Truffled Eggs and Other Little Luxuries

Have you ever eaten a truffled egg?

A truffled egg is rich, creamy, salty and aromatic. It's impossible to accurately describe the smell and taste of truffles, but they're sort of earthy and other worldly at the same time, like decomposing leaves if decomposing leaves had a more pleasant aroma--fetid, encompassing. Truffles smell woodsy, too, but not in a typical cedar, pine, evergreen way. More like dark, dangerous woods woodsy; truffles are culinary sorcery.

Sometimes, when T-money is out for the evening, I cook truffled eggs and sauteed veggies for supper. Tonight I sauteed diced potato, red bell pepper, and petit pois with garlic, olive oil, and herbs de provance, and ate them alongside a truffled French omelet, satiny smooth on the outside and custardy inside. I sat on the couch and relished each rich bite.

The best part about this treat is that it's an affordable luxury. I've been using the real stuff because my friend Erin gave it to us as a wedding present, but Trader Joe's makes a decent faux truffle oil that has almost the same fug and flavor as real truffles. It's also healthy! Eggs are a great source of protein and iron, and everyone should eat more veggies. Adding truffle oil gives a boring supper bang and glamor. It feels good at the end of a long work day to treat your nose, tongue and stomach to something special. Perhaps especially now, when so much of the news is dour.

This blog post is a call for indulging in little luxuries (I can think of at least two close friends shrieking at my hypocrisy right now, but I am being serious). If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time working and more than a little worrying about spending money. And it's important to work hard and to save money. But, it is also important to enjoy life. And that is why you should indulge in red lipstick and body scrubs, long walks, really good coffee with cream, warm pajamas, lazy time with your sweetie, netflix, and truffled eggs. I've been adding baking my own bread, fantasy novels, blogging, and crocheting to the list, but little luxuries are flexible--just do the things that make you very happy.

Tonight, having savored my omelet, I am going to give myself a pedicure and watch a movie starring Viggo Mortenson. Tomorrow I have a rehearsal, grocery shopping and laundry to do, thank-you notes to write, and dramaturgical research to do, and Monday I must write my spring syllabus, but tonight is greedy, selfish pleasure time.

Snow Angels

It's snowing!

The first, and possibly only, snowfall of the year is blanketing our pretty city. The roads are icy, the wind is vicious, and people are in the kind of festive mood usually reserved for Christmas morning and the first sunny day after our long, rainy winters. I made a delicious breakfast strata with sage pork sausage, cheddar, the bread crusts from my bridal tea, eggs, and milk, which we ate on the couch watching Survivor. I walked to the wine store to buy a birthday gift for my dad, and the snow and cold made the barrel-filled shop feel all the more rich and inviting. I bought myself a vanilla latte (an unusual luxury) and a coffee for the homeless guy selling newspapers outside the coffee shop. The cat's been alternating playing the snow and snuggling in our laps, and T-money's playing WOW. And now I'm home baking whole wheat bread and wondering how on earth we're going to traverse the steep hill to my parents' house in our not-4 wheel drive vehicles.

I should definitely be cleaning out my closet, which is a disaster, but it's so much nicer to be spending my one day off a week sitting on the couch, blogging and reading the dumb and yet incredibly alluring fantasy series T's got me hooked on. I've also been daydreaming about my cousin's wedding, because she called me this morning to tell me she's engaged, and I'm so happy for her! I get to be the matron of honor! (How weird is that: matron of honor? I should have a enormous bosom and shrill, commanding voice. Time to get out the breast cake again.) It's especially nice, because she made my wedding so wonderful, and now I get to reciprocate. I also get to write an equivalently mortifying wedding speech, but enough of that because K is the only person who reads my blog on a regular basis, and I don't want her getting any ideas.

So...it's nice to be snug in the apartment on a wickedly cold and happy day with my adorable husband, who "erroneously" claims to be wasting away. ("Erroneous" is his addition to this blog post. He loves the word, and uses it incorrectly as often as possible.) Soon we'll venture out into the cold, but for now we'll sit content, cozy and still.