Best Friend Worthy Four-Garden Egg Breakfast

Up until over a year ago, I lived across the street from my best friend and my nightly ritual was to walk to her house after work where we would recap our day over a bottle of wine on the porch near her koi pond, her husband’s artistic landscaping, and her lounging French bulldog. The ritual was like soul food because we got to dump the activities of our day, embark in a kind of therapy together and boost each other up with a never-ending communication loop of support. When I moved three hours away from her over a year ago, I missed this nightly ritual and had to learn to live with the once in a while phone call and the mutual stalking of our Facebook pages to see what was going on in our lives. One of the things about having a best friend is that you share everything and when you don’t see them but once a year, a lot of information that you want to share piles up in the brain. So when she came to visit me last night for a long overdue sleep over we recreated our nightly ritual with a dinner out, long conversations on my front porch over a special bottle of red, chatting till the wee hours of morn and then waking up this morning ready to go for round two of the mutual brain dump before seeing her off to home.

I wanted to make her a special breakfast full of fresh and soul affirming foods. I had some gems from the Cute Gardener’s yard to share and we spent a few early morning hours walking along the beach and stopping at various stores to choose more items that I would come home to cook. I wanted the meal to be full of vitamins but also comforting tastes to warm the bones while we ate together, again on the patio, dumping the rest of that encyclopedic storage of catching up from our minds.

In the spirit of a four seasons pizza, I created a best friend worthy four garden egg plate consisting of the following:

One butternut squash, peeled, diced and tossed in one tablespoon of olive oil and sea salt and then roasted in a 400-degree oven for 25 minutes. Once done, I tossed the perfectly caramelized cubes in a tablespoon of mignonette, the vinegar and shallot coating the nuggets with a tangy and warm, apple pie-type kinship.

One leek chopped, bulb and stem in all, and sautéed in one tablespoon of olive oil till wilting and then covered with a lid for five minutes while the pieces softened and turned velvety.

A perfect pair of eggs scrambled to fluffy goodness and then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and diced San Marzano tomatoes.

Three leaves of chopped collard greens sautéed with onions and topped with a fresh sprinkle of fresh lemon juice to brighten and punch.

Cooking for those I love is one of my greatest joys. That mixed with a healthy dose of talking and sharing, listening and giving feedback is one of the things I live to do.