Simply the Best!

Poached Eggs over tomato and bleu cheese on toasted sourdough slice

Breakfast is the happiest meal, although lunch is a close second.  How do I love breakfast? Let me count the ways.  It's fast.  It's easy.  It includes eggs and a salty meat, like ham, sausage or bacon.  Bacon....deserves a second mention.  Toast. Is there anything better than a toasty bread of your liking, slathered with a pad of butter?!  It's a serious question.  Silky yolk breaking onto its sponge-like host is unmatched.  Personally, I also love the variety.  But unlike supper, where you're committed to sides and whatnot, breakfast can be as simple as an egg or you can dress that girl up and lay her on a bed of deliciousness.  Bacon egg and cheese on a roll.  The perfect handheld breakfast!  A toasted Everything bagel with cream cheese onion and tomato.  We could live another hundred years and not do better.  Yep, I love breakfast!!!

You Like Potato and I like Po-tah-toh

Potato Soup

Potato Soup

Carrots

Celery

Garlic

Onion

Everyone in the pan with some bacon fat.  When almost soft add ground turkey, sausage or beef (optional)

and cook until a fond starts to build in your dutch oven.

Add a heaping tablespoon of flour and stir around for about 2 minutes.

Add chicken stock and diced potatoes and cook until tender.  Be sure to stir in all the bits on the bottom of the pan.

When potatoes are soft, reseason with salt and lots of black pepper and take your potato masher or big spoon and smash up some of the potatoes until the soup thickens to your liking.  Lactose is not my friend, so I never add cream but you could at this point.  Otherwise, it's perfectly silky with a little dollop of sour cream, yogurt or a dash of almond milk.  I hit mine up with some chopped carrot greens and served with a big slice of sourdough bread.  

They Call Me the Working Man

Just when I thought the neighborhood was drying up, a new food truck emerged.  An authentic Mexican truck at that!  With carne asada platters for $11!  Freddy's.  One guy, a wife in the background at home buying, cutting and preparing all the meats and vegetables.  In this time when the local restaurants are trying to be so fancy, it is a blessing to get a taste of old New York. 

Food trucks are so much work, and it's hard to imagine anyone is able to pull this off each day.  Serving breakfast lunch and dinner, standing up in this tiny vehicle.  After thoroughly cleaning the truck at night, Freddy tells us he has to get his buddy to drive over and lift it up off the street.  Together they haul it to a garage too far away and then, he goes home and starts the whole process over again.  I don't know about these busloads coming in at once, but if anyone has any doubt that the Mexican immigrants that make their way to New York work their asses off, peak in at any business and see who is doing all the shit jobs, and that is who you will see, working harder than you and me. 

And on top of all of that, his food is absolutely delicious!!!  How lucky we are to be able to sit in the park and eat it on a bright, sunny day.  The neighborhood just stepped up it's game. 

Fort Greene Park looking luscious

The ugly menacing new skyscraper towering over Brooklyn