Showing posts with label communal meal. Show all posts

My husband and I have recently moved in to live with one of our neighbours. In the start of our dating relationship I remember talking loads about living with other people and how we hoped one day we would get to do that. There are various ways that we would love to live communally... our conversations have spun around ideas about opening up a home for homeless young people and sharing life with them, to living with like minded people that love prayer and God as much as we do, to living on farms with people who like to grow things, to sharing a home with artists and poets... basically we like people and we like sharing life with them.

We have ideas about how we would love to live with people, but its not about having all the rules or ideas or types of people you would live with sorted out. Sometimes it just about sharing life. I think we were created that way as humans... to love being with other humans (I know there are some people out there that don't like to have any human contact... so this is a bit general... I know). But there is this great sense of life when humans get together... a great sense of beauty.

Right after we moved into our new place our new roomie Tracy invited us to join her and her family that was visiting for one of our first shared meals together. There wasn't enough "traditional space" for all of us to eat up at a table, but this didn't stop us. Tracy whipped out a blanket and said that we would have dinner picnic style. She then served us this lush meal of chicken, potatoes, salad and of course garlic bread (now we know it was a good thing). In an easy moment, it felt like we were all of the same place, the same family, the same purpose.... eating and sharing life together connected us in a way that was extremely basic and at the same time extremely complex... the beauty of being human is that there are loads of these moments that at face value are completely basic yet if you look a bit deeper are highly complex.

People have to eat to live... yet people live to eat as well. Its a basic need for survival, yet a time that humans use to connect, to love on each other, to include, to grow, to connect with each other, to be creative, to experiment!

Really what I am trying to say is that loads of people thought we were nuts for giving up our own personal space to go and live with a neighbour. They thought we would hate it because we would have to share things and hide away and work to keep things seperated. Yet in reality (well thus far... which I should remind you we have lived here for two weeks so it is still early days!).... but in reality, as I sat around that picnic blanket spread out in the living room, surrounded by a family that oddly felt like mine, I experienced the beauty of communal living, of sharing things, of opening ourselves up to life and people that are around us... and it is a great great beautiful thing!

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!