Pet Eggs

One of the most annoying things about DC is the proximity between things. One cool shop is at least 2 blocks from the next one, leaving me with lazy legs, blistered feet and a slight aversion to exploring. Also, my size of my DC fridge trumps the size of my NY fridge by at least half and is now taller than my person, which means a very arduous trek home with heavy HEAVY bags from the grocery store or farmers market, at least half a mile a way. Even up in the boring upper east side I had my pick of grocery stores (though either crappy or expensive). 4 of them within a quarter mile radius and dozens of delis sprinkled in between the supermarkets so planning last minute fritatta or pancakes was no big deal if I ran out of milk. or potatoes.

<rant>
I'm also aghast at farmers market prices here. Come on, get real. Michelle Obama is for these farmers markets, but when you have to pay $2.50 for a pound of apples or $4.50 for a dozen eggs, her local produce activism has to be a little more than just requesting a farm stand to be planted outside the White House and making vegetables in her backyard.
</rant>

I fretted for a couple of days about expensive eggs from a (i suppose) trusted local source and weighing them against less expensive eggs from a suspicious mass distributed source and ultimately decided to buy the cage-freest eggs I could at whole foods. Until I casually struck up a conversation with a coworker who interestingly enough bought a quarter of a pig from a farmer and picked it up from the butcher when it was ready (a quarter of a pig is a large amount of pork). She also gets free range eggs from a friend for free. Free range eggs? From pet chickens? I began to salivate and asked her how much it would cost to buy them and have her bring them in to work for me.

$2 a dozen. Approximately 17¢ an egg, compared to 38¢ an egg.

Pet eggs. They were so pretty. Some were brown, some were grey, some were white and some were blue like my apartment walls.




In the morning when everything is still quiet except the sound of pouring coffee, I make soft boiled eggs mixed with soy sauce and strips of toast without fear of salmonella. The yolks fall out and ooze a bright orangey yellow and are hard to clean once they stick to the bowls – the hallmark of happy chickens that lay eggs packed full of vitamins and omega-3s.


courtyard view from my kitchen

After staying up to watch the tennis finals last night, I woke up when it was snowing and made some soft boiled eggs and blueberry pancakes as fat fluffy robins hopped around on the frozen pond. Is this what civilized living is?

Now to find some pet milk.

DC, could I love you?

Alright, vacation pause! I'm interrupting my own vacation sequence as well. I had to be in DC shortly after I got back from my trip. I didn't even have time to catch my breath. I was pretty clueless and all I knew was that I needed to be somewhere downtown and not screw up and end up in murder zipcode of America. I'm usually prepared for things like this. After getting lost for 4 hours in French Canadian speaking (not even my superb Franglais could help me) Canadian wilderness at midnight has made me an excellent map reader and trip planner.

Enter Laura
"Just follow my map and you cannot go wrong":






My friend Laura (our families have been friends since forever) was amazing! She was super busy with work but let me stay with her on such short notice and even printed out and marked up maps of the area especially for food, even marked out the bus route with APPROXIMATE STOPS. and threw in a bus timetable as well. I promised to do the same for Pamplemousse a year ago, and she's come and gone and it's still a work in progress :( oh the shame. (but in my defense, I went overboard and it was 70 pages long...yes...all 70 pages about where to eat in New York.)

The eating map Laura made was indispensable. I would've found everything by wandering around, but she took the brains out of even that, marking out food joints and rating them. I didn't waste my time with "mediocre cupcakes" and caught my breath at the very empty Freer-Sackler museum.

Then there was Tryst.



Animal crackers with my coffee?! How adorable is that! I spent too much time at Tryst, snuggling into well snuggled couches with my laptop and exceeding my self imposed caffeine restriction. How....hipster of me. Don't judge!

Anyway, Tryst was right next to Madam's Organ (the neighborhood was called Adams Morgan)



Her map really made my week and when I go back to DC, I'm definitely checking out the Cowgirl Creamery...mmmmm jamon iberico.....mmmm