Sunday

Eastside Road, February 8, 2016—

NO SUNDAY IS ROUTINE here on Eastside Road, it seems. They all start out the same, though:

Soft-boiled egg
Toast, butter, marmalade
Coffee with milk

The egg is put in a pan of cold water; the water brought to the boil; then pan is covered and the egg allowed to bask for exactly three minutes. Clearly larger eggs will be softer than smaller ones. We generally buy Large eggs, but since they come from local farms they vary. Within reason, variety is a good thing, even within routines.

A three-minute egg is soft. The word in our household is slubberij, a Dutch word we owe to our friend Hans, who can't imagine eating an egg so soft-cooked.

We usually have one slice of toast apiece at breakfast, but on Sundays two: one with butter, to accompany the egg; one afterward. I do love marmalade.

The coffee is dark roast espresso. I roast it myself, getting the beans from Sweet Maria in Oakland and roasting them in a Fresh Roast SR300 roaster, for 5.9 minutes, and try to use them no sooner than the third day after roasting.

Currently we make our coffee with a Starbuck's Barista machine bought second-hand; our beloved Faemina is on my workbench, awaiting the spring cleanup of the shop.

Yesterday we skipped lunch. We couldn't really help it: we had to drive down to Oakland, 70 miles or so, to take a couple of friends to the opera. (West Edge Opera; concert performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, as set by Paisiello, not Rossini; and very good in every way.) At intermission we had some kind of whole-grain fruit bar they were selling; that was lunch.

On getting home — cold roast chicken, with kale-cooked-with-mashed-potatoes: another stamppot, I suppose.

bottle ends

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