Jiggs Dinner Year Round

Every year at the end of our Christmas day meal of Corned Beef and New England vegetables we and the rest of the Hess family look at each other and ask why it is that corned beef isn't a more standard meal throughout the year?

As it sits in the slowcooker for 5-6 hours, the house comes to smell a bit otherworldly and the meat, when done, is by far the most tender – almost to the point of being a compact gelatin – of any meat we've ever tried.  Find a good 3-4 l.b. brisket and drop into the slow cooker, fat side up, along with sliced onions, six cloves, orange zest, a bay leaf, and the seed packet that comes standard with each meat package, and within two hours the house begins to smell like the dream of an Irish farmhouse kitchen, with the deeply salted meat commingling (sorry, English-major type) with a sharp under aroma of citrus.  This is only the beginning.  The brisket comes out of the slow cooker so delicate that it barely holds together held on a fork, and then you set it on a pan, spread a layer of dijon mustard and brown sugar over it, and bake. The topping becomes something of a sweet but tangy pudding. Sweet, salty, rich meat that eats something like a dessert. Surrounded with cabbage, carrots and potatoes boiled in the remaining meat liquid and you have a holiday dish that might only be rivaled by a perfect prime rib roast.  Ham, turkey?  Not even close.  Jiggs, from the old popular cartoon Bringing Up Father, like most of the rest of us who have sampled, apparently couldn't pass up a corned beef and cabbage meal, harkening back to his own old world Irish heritage.  The cartoon popularized the meal in America to the point that corn beef and cabbage was often referred to as a 'Jiggs Dinner.'  A Jiggs Dinner year round sounds like a good idea.

Popovers

The picture above is of nutmeg and black pepper popovers out of a magazine; the picture below is of nutmeg and black pepper popovers out of my oven

At first look, it seems like an ok attempt at a fairly simple recipe including a bunch of flour, parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, eggs, milk and butter, but if I would have had the courage I would have quickly taken another picture of mine again in fifteen seconds when all those soft domes caved in on themselves leaving...I don't know what...pops with no overs...?  The taste ended up alright, but the popover wasn't full as I assumed it would be.  Despite having coated the muffin cups with butter, as advised, the batter had mostly stuck to the paper, and was still too soft in the middle.  What I learned later, looking back through Ruhlman's Twenty is that when you are making popovers, flour absorption is critical so "the batter rests before you cook it, resulting in a popover with an almost creamy center."  You don't beat the ingredients in this case, but fold it in lightly, and either let it sit for an hour or even refrigerate over night, so to thicken and congeal.  The other mistake I made was over filling my cups, beyond the three quarter line suggested.  The idea is that the popover quickly rises out of its cup and if the batter is filled too high it reaches upward, takes too much heat and crisps while the center is still in need of baking and stays more goopy.  The result is a thin roof that collapses and a lower level that sticks.  Oh well, we shall try again with more time built-in for 'resting' the batter.

Zest


One of the funnest things about cooking dishes with a lot of ingredients is being able to ask the eaters if they can taste the secret ingredient (or two) that you've put in there.  As a novice cook, I've 'put in' all kinds of secret duds over the years, or secrets like, say, capers, that probably should have been withheld in the first place, seeing as my own audience is almost all kids under 15.  But then sometimes you get one right, and what you just cooked yourself has that same wonderful and complex flavor that you hear the Food Network judges so often articulate in shows like Chopped or Iron Chef.  I had been reading a book called Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto two nights ago in the chapter called Acid: The Power of Contrast, in which he elaborates on the point that acidic liquids like citrus juices, vinegars and mustards, although often overlooked as primary seasoning techniques, are actually second only to salt in enhancing taste in ingredients, and should be staples close at hand.  He said the first of importance, "by a good mile or so," is lemon juice.  The next day I decided I wanted to make some Boboli home made pizzas, and happened to find a recipe in one of Bobbie Flay's cookbooks Bar Americain.

This recipe was to be bacon, parsley, some gruyure cheese, caramelized onions, and garlic on handmade dough.  It looked excellent, but I wanted to add a few of my own ingredients to a pizza and ended up putting-in thick smoked bacon, baby portobello mushrooms sauteed in garlic along with chopped red peppers, a bit of broccoli for coarse texture, parsley, gruyere and mozzeralla cheeses, plus one secret ingredient.  At first, Jan guessed the parsley, then the gruyure.  Not quite.  What was that final 'spring' of taste you get when you bite down into the pizza? Something, something that added a splash of flavor.  If you look closely on the surface of the pizza above, and on the pizza we made, it is the shavings of lemon zest that added that extra something

Ruhlman goes on to say, "More foods than not are elevated with the addition of lemon juice.  Always have a lemon on hand.  Salt, onion, lemon – a kitchen without these items is handicapped."  All of this, to me, would make for a defense for creating and enjoying complex foods as long as ingredients don't become garbled.  Most of what we cook could use heightening by contrast.  Deep smoky bacon.  Lemon zest.

Pumpkin Addiction


There have been weeks when we go through Starbucks drivethrough at least twice for their perfect pumpkin bread.  Carly's addicted.  If she even smells that we're close to highway 16 she will, without thinking, shake her six year old nose like Samantha used to in Bewitched,

and call out "Daddy, Starbucks?  Pumpkin bread is good for you.  There's a vetchatable in it." She's got me there.  We've tried making our own over the years, secretly competing with Starbucks and haven't quite got there, until, maybe, almost...last night

The recipe was pretty straightforward, with Libby's canned pumpkin, brown sugar, eggs, etc., but what set these over the pumpkin patch edge was pumpkin pie spice and the smooth icing eventually whipped and spread over the top.  Our own batch came out close to the glossy magazine page above, but with one exception – I found out you do HAVE TO cool your bars, brownies, cake, whatever, before spreading the powder sugar based frosting over the top.  If you don't, the moisture from the warm cake rises and gathers at the top and mixes with the frosting, which then slips off the roof like snow on a house

The bars up through the center of the pan are still almost perfect -- to the point of 3 and 4 star reviews from the Hess girls -- but the upper left bar has lost its top.  Oh well -- we staved off at least two runs through 'Bucks' with this attempt, and these were even softer.

Comfort (?) Inn


This past weekend Julia and I found ourselves in Eau Claire for two days at the UW for eight games of Suns' ball.  The team played quite well once again, won 7-8 for third place out of a 32 team League Championship Invitational. The team is now, for the season, 15-1

with the one loss on sunday to Bloomer, a game lost by only two points.  What you figure out quickly with these rigorous weekend tournaments is that you have to keep track of your team schedule and win / loss brackets to make sure you're in the right place at the right time throughout the day.  The team wins a game, then you get to mill around the auditorium for two hours waiting for the next game, so you have to stay sharp, stay focused, or else you end up in the wrong gym at the wrong time, and there are coaches and teammates looking for you.  Not that this would ever happen to Julia and I, of course, but there are close calls. I thought we were supposed to play three games on sat., but found out there was ONE more at 6:30.  After we won the game the assistant coach said we were set to play sunday at 11:00...so a late night on sat., yes, BUT we all get to hang out and sleep-in sunday so to freshen those eleven year old legs that have been beating up and down the court all day.  This was the last piece of tourney info. I received before Julia and I headed to bed fairly early, whipped, and ready for a little Food Network in the comfort of our Comfort Inn beds.  Morning came.  7, 7:30.  Seems like a lot of noise in the surrounding rooms.  Better shave and take a shower to take a look around and get a cup of coffee.  I poke my head out of the door at 8:00, and there is half the team walking down the hall, dressed in playing uniforms.  "What time is the game?"
"Nine."
"Oh."
"What time should we be at UW"
"Ten minutes."
"Oh.

Juliaaaa! time to get out of bed"


We made it through the fog, snow, sleet and whatever else they could throw at us to the game in plenty of time...at least thirty seconds before mandatory meeting time.  Oops.  We didn't hear the news at 10 the night before about the time change.

The kids played well in the first game, but lost the second.  By the final game, Julia did an excellent 'box out',  worked on her fast break sprinting, and crouching while on D.

We may be tired for a week, still a bit confused on playing times, and hear the squeaking of b-ball shoes in our sleep, but we did get third.

Good Grief


12/12/12


It is four in the afternoon and some combination of the waft of the chicken roasting in the oven, the snow melting off the neighbors' eaves against the blue sky, and Jan's tortuous day of announcements and transitions at work got me thinking about my favorite X mas album,  A Charlie Brown Christmas from the Vince Guaraldi Trio

  The clinking piano of Vince Guaraldi and those soft snares in usison with the childrens' choir remind me that it 't'is the season' to be thankful despite difficulties.  This tune is for all the little peanuts in our lives

First Snow

The Rising Suns


Julia's basketball team, the 6th grade Suns, are now 8-0 and have taken first place in the first two tournaments they have competed in – Portage last weekend and Melrose Mindoro yesterday.  The fourth and final game yesterday was tough.  Melrose's point guard, the coach's daughter, at one point brought the ball up the court, gestured as though she was going to drive to the right, pulled back quickly to the top of the key, dribbled between her legs for the sake of misdirection, lost her defender,  pulled up for a 20-footer and nailed it.  She was single-handedly beating us in the first half, but then in the second, as rules permit, we were able to full court press and we started to repeatedly trap the nifty point guard at the sideline on offense, and as we took the ball out of her hands, the rest of the team began to break down.  We scored a bunch of unanswered points on steals and began to separate.  Julia played some mean defense on another point guard and got into the rebounding mix under that basket.  Congratulations Julia!  Next week, League Championship for a two-day tournament in Eau Claire.

A Brief Homage to Ale Asylum


There's beer, and then there is THE BEER.  After sampling three thousand and twelve micro brews (maybe one or two fewer) as a secret agent of Hops, I have finally come to the conclusion that Red Hook and Rogue, Anchor Steam, New Belgian and a hundred other competitors, all have to move aside on the crowded bartop for Hopalicious from Ale Asylum, a little non descript brewery near the airport in Madison.

Julia and I passed the Asylum on our way to Lake Mendota a couple of years ago to try out a SUP (stand up paddle board).  The building and location piqued my curiosity as I passed it and as chance had it later that day we found that THE BEER was on tap at Pasqual's, the southwest cafe we ate at located just down the road from our B &B off of Monroe street.

Sometimes you taste a new brew and think that this is it, this is the masterpiece, a smooth body of hops and citrusy fermentation unlike any other, but at second or third taste it just doesn't stand up, it falls flat, literally, or you find that it leaves a lingering aftertaste that is bitter or too sweet to want to return to.  Hopalicious is the perfect combination of full body and striking taste, a sort of simple complexity that tastes like it wants to be perfect every time.

Death by Chocolate


When putting Carly to bed last night, I asked her if she liked the cookies we made earlier in the afternoon, and what makes the perfect cookie.  She said "they were the perfect kind because they were smooth inside but like with a little crunch on the outside."  This is no kidding, verbatim.  I said, "yes, that is a trick to do them that way."  I hope she went off to cookie and milk dreams from there, but she was right – the trick is to try to find that perfect cookie which is both creamy on the inside but also holds a crunch on the outside.

I have found that a lot of the usual advice from professional bakers is essentially true: to get cookies right, you have to have close to exact measurements, especially on key ingredients, like the flour.  An under-floured cookie has very little chance of eventually holding its hoped for form, and will flatten then over crisp when baking.  The cookie loses its body.  Heat is also critical.  I like to let the oven pre heat for much longer than the oven preheat beep.  I once gauged the preheat temp and it had not climbed to the goal heat number as the oven had indicated.  If the cookie isn't getting its proper 350, then again it won't form the way you want.  The most important step, though, we have found, is to experiment with size of the dough ball or with substituted ingredients.  The cookies above called for a choice of chopped nuts in addition to the two boxes of semi sweet Baker's chocolate, brown sugar, two eggs, and Calumet.  I diced up a minimal handful of nuts and tossed them in because none of the kids seem to want them, but I wanted to add just a bit more texture than what I already had.  It seems that even the batter, before the oven cooking, turned out edible:

Now, in the process of making that perfect death by chocolate cookie, thankfully nobody died, but mouths did come in contact with some very dangerous products, as seen in the next pic.  We rushed to the sink for a scrub and soap, and fortunately everybody ended up OK:

You Can't Leave Portage


Armed on the way there with Mapquest directions and Julia at the passenger seat helm helping navigate, you'd think you could get to John Muir Elementary in Portage for the Suns b-ball tournament without any major hitches.  It's early morning; the sun is poking around at least a little bit.  But you miss Slifer road and only by some luck and intuition you recognize that there's no more town left to hold an elementary school, and you turn back and re-coordinate.  You see what you think is the coaches SUV, and happily follow...that is until the coaches SUV passes what looks to be the elementary school, then stop and turn around again, drive into the parking lot of the school, and see that the real coaches car is comfortably parked.  Hey, "we're here, and on time, no problem." So this is why you allow yourself half an hour extra travel time heading into any rural ball tournament.  Over the course of eight hours, Julia wins one, then two, three, and finally the fourth and final championship game against Portage itself, the host team – what I felt was a pinch of sweet revenge against the town's maze of barely navigable streets.

The girls truly played hard and well all the way to the last minute -- very impressive and fun to watch.  Julia started the third game and got some great experience on the court.  Nice work Julia.  All was well.  Tired, but team smiles.  Outside, though, December fog and rain.  It's dark.  We've got Mapquest paper in hand, and we did previously get here didn't we, so shouldn't be a problem.  But as we found out You Don't Leave Portage.  What should have been five easy pieces became twenty three dark turns through highway farmland and at least one stop at a BP that I can remember to get directions that turned out to be a bit more vague than Mapquest's.  Finally, hwy. 33 (south? north?) magically advertised 90/94 west, and as we turned on to the slippery and barely visible interstate, I could hear the words of Janet's voice from the night before... "you could just bring the Garmin."

Sous Chief


The assistant chef is, as this picture shows, highly critical to good cooking. After dicing the potatoes and celery and carrots, adding the peas and cream of chicken soup, a dash of salt and pepper, working the pie crust pastry, and baking to a perfect brown crust, it's time to admire the veggies of our labor.  This sous chief is heavily invested. Homemade pot pie is by far her favorite weeknight meal, and we know, at least this night, she might actually eat more than three bites before making the claim it's time for ice cream.

Edible Fraser Fir


I found on a brief search that many seasonal decor mags online offer all kinds of fun ways to place edible goodies on your Christmas tree, from stringing cute gumdrops to cranberry and nut combos or baking your favorite cookies, painting them up in reds and greens, then using a sipping straw to create a hole at the top of each for a hanging hook.  Great ideas.  Our tree is already personalized with ornaments that we've collected -- or kids created -- over the years,

but we have been toying with the possibility of coming up with a new theme for some time.   There is now a yearly minor ornament war battling out as to whether we stay old school or dive into the realm of a new but more generic style.  The voting card usually comes down as Julia staunch old school, Janet neutral, and myself, at least for one year, try something new.  So a compromise has been struck and I spent four hours stringing patterns on sewing thread of ten inches of popcorn and then one color wrappered Lindt cream candy around the entirety of the tree.  It turned out nice -- old and new merging -- finding a way to have our tree and eat it too.

 

Karate Ann Hess


I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of this kick.  For the first four classes Carly and her Little Dragon comrades have been running circles around the floor mat and otherwise mostly following basic instructions to sharpen those fledgling karate instincts.  But this evening it was time to unleash.

The more I think about, though, I realize that this has likely been a coil in waiting for six some years – as the youngest of three sisters I suspect that it is the vision of Julia, Carly's nitpicking nemesis, that she is envisioning in the center of the punching bag here.  As dad, I'll take fantasy revenge over the real thing anytime, but be warned elder sisters, Karate Hess is on the up and coming.

Fraser Fir


I used the prospect of eating at Famous Dave's later in the night as bait and got Julia and Carly to come with me to pick out our Christmas tree sunday afternoon.  We get our tree from the Hertz family who has been selling trees in the back lot of the Midway BP for years.  They are friendly, offer great full trees, and tie up your new domesticated piece of the forest on your car without so much as a grimace.  Douglas and Balsam fir run as cheap as 15 dollars and Frasers all run at 40, not bad.  I wondered, why are Fraser's considered the choice tree? One of the main reasons, besides holding a nice triangular shape, is that their needles tend to retain their softness and don't prick the kids' hands as they set up ornaments.  Here is ours, undecorated, in our new fireplace living room, Quarry Lane:

The standing of trees for the sake of Christmas time celebrations goes back as far as 15th century Germany in guild halls to be "enjoyed by the apprentices and children." In the beginning there were no personalized plastic discs and or lit orbs but instead trees were often lined with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers."  Hmmmm, an edible XMas tree.  Now we're talking.

Finished tree pics to come – Famous Dave's stay on call....

Broadway Stanley


November off season at the cabin Rock Dam and you find yourself and four young women on highway 29 heading west to the megalopolis of Stanley where you've heard there is the cutest little home store on this side of the Clark County forest line. You don't know what to expect. Stanley has a deer to human ratio of around 36 to 1, and the front page of the Stanley Republican headlines "Big Bucks!" but you get there and Broadway Home turns out to be glamspankin.  At first glance, the store looks to be chick-ville central (and it is that), but then you find right inside the door a fart igniter, a beer barrel Christmas ornament, and a woman walks up to Janet and I doling out hot chocolate laced with vodka, and it turns out this two story classic brick has a little something for even the family token male.  Nice clothes.  Jan found a funky gray and bergundy top, and Abby eventually tracked down a pair of shin high black boots. Carly some kind of stuffed kitten carrier and I that beer barrel ornament.  Julia didn't find her style here at Broadway but later did at the Stanley Shopko – a blaze orange hoody to wear when we got back to the cabin, appropriate to the season. Here's Abby, with entourage, picking out her birthday boots from dad:

  

Two Day Stuffing, Two Minute Meal


The quote of Thanksgiving Day was by Derek who, as he was looking at the cornbread stuffing fresh out of the oven and finally ready to serve, keenly detected that there was pieces of sausage links mixed in abundance among the rest of the ingredients, and said something to the effect "how can you go wrong with sausage in there?" So true.  The sausage in the stuffing reminds me of cooking from any of Tyler Florence's recipes whose special little friend in the kitchen is bacon, and who might very well  add salty pork to oatmeal if he thought he could get away with it.  Back to the stuffing.  If you have nothing better to do with the better part of two days, I'd highly recommend the Bon Appetite recipe, but know that you might be knowingly wrapping yourself in your own little culinary bubble T-day as you dedicate your efforts to this dish, and that your wife, three kids, guests and the spring-like day outside might all have to take the back burner, so to speak, to the RECIPE.  The day before you can make the cornbread, which will eventually get cut into your croutons, cut in small 2 X 2 squares and baked at 250 to harden.  Cornbread is a very crumbly structure to begin with, so beware when eventually mixing everything together that those perfect squares will break down and turn mushy with too much handling.  The next day will include some simple toasting of pecans, a bunch of chopped onions, celery, chopped rosemary, sage, thyme (allot at least three hours to de-leaf thyme off the stems!), rosemary and eggs.  And oh yeah, the part that jumps out at the taste buds: one pound of Johnsonville Maple Brown Sugar Breakfast Sausage Links, broken down into pieces and folded into the mix.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes to get that browned crisp on the moistened cornbread, and you have yourself a two day dish that will you hope, but also ironically, be devoured in like two minutes by appetites that have been saved since Halloween for the big meal.

Deviled Eggs


I'm always curious how certain kinds of food we eat today were originally discovered.  The cooked steak and the corn on the cob are no brainers – one is as easy as fire and meat, the other as easy as picking and biting, but what about intricately processed foods like deviled eggs?  Some ancient Roman– credited as the founding culture – must have tinkered mightily with all of the various stages of an egg's development in order to turn the chicken's gift into a 'spicy side dish.'  The ancient Roman would have to first decide to boil the eggs long enough so the insides stayed firm when eventually cracking.  He or she then would have cut it in half and realized that the yolk liked to conveniently peel away from the surrounding whites and that those yolks, when further mashed, became crumbly but creamy and hey, maybe they should be re-packed into the now open sockets of the remaining half egg?  This is where the 'deviled' part must have come into play over the years, for although the half-filled eggs would have served as a sturdy protein, the taste might have been a bit dull, so now it's time to spice them up a little bit. The "use of spices or spicy sauces with eggs, goes as far back as...the cookbook of Apicus, in which he reports that 'boiled eggs can be seasoned with pepper.'" Mustard, sour cream, tomatoes, capers, mayo, and paprika, are all now common spices used to 'devil' an egg.  The batch shown below, which I made for T-day the day before, and appropriately called Bella Tuscany Deviled Eggs, harkening back to its ancient Italian roots, included sun dried tomatoes, chopped capers, sour cream, salt and pepper for its body.  The two strands of sun dried tomatoes tented at the top add the lasting potent bite to these deviled eggs:

Connecting Some Food Dots

So if this blog is to be dedicated – at least in the beginning – to foody stuff, then once in awhile, when I find a cute set of photos of kid happenings, some food dots will have to be connected to make sense out of it.  To say that the picture above is all about M&M caramel apples might seem like a stretch without a bit of backstory: the week before Halloween I decided it was time to try our own batch of caramel apples at home, an easy enough task – melt some of those 16 oz containers of caramel in a small sauce pan, push the stick through the core of the Granny Smiths, dip, place on a plastic sheet, sprinkle on some fine crumbs of graham cracker just for fun, cool, and voila, bright little sweet but healthy treats.

Good enough.  But then it dawns on you that you would like to be able to see if your apple marvels are close in quality to how some old reliable pros do them.  Despite the summer draught, it is apple harvest season, so why not check out Ferguson's Apple Orchard 

and test one of their creations which we know was likely recently plucked from the orchard vine?  When we got there, on a bright late October early afternoon, the display case was full of all kinds of combinations, including M-e-M's caramel apples, and what had been two fighting sibling faces quickly turned to smiles and a newfound spirit of adventure, like thirty-seven trips through the haunted house (picture at top), corn maze cruising, 

queen of the hay mound (Carly ran the joint), and some quality kid / farm animal conversation.

  

In the end, whose caramel apple 'reigned supreme'?  Because I'm making up the criteria for evaluation as I write this, I'll just have to say that even though the homemade versions didn't come with farm entertainment, they also didn't cause any of the tummy aches mentioned after a few too many M-e-M's.

Monster Cookies

There's been a good batch; there's been a flat batch.  I couldn't say what the difference has been between the two, but this is an odd little recipe for cookies because it doesn't ask for any flour, so even though the texture is thick at the ball-making stage, you can only hope that the four and a half cups of oats you put in holds up and keeps its form under heat.  The first time Carly and I made these we did all kinds of substituting – no peanuts and no raisins, and instead of chocolate candies, the first time anyway, we put in M&M pretzel candies, which were killer good. So, the overall recipe calls for a bunch of oats, white and brown sugar, a cup of peanut butter, baking soda, some chocolate candies (couldn't find the pretzel kind this time around so substituted, again, with M&M's peanut butter), and a cup of chocolate chips (we used mini semi-sweets to fill in all those cracks).  This batch, with high hopes and nice looking batter (below), for some reason flattened and was a bit sticky and rough textured.  We try to make a batch at least every other week, and will try these Monsters again pleads Carly, who likes to sample through just about every stage of baking.

Beef Stew

I've told Jan many times in the past that when a day at home is open and nice, all I want to do is cook. Digging through some new recipe book or mag, coming up with the ingredients list, heading off to old reliable Festival one more time (becoming a daily shopper), then coming home, unloading the groceries, and diving into the fine type of the chosen recipe with my suburban dad's version of reckless abandon is The Joy of Cooking that I think is all part of what the famous book is referring to and my kind of fun.  (Any guys reading: maybe it's time to finally take up deer hunting?!) Today it was Classic Beef Stew out of the Williams-Sonoma Slow Cooker Cookbook – the kind of recipe for anyone like myself who comes from the childhood Dinty Moore camp of canned, thick sauced, not runny, beef stew.  The key, I found, was to dredge the pre-cut and well salted stew meat with flour and brown in a pan before pouring into the slow cooker.  Over time the flour and beef broth, along with other juices, (red wine or vinegar both options) form something close to the kind of sauce that is velvety, not pasty.  Along with the carrots, potatoes and other standard ingredients, the recipe also calls for additional cremini mushrooms and pearl onions to be put in the cooker about an hour before the stew is to be served.  Since they're tossed in late, they keep their crisp structure and distinct taste against the more subtle soft meat and sauce.  Mine didn't look look like below, and probably didn't taste as good, but it had some thing on Dinty.

The Perfect Omelet

I've learned over many years of weekend morning practice that making the perfect omelet is in the mouth of the forkholder.  For as long as I can remember, Janet will wake up on either saturday or sunday morning and ask me whether I'm making her an omelet yet, or not.  My cooking synapses fire up and with a cup of coffee I start looking through the fridge for ham and cheese type ingredients, no funky spices or veggies thank you, just straight up...but there is THE catch: the omelet must be thin, must be soft on the outside, and damn it, it better not be browned!  For all of us who have tried this little folded eggy blanket trick, we know that sometimes the cooktop and pan don't always see eye to eye, and browning can occur.  When this happens, no matter that the inside might be a Mona Lisa of muenster and high grade ham – the fork has to punch through that tough wall of a skin!  Due to operator error, I've done the brown skin thing far too many times to want to remember – it amazes me to this day that I can't make the perfect omelet every time, no matter the culinary challenges.  Now, though, with the new Quarry Lane gas top stove at my disposal, the consistency is getting there.  This morning, a two egg portabella and onion shell with cubed muenster and sliced ham interior, soft to the touch and smooth to the fork.  Evidence, exhibit A