The short version is, I made changes to my diet under the direction of my nutritionist neice Anna in order to lower blood sugar and cholesterol. 6 months later I discovered I'd lost 10 pounds, consulted with her again, and was advised to ADD calories to my daily diet. I decided to start with eggs.

In late 2020, we had a little vacation in New Orleans RIGHT BEFORE the holiday COVID-19 spike hit (timed intentionally). There was no restaurant in the hotel Priceline dumped us in and we were guided to the infamous Clover Grill on Bourbon Street, about 2 blocks from from the hotel. I say infamous because IT IS on Bourbon Street, and in happier times open 24/7. You can fill in the blanks.
They didn't offer oatmeal, my normal breakfast, so I opted for an omlet made w onions. Simple enough - but the dish turned out absolutely stunning. No sauce, no spices; just eggs and onions. Done in a couple minutes. So over the course of the week I pointedly observed his tech and realized that once he'd cracked the eggs, he dumped them into the contraption you'd use to whip up a milk shake - and whirred the eggs for a couple seconds before before 'em on the grill. So - here's my home interpretation.

Ingredients:
2 whole eggs
a TBS of chopped or thinly sliced onions
Pam or spray on olive oil
spice of your choosing

Preparation
heat pan at highest heat
break two eggs into a Magic Bullet or any other sort of blender you might have around
chop/slice onions
whir eggs for 20-30 seconds
reduce heat to merely high
spray pan
dump in eggs
sprinkle onions over the surface of the eggs
dust eggs w spices if you so desire
lift edges of eggs to allow uncooked egg to run into pan
fold one edge of egg over
slip out of pan

This all takes 5-10 minutes.

Clearly you can jazz this up in myriad ways, add protein, cheese, other chopped vegetables, hit it with hot sauce, salsa, cheese sauce etc. But the unjazzed version is incredibly light and fluffy, the onions add bite and sweetness and is pretty perfect as it is - and clearly healthy as fuh. And it's what I had at the Clover Grill day after day.

After half a decade, here's something new! When I lived in D.C. and worked at a record stores in Dupont Circle, the Classical Music buyer invited me to dinner. He served what he called "Putanesca" which he explained translate to "Whore Sauce." According to him,when a john would engage a Working Girl, a quick meal was included in the services paid for. So this would be a meal where you could fire up the hot plate, dump prep ingredient, dump them in the pan, cover and... "occupy yourself" for a bit. By the time things, uh wrapped up, the unattended meal would simply be ready for consumption. He actually prepared this by throwing oil, onion and spices into a pot and then emptying a big can of tomato juice into the pot - with the heat on high the whole time. Within 10-15 minutes the juice would have boiled down to sauce consistency. Over the years I've seen this dish on restaurant menus, sometimes primly referred to as Pasta With "Femina" Sauce. But which chunky ingredients. The below is an adaptation which is insanely quick and easy. In fact you prep and cook as you go and it moves along quite nicely. Maybe it takes 15 from start to finish.

Ingredients:
a medium tomato
half a medium onion
4-5 garlic gloves, in the skin
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
6 pitted olives
2 tsp capers
DO NOT ADD SALT - the olives and capers are brined and loaded with salt!
1 cup cooked whole wheat pasta
2 TBS olive oil

Directions:
heat oil in pan, untl it starts smoking, then lower heat to medium
coarsely chop onions and add to pan
put garlic in garlic cooker (or just put in a covered bowl, or on a plate covered with a glass bowl/up and nuke on hi for 30 seconds
peel garlic and add to pan
add oregano and basil - you can add some red pepper flakes if you'd like
coarsley chop tomatoes and add to pan
coarsely chop olives and add to pan
add capers and heat for about three minutes
top w cooked spagehetti and cover for about three minutes

Dump this mess out on your plate. You can add cooked sausages or meatballs or chicken for protein

GUEST POST FROM JERSEY BEAT PUBLISHER JIM TESTA

I've been trying to eat vegetarian as much as possible. I love doing stir fries and quiches, great way to use up leftover veggies and it's fun to work with different flavor combinations. But my favorite recipe is my pantry burritos.

I made these because I had half a can of leftover vegetarian baked beans. I mixed the beans with one package of instant Mexican rice (the pouch you microwave kind) and a bag of shredded Mexican mix cheese. (There are lots of vegan cheeses out there if you dont want to use a milk product.) Microwave the rice, warm the beans, and toss everything together in a bowl. Then stuff burrito size flour tortiallas with the mixture. Brown them gently in a frying pan to crisp the tortilla (it also melts the cheese and helps them stick together) then top with a jarred salsa or mole sauce. Yum yum!

I realize it's been a LONG time since my last post. A lot of the cooking jawns I've rolled with I've had to come up with for various reasons. But things have been useful and satisfactory for a while so I've had no great impetus to invest new recipes.

But there's been a confluence of circumstances. My blood pressure started acting up in late 2015 and I had to add fruit to my diet on a daily basis. My metabolism has slowed down so I find myself putting on weight very easily and having a hard time shaking it. And now it's Lent and typically I give up goodies. Rolling econo I grab whatever fruit's cheapest at the grocery store - so that's apples and oranges. Just been thru an oranges phase so back on apples. But I ate the latter so regularly last year -- that I'ma little sick of 'em. One solution was to bake 'em - just cored an apple, added a little sugar, mebbe a splash of red wine, mebbe raisins. And into the toaster oven for about 45 minutes. Which was good enough.

But the coring kinda sucks without a proper coring tool so I tried slicing up the apple and wrapping in foil and making 45 minutes. And actually that cooked worse than the whole apple.

SO I decded to try nuking the sliced apple for 5 minutes in a sealed Pryex dish. That worked GREAT! Cooked thoroughly and was pretty delish. And then I started with add ons and frankly each one was mighty fine. Though at the same time, none was necessary, so I'd count each as a valid and delicious variation to be deployed as yr fancy dictates.

In each case you start with a sliced apple (skin on), nuked for 5 minutes in a covered Pyrex dish. The add on options are:

teaspoon of cinnamon

tablespoon of raisins

teaspoon of butter - diced and sprinkled throughout yr pile of apples

tablespoon of leftover rice (I usually have some cooked brown rice lying around)

I'd also tried sprinkling a tablepoon of bran cereal or Grape Nuts over the cooked apples - and that was OK but frankly I thought they were better with the rice or with no grain products whatsoever.

Beets Squashing 'em!

this one's quick and dirty -- every year squash sprouts out of the compost pile and in the spirit of science, I transplant them around the backyard in any place that'll accomodate the 10 foot long vines the result. by Summer's end we've got a boatload of butternut squash - which is not my favorite vegetable to work with. but after managing to give away a decent amount, I was left with a couple squash and wanting to clear 'em out so as an experiment took my (previously posted) borscht recipe and swapped out beets for squash... and it came out GREAT! While all the other ingredients remained the same, this one substitution yielded a golden soup that more savoury and a tiny bit thicker. This in turn made the spices, especially the cayenne less prominent, more subtle. the final effect was delicious!

Italian cuisine in the raw

OK - so this recipe is NOT comprised of leftovers per se, but for some folks - especially if you live in non-bourg suburbs or rural areas and do a little vegetable gardening, or have friends that do - you're likely to find yourself inundated with the late Summer tomato crop. And there's tons of obvious things you can do with fresh tomoatoes, but one that I'd not considered before is making fresh spaghetti sauce with it.

We were out for drinks and small plates with some friends over the weekend, and our friend Joan berated me for chimping with another friend, Jim Testa, about hot spaghetti sauce option. She was advocating basically a raw sauce. I replied that what she was describing was like a cold putanesca, or putting salsa on spaghetti. Either way, an interesting idea.

So here's a simple way of putting this together on the fly, and assuming that you're doing one serving at a time. And if you wanna serve more -- just multiply!

MUSIC:
Louis Prima Capitol Collector Series - a nicely perverse mix of New Orleans jazzamatazz and ethnic Italian bonhomie.

Ingredients
1 ripe tomato, coarse chopped (and I'd leave the skin on, or you can peel 'em if you'd like)
1 TBSP onion, FINELY chopped (and you can use regular yellow onion if that's what you have around or you could get something fancier like sweet Vidalia if you'd like)
2 cloves garlic - peeled and put in microwave for 30 seconds - to soften and sweeten
2 leaves of basil, coarsely chopped
1 TBSP grated Romano cheese (you could use Parmesan but...at least around here, that always turns out to be incredibly bland)
one serving of freshly cooked pasta (whatever that means for you)

Mix the first 5 ingredients together
toss with hot pasta
top with a shake of red pepper flakes or a couple grindings of black pepper

then go pour yourself a glass of wine, set the table - let it sit for a minute so the hot pasta cooks the other ingredients a little bit, and they get a chance to flavor the pasta. Bon appetito!

Tomayto Tomahto (Du Plenti!)

Jim Testa of Jerseybeat.com just sent me the following query:

"Do you ever make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes? I got a bushel for $3 of bruised tomatoes from a farmers market.
It's simmering now but I'm not sure if I should leave it chunky and rustic or give it a whir with the immersion blender and smooth it out."

Lotsa interesting questions in this.
Folks would recommend that you peel and seed tomatoes before making them into sauce. And while that's valid
1) seeds have important nutrients
2) usually I do this with cherry tomatoes and peeling is impractical - so I don't and I've never had bad results.

As per smoothing out or leaving chunky - literally tomayto, tomahto. Why not split the load between two pots and smooth out one. Or just wait till your done - scoop half into one container and smooth out what's left.

If you've got tomatoes left you can always make a putaneso which is, um like hot salsa. You just chop up the ingredients, throw 'em into a hot pan with a little olive oil and cook a couple minutes and voila! reputedly prostitutes would greet a customer, set a pan cooking and when "business" was done, so was the sauce!

here's an article on the possible health benefits of eating tomoatoes -- tho no mention of which part of tomato provides which benefit: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273031.php