So I don't know about you but I love Easter! And a big part of Easter is obviously the breakfast. And if you are American you know it ain't a real breakfast unless you make an egg casserole.

This Easter I was so excited to serve up perhaps one of my favourite breakfast dishes but was shocked at how many English people had no idea what I was on about when I said "Egg Casserole". I did look up a recipe but as always I mainly do this just to see what the 'ground rules' are and then I do my own thing. Everyone was really loving this dish, even people that normally won't eat at all at our communal meals were asking for seconds. So I thought I would write down what I did. I know this recipe is out there somewhere, so by no means am I claiming to be the inventor (even though making egg recipe 'inventions' was one if my favourite pass times as a kid).

Irish Popeyes Meats Porky Pig: spinach, sausage, bacon egg casserole.

Ingredients:
3 of those big ass potatoes, commonly known as Jacket potatoes here in England or in America Bake potatoes.
1 medium size red onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 generous handfuls of fresh spinach
A bit of salt and pepper
12 (or so) eggs
2 (ish) tablespoons of butter
1 package of 8 tomato flavoured sausage (sainsbury bowwyaaa)
1 package of per-diced bacon
1/2 package of cheddar cheese

Preheat your oven at about 170 degrees Celsius (or about 330 degrees F).

So here is what you do. Grab those bad boy potatoes and using a grater, shred 'em right into one of those bigger rectangle size pans. Then dice up your onion and garlic and combine them all together in said pan. Then get out a frying pan and melt about two tablespoons of butter into it. Fry up your sausages and bacon together in the same pan. Once the meat is all cooked, dice up your sausage links (again for the English peeps, if you are in America just buy a tube of sausage and get on with the frying). In the mean time, sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper over the potatoes mixture. Then get out a large bowl and crack all your eggs in there and beat them up real goods. Dump you cooked meat + Butter + greasy goodness on the potato mixture and give it a good stir. While your doing that heap in the the generous handfuls of spinach and make sure it get mixed in too. Then make sure the potato/ meat mixture is evenly spread out in the pan. Slowly pour over you egg mixture. The liquid egg level should come just ender the level of the shredded potato. Remember as egg cooks it will grow so you wanna leave some room for that. Shred about a half a block of cheddar (or a bit more if you LOVE cheese like me!) over the top to make sure it is all covered up.

Then wack your pan in the oven for about 45 to 50 min. Keep an eye that the cheese doesn't burn.

Let it stand for about 10 min when you take it out and then enjoy that Irish Popeyes Meats Porky Pig Egg Casserole!

#americanbeautmeetsenglishholiday

*not suitable for vegetarians or vegans!

P.S. next time I will remember to get a picture. But let me know if you try it and what you think!

Can you blieve it but Steve and I have been living in our First Home for 19 months. I remember when I migrated over to Enlgand 20 months ago to marry steve. Within the first day of being here Steve walked me over to our little flat. He of course had sent me gobs of photos and epic facebook messages describing our first little "flat" (ooo "flat" how english and adorable!), but it was absolutely amazing to walk into our little flat and be thinking "I'm going to live every day here with my best friend, I'm going to be a wife here, GREAT memories are going to happen here!"...

Steve had bought us a few bits of life furniture, a bed and a kitchen side trolly, besides that it was completely empty.... I walked in and he had a card, flowers and a bottle of wine all by the bed... I knew life was going to be amazing. And it has been. Our start here in England has been epic.

Whenever we stop and think about what we have gotten to do here I am like "Damn, life is big and I love being in the thick of it".

A few months after we moved in I finally convinced steve to nail up all these pictures we had of ourselves from our wedding (it possibly boardered on creepy self shrine, but we were too in love to care so we got away with it!). After he 'ruined' the wall with all those damaging and deposit risking nail holes (his words not mine!), he decided to turn the surrounding walls into a bit of a memory wall. Before either of us knew it our little wall of memories has grown into this massive mural of happiness.

Invites to parties, poetry events, poster from friends who had visted winston church hill war museum, maps from our charleston mini american vacation, receipts from ordering food in kosovo, my graduation cap, movie ticket stubs, house concert invites, more poetry events, my kate nash poster that asked steve to marry me on it, music festival tickets, towie tour tout... Whenever we did something we loved we tried to bring back a bit of memorabilia that could be stuck up on our wall. Secretly it was my favorite part of our nest.

This week it came down.

It only took 20 min and now it's blank again.

I didn't help take it down. But watching it come down had to be one of my least favorite moments.

I love our life. Its been so good. What garentee do I have that we wont leave the good behind? That what we had was as good as it gets?

The next day I walked by that same wall. That same blank wall that had me the day before being bitchy and moody because I struggle with change and hold on to things to tightly and possibly have unhealthy love attachements to inaimate object and at the end of the day still regularly pinch myself becaue I can't believe that Steve fell in love with me and that we are getting to live out a real life happily ever after ****deep breath in**** AND I was excited.

I AM excited... for a new wall. For the promise of a furutre. For the chance to do more! To do different! To fill a new empty until it is over flowing and frost my new life with a similar joy! The beauty of life is not that I capture a bit of it and hold it so tight that it never changes, but that I grab on to this wild, uncontrolled forces that pulls me and keeps pulling me forward (and possibly up!?!). All I have to do is hold on and enjoy the ride.

Sometimes it's messy, sometimes it's unexpected, sometimes it's hell'ava lot harder than I anticipated. But I have definiately learned that God certainly does work all things together for good of those who love him and listen to Him calling and asking to do life with Him.

And now we are getting ready to move into another unknow. A beautiful neighbour named Tracy has invited Steve and I to come live with her for the next 6 months. She lives just across the square from where we are now. She has such a lovely soul.  We went to her house today and started measuring the room and talking through how we are going to move our things in. Tracy is quality. She has put up hooks for us, bought a spare freezer and is even letting us store all our over flow crap in her garage.

It will be a new adventure for us all. Steve and I are excited to investigate what living with someone else as a married couple is like and Tracy is preping for having more 'noise' around her! We don't know how it will go, but the uncertainty of it almost makes it more awesome. Change or not here we come!

But even in these moments of being really excited to move on I still find a bit of me holding on to our first little nest. The perfect patch for two. Out Lawton Mafia Hideout. I don't want to let go and at the same time I am ready to jump.

So, if you see me at the end of this week standing on an empty staircase at number 12 Memnon Court looking up and possibly hiding a tear or two just remind me that the memories of the past are just the beginng and for God's sake never forget to keep looking up!

Over this weekend my hubby and I got to go to this cafe in Marks Tey called the Food Company (well its actually a specialty shop added home decor shop, recently added restaurant cafe. We wanted something a bit different, but nice and to be fair it is kinda hard to find places that serve breakfast after 10am (which is complete crap because if you are not going to make breakfast for yourself it is most likely because you have slept in and hence would not be waking up early to fill your breakfast need!) But I digress..

So as we were sitting in said cafe/restaurant I noticed that they had nice tables, professional looking chefs, there own fromagary, butchers, fish bar, bakery and a host full of other hand selected items.

You could tell that the staff knew what they were doing and that the types of items you were choosing had been selected with the purpose of being the best item of choice for you. It felt a lot less like "what deal can I get or how much are they ripping me off for this" and way more like.... well like home. A safe place were good products were chosen, yes to fill a need, but also to make the most out of life. A place where I could finds good things to add to my life and not just a place that took good things from me and gave me crap in return.

I like places that make me feel like I are making the most of life. In this world where apathy has numbed our sense of worth and value by encouraging us to just complacently load up our lives with the cheapest "value brand" (that is anything but valued) this shop was a breath of fresh air.

I also didn't pity the people that worked in this shop. In fact I found myself envying them. I wanted to be down with the club, to be involved in something that had so much purpose and quality. I found myself dreaming of working in their fromage cupboard or baking up goodies for the rest of my life in their bakery. What a life of value to be able to be a part of a team of people adding such quality to our world.

 It didn't take me long to connect the dots as to where I find this worth in my own personal life, but it did make me wonder how many other people are hungry for this type of place... where each and every item is chosen with a purpose, where quality of people, environment and service means something.

I'm glad this places exists in our world... and that (at least for now) we still have to option to shop at places where there is such a sense of purpose, quality and respect interwoven into their DNA.

It also reminded me that if I ever have the chance to build something, to please please please not let the illusion of money, success or power out way the beauty of good quality, heathy relationships and a true value of worth.

 http://www.thefoodcompany.co.uk/