was thankfully motivated to cook up this delicious version. Feels so good to use fresh leftovers from the night before, especially when it's turned into something totally unique and doesn't taste like a shrimp taco!

Lori made a bittman waffle batter last night to let it rise overnight. It had yeast in it. Unheard of! But the promise was a crispy exterior and moist interior after coming off the waffle iron so she gave it a shot. And they were delicious... Crispy and moist, a great, great waffle:

Then there was the suggestion to add strips of bacon right on top of the batter in the waffle iron. What? Again, unheard of! We had to try:

And after a couple minutes, here's what we had:

The bacon was completely fused with the waffle. Totally nuts. An entirely different thing than having bacon with your waffle. The fat and meat soak right in... It almost looks processed:

We ate them with our hands in quarters. Really satisfying. Totally weird. Would be great for a big appetite, crowd pleasing surprise. I can't imagine making these things frequently, but once in a while I'm sure we're going to crave them. If you haven't tried, you gotta go for it. Bacon Waffles!

Another great part about that Bittman bread recipe? It makes three baguettes, so plenty of leftovers to make lightly toasted, buttered, and jammed toast with some strongtree coffee in the morning.

Lori made this breakfast this morning. That's my tridux bread, with a hole cut in it, toasted in a cast iron skillet for a minute, cracked an egg in the hole, keep cookin for a minute, flip, cook for another minute and serve with chopped parsley on top. Plus a piece of that Applegate Sunday bacon which is perhaps the best bacon out there. Kicks nueskie's ass if you ask this new englander... Er new yorker. Awesome breakfast!