Apple & peanut butter pancakes, and waxing sappy about friends.

Last weekend, one of my very best friends in this whole world married the love of his life – a kind, warm, funny and gorgeous lady who has grown to be (oh, who am I kidding, I thought she was great pretty much immediately) one of my friends – in a beautiful, moving ceremony that got me right in the feels on a number of occasions. It was, in short, a blast – and the fact that I was asked to be part of it (as a freakin’ GROOMSLADY, which rocked my socks mint green pumps off) continues to mean so much to me.

Mushroom-brussels sprout hash.

I have a new breakfast-related goal. Okay, two breakfast-related goals, which are actually in diametric opposition to one another. One is to stop eating so much bacon (ugh), and the other is to develop seasonally-appropriate hashes (which, let’s be honest, will probably all feature bacon). I’m a little late on this one, given that it’s technically spring (even though it was 28 degrees this morning and we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow, despaaaaaiiiiiir), but I’ve been loving brussels sprouts lately, and the mushrooms in my fridge were on the verge of going bad, and letting mushrooms go to waste is a sin.

Brussels sprouts have been a much-maligned veggie in popular culture, for some reason I can’t seem to fathom. I never had to eat them as a kid – and perhaps I’d understand if I had been forced to eat them for dinner all the time – but I worked them into my repertoire last year, and Colin and I are both pretty big fans. I mean, when you combine roasted vegetables with olive oil, salt and pepper, it’s hard to go wrong. And they’re adorable! They’re like baby cabbages!

That’s right, I’m a grown woman gushing over cruciferous vegetables. Come. at. me.

Really, the only bad experiences I’ve had with brussels sprouts are when they’re eaten raw. This winter, I made two different kinds of brussels sprout salad, and both times they filled me with nothing but abject sadness. Fool me once, Pinterest, shame on you. Fool me twice…

Deakfast: Brinner’s infinitely cooler cousin.

As my extreme detesting of eggs probably indicates, I am not really a breakfast person. I almost never make breakfast, despite Colin chanting “make me breakfast!” at least once a week, because making breakfast for Colin generally means making some lackluster eggs that are probably either overcooked and dry or undercooked and salmonella-tastic, a few strips of bacon (the only thing I eat, healthyyyyy) and occasionally toast. And why am I going to task myself with scouring dried egg and bacon remnants from my cookware when I’m not even getting something that remotely qualifies as a meal out of the deal? I know; I’m selfish. 

 

I do enjoy pancakes, but they can be time-consuming, and since between the two of us, no more than five pancakes get consumed, I’m saddled with about twenty billion leftover pancakes neither of us ever want to eat. And I love hash browns, but I usually lack two important elements for making hash browns (cheesecloth and patience), I’ve stopped setting myself up for disappointment. I also enjoy breakfast sandwiches (sans eggs, of course), but half of the time, if I order one (pork roll and cheese, no eggs, PLEASE no eggs seriously god please), the bleary-eyed short order cook throws some eggs on there because everyone else in the universe orders pork roll, egg and cheese sandwiches and (s)he probably hasn’t had enough caffeine to process this whimsical request. So again, I’ve stopped setting myself up for disappointment.

(Seriously, with the eggs, I feel like Graham Chapman in the Monty Python ‘Spam’ skit, except it’s not as funny because there are never any singing Vikings or cross-dressing Brits.) It’s damn near impossible to find a meal on a breakfast menu that doesn’t include eggs or isn’t slathered in a metric ton of whipped cream and fruit preserves — and NO ONE sees the problem with this.