Lessons Learned

A week ago, Jessica posted about a comfort dish - Cabbage with Hot Sauce from Orangette. Jess even added an egg for EXTRA comfort. girl's known for loving her eggs - in fact, both of my co-ABBers profess their love for eggs. I feel eh about eggs and usually only cook with them when baking. But, we had a purple cabbage from the CSA and CSA cabbages usually get tossed out with the trash a month after the share, and jed was out with his 5th grade girlfriend so I was cooking for myself. I wanted something simple and quick. And comforting.

I am in major need of some comfort food. I don't know what it is, but ever since the time change, i have been so tired - all i want to do is come home from work and lay on the couch for a long time. I have been late waking up every day for the past few weeks. Maybe its the weather or busyness at work or vacation excitement or the economy when in doubt, blame everything on the economy. ***(I promise that i'm not preggers.)

So, instead of going to the gym, I decided to try Jess' recipe. After all, I love and trust rach and jess and if they love cabbage and eggs, i should try it.
Lesson Learned #1 - Trust your Instincts

In fairness, I altered the original recipe a little.

1. As mentioned, I used a purple cabbage
2. I added sesame oil
   
3. Instead of frying an egg, I scrabble eggs with the siracha and mixed it in. Hoping for a pad thai style egg but didn't get it. The eggs stayed mushy.
   

Lesson Learned #2 - Follow a recipe the first time

The meal wasn't bad. But I don't think I cooked the cabbage enough - it was still crunchy, although spicy and sesamey and hot and delicious. The good news is that my second helping was much better - the cabbage was softer and the flavors better combined.

The bad news is that the combination of the mushy eggs and purple cabbage looked like puke after drinking too much red wine chased by massive amounts of bread. Sorry for being graphic and gross, but i was almost sick. Food doesn't usually gross me out, but seriously, it looked like vomit. I threw the rest out.

Notice that despite my severe aversion to the looks of the dish, i still had 2 servings.
Lesson Learned #3 - food is very visually linked. I know - duh - but i never realized it so fully until tonight.