Category Archives: Eggs

Summer Is For Salads

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Heartwings says, “Simple meals taste best in summer heat.”

In the summer heat, my appetite tends to disappear. In addition, so does my desire to cook. Not much affects Stephen’s appetite. However, he’s not the chief cook in this household. With little desire to cook and practically no appetite, I have to make sure I have food on hand that is easy for me to prepare and tempting to my diminished appetite.

One of our favorites is egg salad. It is easy to prepare if I have hard boiled eggs ready to shell and mash. As I have never mastered the art of successfully peeling eggs without mangling them, I never make stuffed eggs, however, I am happy to scoop the contents from their egg shells and mash them up with a fork. Then I add the following ingredients. Suggested amounts are for 6 eggs.

11/2 tsp Dried or fresh tarragon, 1 tsp granulated dried garlic, ½ tsp. mustard powder, or 1 Tbs. of your favorite prepared mustard, ¼ cup chopped celery, 2 or 3 Tbs chopped scallions, 2 or 3 Tbs, fresh parsley, and 1/2 cups mayonnaise–or to taste. Feel free to substitute, increase or decrease amounts and ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste. Some people like to add 2 tsp. or more of curry powder. In which case, eliminate the tarragon. Serve lettuce with the egg salad.

 Another summer favorite is seafood salad. I often bring this to potlucks. It is tasty, simple to make and nutritious as well as friendly to the budget. I usually have a package of the base, usually called crab meat salad or sometimes, Surimi. It is a combination of pollock and crab meat, cooked and sealed up; thus it keeps well. I begin by taking it out of the packaging and either taking the block apart or cutting it up-a purely esthetic decision. Next, I put it into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients.

½ cup mayonnaise—more if you wish, or less; a half a cup of finely chopped celery, ½ cup finely chopped onion, ½ cup finely chopped red or yellow pepper, a tablespoon of dried or more snipped fresh tarragon, and 1 tsp dried, ground garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and serve on a bed of lettuce, or keep it separate and serve it alongside of the mixed seafood.

A good salad can be made with blueberries, strawberries cut up, pears or apples peeled or not, halved grapes, and/or dried cranberries, raisins, pecans, slivered almonds or walnuts. The dried fruit adds fiber and the nuts add protein. Cheese of all sorts can be chopped, slivered, or even grated, to add more protein.

 Cottage cheese or feta also add protein.

 Tomatoes are a summer standby, however Stephen and I are both allergic to them. My substitute is either Strawberries or blueberries. You can feel free to use any or all of the ingredients I have suggested, and change quantities of seasonings to suit your taste.

May you enjoy whatever food you fix, bless it and give thanks for your abundance

Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert

PS Please share your summer recipes, I would be happy to try them and will write you back.

A poet and writer, I publish a free weekly blog, Heartwings Love Notes for a Joyous Life. My Books: Up to my Neck in Lemons, and Heartwings, Love Notes for a Joyous Life are available on Amazon. My latest publication available there is my first chapbook, Poems and Prayers, and I have two more in preparation. You can sign up for my blog at http://tashasperspective. Com.

Heartwings Love Notes: Eggs and Easter Memories

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Heartwings says, “Like Easter, Eggs are symbols of beginnings and renewal, the essence of spring.”

My father was attuned to all things that concerned or had to do with nature. His grandfather was an amateur horticulturist, who may have been his first teacher.  Though he never studied horticulture or took classes as far as I know, he had a broad interest in plants and trees. He also kept chickens, and we always had plenty of fresh eggs, as well as chicken to eat. I can still see my mother, standing by the sink, plucking the feathers from the younger chicken she was roasting for dinner, or from the elderly fowl, no longer laying eggs, that was headed for soup.

 During World War II many things were scarce, eggs among them.  We had plenty to share, so daddy would often sell a dozen eggs to people he knew, receiving whatever he charged for them to defray the cost of the grain and mash he fed the layers. I can remember him once, laughing over a rather rude response he got from one customer, an acquaintance, who told him to go around to the back with his delivery. He didn’t take it to heart, because he had a good sense of humor. I was often called upon to feed and water the hens, and I received a small allowance—fifty cents a week, for doing so.

What brought all this to mind was the fact that this weekend it’s Easter, and eggs are an important symbol of the holiday, as well as a prominent feature. One year, as I recall we had so many eggs, my mother and father decided to hold an Easter egg hunt. I helped color the eggs, but was not allowed to participate in the hunt. I remember looking wistfully out the window from the second floor of our home as the invited children of friends scurried around, discovering the hiding places of the eggs. The adults were probably enjoying cocktails and snacks, as they often did at gatherings my dad hosted.

Besides eggs, Easter in my household meant flowers, both corsages for my mother and for me, and flowers in vases and plants in pots for the house. It also meant wearing hats in church. I recall a straw hat with a broad, turned up brim. It had a wide blue grosgrain ribbon that went around the crown and hung down in the back, descending from a bow. We attended two services, first my mother’s Catholic one, then my father’s Episcopalian one, which I loved. There was singing of familiar hymns—we sang one or two of them each morning at my school’s morning meetings, plus the service’s words were in English. Even better, there were cushions to kneel on instead of the hard wooden benches of my mother’s church. Happily, there was a geranium for me and every other child there, to take home after the service was over. Such spring symbols bring the assurance that the old is passing away and the new is here.

 May you find your heart renewed by spring’s symbols.

Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert

PS If you have any Easter stories, please send them along, I love hearing from you. You can write me at tashahal@gmail.com. Sign up for more Love Notes at my blog, found at https://tashasperspective.com/Pujakins

Eggs are Delicious, Nutritious and Versatile

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Cooking with heart Though I’ve never had it or made it myself, I remember Goldenrod Eggs–a dish made with hard boiled eggs that my mother served at luncheon parties. The eggs were carefully hard cooked—never boiled as this turns the yolks green. The whites were chopped up and stirred into a white cream sauce. This was spread over toast with the crusts cut off and made into triangles. The yolks were then pressed through a sieve and sprinkled over the top of the creamed whites.

This was a pretty dish yet far too labor intensive for me. Besides, I prefer hard boiled eggs cut up and made into egg salad or stuffed—but not by me. I can’t get the whites out of the shells easily. However in the days when I was little there was more time for cooking because life was simpler and less hectic. In addition, women like my mom had luncheons in their homes because her friends were home with their kids too and did not have to go out to work.

Easter brings thoughts of eggs, coloring them, cooking them, eating them. As a child I disliked eggs intensely. They were always served me in an egg cup with the top off the shell. I didn’t care for the taste much. Still, whether I wanted to or not I had to eat them because I couldn’t leave the table until I did. For some reason our egg spoons were silver which quickly tarnished from the yolks of the eggs, and this somehow made the experience even worse. It was many years before I was able to eat eggs with pleasure.

To prepare dishes with eggs requires careful timing. For garlic fried eggs with parsley—our breakfast favorite, slice garlic into butter, break eggs over it, cut parsley over them, wait until they are just set, then turn off the stove and turn the eggs over to finish cooking lightly. This insures that the whites are firm and the yolks cooked yet a little runny. Separating raw yolks from whites, is now simple since I learned the trick of holding the yolk in my hand as the white slips through my fingers. My Lemon Cloud Pudding is easy to make doing this.

I have fond memories of sharing a simple lunch of warm hard boiled eggs peeled and mashed with a little mayonnaise, some salt and maybe some chopped parsley with my best friend as our little ones played together. How tasty the eggs were with some saltine crackers and a cup of tea. In those days I dyed my eggs with pellets of color from the supermarket. Some years ago I tried dying them with onion skins. They turned lovely purple and red colors.

This is an ancient way to do them: Save up your papery onion skins. Tie them around your eggs with string and simmer the eggs for 20 minutes. Very beautiful and fun. To make a tasty egg salad, mash yolks and whites together, add mayonnaise to taste and some of your favorite mustard. Add ground dried garlic, chopped parsley and curry powder if desired. Serve with crackers, toast, bread or just lettuce and a fork.  This is good for any meal, especially for one of after Easter leftover eggs.

Want an autographed copy of my new book Up To My Neck In Lemons? Send me a check for $15 Postage included, to P.O. Box 171, North Grafton, MA 01536,  and learn about lemons–actual, poetical and metaphorical. Make your life’s lemons into lemonade and enjoy my book a sip or so at a time.