the time has come

The time has come for the son of man to be glorified by me finally writing a post.

 Please know that I have tried to write all week. In fact, I wrote an entire entry, but...you never got to see it. (It was actually one of those long-writing-processing-posts that I do...specifically about everything that happened in Boston this week...and I decided it was better left processed and not published).

Also, excuse the outdatedness of the pictures, but they have been patiently awaiting their debut from iPhoto for like...a month. Does that count as neglect? Whoops.

Meet all our animal friends. Amanda and I went on a walk, and there were just...animals everywhere. By animals I really just mean a couple ducks and a couple kitties. It was really strange and really awesome.

I thought Amanda was going to die and go to heaven. She really loves cats. Ernie, the orange one, is apparently 23-years old. Or so says the 12-year girl who owns them. We sat down and talked to her for awhile. That's my favorite.

Over "spring break" (air quotations because I don't technically have spring break anymore), I went home and had a wonderful date with my mom. We walked to The Dancing Fox, where we treated ourselves to lattes and a hearty breakfast. I could rave about this place forever...it's that good.

I got the rustic french toast, which came with blackberry compote, maple syrup, and a fresh batch of VANILLA BEAN WHIPPED CREAM. Oh geez, writing about this 18 days into my strict Paleo habits is the hardest thing I've endured yet. SO DELICIOUS was that plate of carbs and sugar. We also got fruit cups. To balance things out. My mom got a caprese egg scramble (death) which came with toast (more death) and was served in a really cute cast iron skillet. I love you, Dancing Fox.

My mom always sends me home with goodies, too. This time it was in the form of freshly picked asparagus. No better way to celebrate spring than with a million pictures of the stalks! The tips and ends had this whole purple thing going on that you just don't see from the bunches at grocery stores. Call me lame, but I think it's so freaking cool.

Small life updates:

• inaugural issue of the magazine should be out very soon, and I'm SO excited to see my name in print for the first time
• been eating Paleo since the 3rd, and I feel really, really great. My food digests and satiates me all at the same time. What a novel concept. After 30-days I will reintroduce dark chocolate and other items that I know don't bug me, but for the most part I think Paleo is here to stay.

Anyone else completely freaked out that it's almost May? Goodness gracious.

Happy Sunday!

basil-cally, i love basil

Let me just say this now, and then (maybe) we can move on: I love basil.

I wholeheartedly, unabashedly, slightly obsessively, love basil. It is one of the freshest, most in-your-face flavors ever created. And it tastes good with everything. Okay, maybe not ice cream (although that could be debated), but anything in the savory-world for sure.

When you're cooking for one, a single bunch of basil goes a long way. Actually, scratch that. Basil just goes a long way period. I think God designed it like this...because let's be honest, running out of basil mid-week could be disastrous. Just really, really disastrous.

Anyway, (I get on tangents frequently, sorry) I still have basil from last week's trip to the market, and I have used it a ton. I used it for homemade pesto, I made bruschetta for my newspaper meeting, I've taken a whole leaf and just eaten it, (wait, what?) and then I used it in my breakfast this morning! (Which is really the point of this entire post, but we all know how much I love context).

Moving forward, this week at the market I purchased more tomatoes and some meyer-lemon rosemary bread (hellooo). This morning I was inspired by my friend Alissa's breakfast tweet about an omelette, and I thought, Hot dog, I wanna make an omelette! So per usual, I hopped on my computer to ravage my favorite food blog, How Sweet It Is, and low and behold I got something better than an omelette: a recipe for a caprese egg-bake. A CAPRESE EGG WHAT?!

I had all the ingredients, I had one hour before my piano lesson, and bam. It happened.

I mean, just look at that bread.

No really; LOOK at it.

I added green onions to the top because I had them, and I'm really glad I did. They added a little extra somethin' somethin'. And it was a good somethin' somethin'.

The best part was: all of it. But I especially appreciated that I didn't feel gross or overstuffed afterwards. My breakfasts are usually pretty simple, so adding the elements of melted cheese and real bread was (a little) worrisome. It was okay though! And it stuck with me a long time. And it was so easy. The end.