Breakfast Pajamas

It feels like October. Yes, it is October, but the months here have rarely matched the descriptions I've stored away in my mental file cabinets. Today the sun is shining, the sky is blue, there is a cool breeze blowing, I'm reading ESPN to scrape up every accolade for my beloved Hawkeyes, and I'm wearing a sweater (I can barely contain my excitement with this one), all aspects darkly underlined on the October file.
To add to this excitement, my friends got an oven at their place. An honest to god oven!!! I commandeered it on a cool, rainy Saturday and made banana bread that my friend Jess made a couple years ago in the north country and I promptly tagged in my September and October files for future use.
I'm definitely projecting this fall feeling to a certain extent, I'm sweating wearing this sweater (my cool here is 70 degrees, not 45) and I won't get to watch a single Hawkeye game this season. That aside, I'm enjoying my faux-fall immensely. Tying certain aspects of my traditional fall to those I'm creating here.
My favorite fall traditions were generally also my laziest, it may be a coincidence, but more likely it is my undying love of being well pajamad. Living at home Saturday mornings at my parents house had me lounging in old flannel pants and playing Scrabble. My Louisville autumns saw me rocking the pajamas on my fire escape, listening to music, and enjoying a beer from BBC.
College has probably been the pinnacle of my pajama:normal clothing ratio(or low point if you're one of those "active" types). Looking back it seem like I was in pajamas for four solid years, but especially in the fall. Cooking breakfast on Saturday mornings before games, my friend Katie and I would daydream about owning cute pajamas with an egg and bacon print from the over-priced boutique. Later, as we would make our way to the game full of heavy breakfast foods and a bevy of beverages, we would host our pretend talk-show (our imaginary wardrobe being the aforementioned jammers) Breakfast Pajamas. Some may daydream about illustrious careers with fancy wardrobes, but give me a job where I can be a total ass and wear comfy pants with bacon strips on them.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, I can't ever remember what happened on this talk show. But I do remember making a condescending, mildly-amused, closed-mouth reporter laugh after pretty much everything we said. Maybe that was all there was. Whatever the content, the memories of football, crisp weather, breakfast, and cozy pajamas summarize everything I'm importing to Mexico for my full fall enjoyment.
These were the jumble of memories rolling through my head when I stumbled on something called red flannel hash. I've never gotten into the hash thing. Partly because the sight has always made me vomit in my mouth (just a little bit)and partly because my old roommate Roxie told me it was good, she generally lies. But red flannel made me think of pajamas and the recipe from epicurious involves beets and sweet potatoes, roots and tubers feel autumnal to me every time, plus there's bacon. It kind of screamed "I am fall, trick!" Maybe not the breakfast meal to take home to mom, nah, probably even mom would overlook the foul-mouthedness for the delicious.

Red Flannel Pajama Hash
serves 4
8 bacon slices
1 jalapeño, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 C fresh parsley
1/4 C sour cream thinned with about 1 Tbsp milk or fresh cream
1 C coarsely chopped cooked beets (roasted, steamed, boiled..whateva)
1 C coarsely chopped cooked sweet potatoes
1 C coarsely chopped cooked potatoes

In a large skillet fry bacon until crispy. Remove from skillet and crumble into a medium mixing bowl. Drain off excess bacon grease, but leave a thin coating in skillet.
Add remaining ingredients to bowl with bacon, salt and pepper, and mix.
Heat skillet over medium-high heat and transfer contents of mixing bowl to skillet. Using a spatula, smash hash mixture. Cook for about 15 minutes, turning up bottom occasionally to prevent sticking, but allowing to crisp and brown. Repeat smashing as needed.
Divide amongst hungry. Top with poached or over-easy egg.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

I haven't undertaken a project the scope of painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling or anything. Don't worry, I'll be sure to complain about a big project if one comes up. This title just keeps popping into my head because
A) Assorted, illogical things are always sprouting up up there.
B) I keep thinking about how everything has positive and negative points
C) Overdramatization with titles is the way I live my life.

The positive and negative isn't supposed to sound depressing. If you think of it a certain way it can be rather comforting. No matter what you do there will be some bright spots, and no matter how much little things might be bumming you out, there will be little things that bum you out in anything (I'm not sure if that comes of the way I mean it too, but I think it's supposed to be a relief).

I keep thinking about how much I love Mexico (happy), but I'm probably not going to stay forever (sad). But then I also think, when I go back to the U. S., I'll get to see my family much more often (happy, fun), but then there will be winter (sad, gross). I might go back to school (interesting, exciting) and I might go back to school (homework, gross).

This title seems very applicable to most foods as well. It seems that often there is an inverse relationship of agony and ecstasy. Taste goes up , health goes down or health goes up, taste goes down. I know this isn't true of many, many things--I love the s**** out of lots of healthy things, but I also enjoy a giant pile of animal products that have been cooked on diner griddles in the old fat remnants of other animal products and then topped with cheese.

The agony isn't just related to thoughts of "oh, this is so bad for me." Nah. It's generally that it feels bad for me as my system struggles to digest it. For example, I had the unfortunate realization, when I was home over Christmas, that my sturdy Midwestern frame with generations of dairy-farm blood flowing in its veins has come to the inconceivable conclusion that it cannot handle cheese very well. Unfortunately, my whole family smelled this realization as well, because Christmas is not a time when I'm going to sit back and not eat pound upon pound of cheese.

Man, I could go on and on about the pain I've inflicted upon myself in my ecstatic consumptions. However, I'll just leave you with my most recent edible example of food's duality. Some pictures are worth 1000 words--this one is worth approximately 3000 calories. Aaah the glory.

It isn't easy to tell exactly what the slop is so I'll give you the breakdown.

Step 1: Boiled potatoes, cut into wedges are the foundation for this monstrosity

Step 2: Add a heaping mound of guacomole--this batch was simply avocados, tomatoes, garlic, and a green habanero salsa.

Step 3: Fry bacon. Add to life-shortening mound.

Step 4: Fry egg in bacon grease. I wanted the egg to be over-easy, but you would be surprised how difficult that is when you are trying to flip it with a butter knife. Ahh well, toss it on the pile.

Step 5: Finish with Valentina and freshly ground pepper.

Hopefully your ecstasy at this ridiculous dish outweighs the agony. My stomach felt a little over stretched and resentful the next day (it should've been thankful I didn't have cheese), but thus is life--plus, I'm still getting some residual ecstasy from the memories. Also, I have tagged this as "breakfast", because of the egg, potato, and bacon combo, but I don't know if I would try to live through a whole day after eating this. Mmmm. Enjoy.

Breakfast....¿Donde estas?

When I began working at the university, every morning at 10 o'clock my fellow güeros and I would go have breakfast (classes hadn't and haven't started yet).

For 19 pesos (roughly 1.75) you could get chillaquilles, enchiladas verdes, or a rotation of other possibilities, a pastry, and coffee (very sweet, but hot and caffeinated).

Now, in the name of cost cutting, our friendly breakfast couple is gone and replaced by a soulless buffet line where not even the coffee is hot. So now it is 10 o'clock, I'm not enjoying chillaquilles, my stomach is growling, and I have 4 hours until lunch, but here are some photos that remind me what breakfast should be, so I don't break down and give in to the slop.