breakfast with older tomatoes and younger others

While thinking about breakfast this morning I remembered I had some beefsteak tomatoes that I really shouldn’t be hanging onto any longer (I’d had them on the north windowsill for 2 weeks, but still looked and tasted fine when I tested one). The problem was that I didn’t want to turn on the oven when the temperature inside the kitchen was finally so reasonable, although it was a devise called for by my usual go-to eggs and tomato routine. I resolved that issue by preparing all but the toast inside a single large cast iron pan on top of the range.

  • four slices of thick bacon from Millport Dairy Farm’s pastured pigs, fried over low heat inside a large enameled cast iron skillet, turning occasionally, removed while they were still juicy, before they had become crisp, set aside on paper toweling to drain, then cutting each into 3 sections after they had cooled, the heat under the pan increased to medium-high, and 2 very ripe beefsteak tomatoes from from Jersey Farm Produce in our very local 23rd Street Chelsea Down to Earth Farmers Market, each cut into 6 slices, added and cooked until they had begun to brown on the edges, removed and placed in a shallow bowl, seasoned with local sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, sprinkled with chopped fresh epazote from TransGenerational Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket, the cooking ended by cracking 6 fresh eggs, from free-range chickens, also from Millport Dairy Farm, into the same skillet, frying them until their whites had barely set, seasoning them with salt, pepper, and a pinch of a pinch or so of some of the (now powdered) remains of some light-colored home-dried habanada pepper that had been purchased fresh from Norwich Meadows Farm in 2017, and the now-fried eggs added to an assemblage, on 2 plates, going from bottom to top: of 6 small just-toasted thick slices of Lost Bread Company’s ‘Seedy Grains’ bread (wheat, spelt, rye, and barley organic bread flours; buckwheat; oats; flax sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds; water, and salt), the bacon pieces, the tomato slices, and the eggs, which were now dusted with some scissored fresh dill blossoms from Willow Wisp Farm
  • the music was the allbum, ‘Messiaen: Meditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinite”, with organist Tom Winpenny