A few friends asked me recently, “So are you all settled into your new house?”
Given that we moved in six weeks ago, that is a reasonable question so I thought I would give an update today. (This has nothing to do with paleo or even food, so feel free to skip to the recipe if that is more interesting. I don’t blame you.)
Are we settled in to the new house? A little yes, but mostly no.
We feel totally at home in the neighborhood. We love our quiet street and upstanding neighbors. My commute is a little easier and I feel like a rich lady when I look at our yard, where there are actually trees and grass and landscaping.
Our garage gym, which I last wrote about HERE, is even better now. We added a squat rack/pull up station, GHD, more bars, bumpers and kettlebells. Matt climbed the trees in the backyard to hang a 18 foot rope to climb and a set of rings I can use to (fruitlessly, so far) practice my muscle up. The other night Matt walked inside after his workout and said, “Wow, I love that gym.” I agree.
However, the house still looks basically like this inside.
This is a picture we took the weekend we moved it. Now, there are less boxes and more random furniture. Tour has a dog bed though, so he’s usually curled up instead of standing around.
When we first moved it, I thought perhaps we would have a Fourth of July party. That was a ridiculous idea. The bathroom is still under construction, with new dust being sprayed around the house daily. Our storage unit is not in place so the guest room is packed floor to ceiling with boxes.
And the painting is not done. In fact, I have made little headway on my mission to obliterate the mustard yellow-brown that the previous owner apparently like enough to paint on every wall and most ceilings. This week, I finally got the hallway and bathroom ceilings back to their natural color (white) and painted the bedroom Benjamin Moore Metro Gray (#1459.)
A little side note on painting: It sounds so easy but — boy, do I find it hard! I messed up the trim and got paint on Matt’s new nightstand. I spent half an hour convincing myself that these mistakes are actually fortunate because they give me a chance to explore the principle of wabi-sabi. Saying that I am embracing the Japanese philosophy of imperfection sounds way hipper than being sloppy. I’m going with it.
Anyhow, luckily our kitchen is fully functional –tacky, but functional – and I’m totally back in the swing of cooking.
Last week I made these egg muffins, which are like mini omelets made in muffin pan. There are dozens of egg muffin recipes in the blogoshere but they don’t all have pesto. Pesto is the most delicious thing ever – which makes these really good and worth sharing.
Pesto Egg Muffins
For pesto —
Fresh basil, 1/2 cups loosely packed
Almonds, 1/3 cup
Olive oil, 1/3 cup
Water, 2 tablespoons
Garlic, 1 small clove
Salt and pepper, to taste
For egg muffins —
Onion, 1 medium, diced
Coconut oil, 1 tablespoon
Broccoli, 2 cups chopped
Bacon, 8 ounces
Eggs, 8
- Using a food processor or hand blender, puree together all ingredients for pesto. This will give you more pesto than you need for this recipe but be happy because you now have fresh pesto to put over roasted veggies!
- Then add onion and coconut oil to skillet over medium heat. Saute onion until soft, about 6 minutes.
- Add broccoli and bacon and sauté until broccoli is soft and bacon is to desired level of doneness, about another 6-12 minutes.
- In a large bowl, mix together onion/bacon/brocoli mixture, eggs and 1/4 cup pesto.
- Line a muffin tin with papers, just to make it easier to remove the egg muffins. Scoop about 1/4 cup of egg mixture into each muffin cup, so you spread mixture evenly across all 12 cups.
- Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until tops start to brown and eggs look set.
- Remove pan from oven and muffins from pan (so they don’t get soggy.) Eat hot or cold — topped with extra pesto, of course!