At the back of my perennial garden is a special garden space that really belongs to Tom. This is where his hops grow -- with the bines growing up twine that reaches to the roof of our garage where they can then expand out sideways. Hops grow fast. Really fast. The shoots come out of the ground pretty early in the spring, too. You're only supposed to let a few of the shoots grow on each plant in order for them to be the most productive. We learned last year that the young hop shoots are edible and are sometimes called "poor man's asparagus".  That said, I also read recently that hop shoots are the most expensive vegetable in the world to buy. Perhaps because you only have a few days a year to harvest them before they get too large. Anyways, I never did anything with ours last year, but I wanted to try cooking them this year. Many people recommend sauteing them like you would asparagus. Then I found a couple of recipes for pickled hop shoots. Now, pickling isn't normally my thing, but for some reason, I wanted to try this. I found this recipe that I adapted mine off of.

Unintended though it was, this past weekend was a weekend of making things -- mostly food. On Friday, after a delicious surf 'n turf meal (in which I almost burnt the house down when the grill caught fire, but miraculously managed to keep the steaks from getting charred or overcooked), I decided to try the bagel recipe from my bread book.  I used the provided recipe, only I added sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil, since that's one of my all time favorite bagel flavors -- and it's hard to find! I made up the dough on Friday and refrigerated it overnight. Saturday, I attempted the bagels. They turned out...just...slightly...misshapen.  I got two out of nine that were fairly good looking and decidedly photo worthy.

Twas the day before Easter and I just had a hunch, that combining these ingredients would make a great brunch! Some freshly made feta, and freshly baked bread, a fried egg and fresh salad did rouse us from bed!  (Okay, enough of the rhyming.) Seriously, though. I've been on a homemade bread kick since a friend introduced me to this book (go buy it now!). And I FINALLY used my cheese making kit a friend got me for my birthday to make some feta! I needed to try out the cheese and brunch sounded like a good idea. I had seen some recipes for egg "boats" using french bread -- but I only took a half loaf out of the freezer and it didn't seem big enough for that. So, I made up something new. I don't know what to call it, so for now it's the FFF brunch (French bread, Fried egg and Feta). Whatever you want to call it, it's delicious. Also - brunch side salad = good idea!