A Tasty Start to a Cold, Wet Day

Today was sup­posed to be won­der­ful. It bliz­zarded big time here yes­ter­day. Er, big time for Nashville. We got 5 – 6″ fol­lowed by about a quarter-inch of ice on top of that. As a result, we had a lovely day of nothin’-doin’ planned for stay­ing inside. Well, not exactly nothin’-doin’. There are a few chores and some clean­ing that we needed to take care of, but we also planned on going out­side and play­ing in the snow like five-year-olds at heart that we are. We started with an awe­some break­fast — a hash of sweet potato, onion, mush­rooms and chicken apple sausage on thick-cut, toasted Amish all topped with an over easy egg and fin­ished with black sea salt.

It was deli­cious. The sweet­ness of the sweet potato paired really well with the sweet­ness of the sausage while the earth­i­ness of the mush­rooms kept the whole thing from becom­ing cav­ity induc­ing. The black sea salt melted into the warm egg form­ing smears of black salty good­ness. And speak­ing of the egg, with the over easy egg on top, I was able to enjoy one of life’s sim­plest plea­sures: watch­ing the yoke flow like yel­low lava down my lit­tle break­fast mountain.

This is some­thing I will be mak­ing again soon. It’s super easy, you just dice and brown one sweet potato, add half a diced onion and a cou­ple links of your favourite sausage and let them get a lit­tle color on them. Then add some sliced mush­rooms and a clove of minced gar­lic and let it all cook until any mois­ture from the mush­rooms has cooked out and the pota­toes are done (make sure you sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste). Serve it on a slice of toast and add an over easy egg on top and voila!

After break­fast we began our chores all the while I was excited about going out into the snow to watch our dogs around and sink into the snow and gen­er­ally be con­fused as to why their world is the wrong color. I had planned on adding some pics to this post of us and the dog frol­ick­ing and the tiny snow man with a baby car­rot for a nose that we would have cre­ated as is my tra­di­tion.

Instead of this won­der­ful day we planned on hav­ing, our water heater decided to die and leak water all over the fin­ished area of the base­ment. There was one area at the bot­tom of the stairs where the water was stand­ing two inches deep. Nothing was dam­aged and we were able to finally get all the water sopped up. Unfortunately the laun­dry room where our water heater is is car­peted. We have fans blow­ing across it and a dehu­mid­i­fier suck­ing mois­ture out of the room. hope­fully we won’t have to deal with any mildew issues. The plumber was going to be able to install a new water heater today but because of the weather and Nashville’s inabil­ity to han­dle even the threat of flur­ries, his truck got stuck a few miles from here so he’s com­ing by tomorrow.

So, here we are, tired, hun­gry and water­less due to the inep­ti­tude of who­ever orig­i­nally installed our water heater not putting the shut­off valve in the right place. Oh well, maybe we’ll take a late-night snow walk tonight. Or maybe we’ll just order pizza, open some wine and watch movies. Hmmm…that sounds like a great idea…

Anyway, if you got snow, I hope you enjoyed it. There is lit­tle I enjoy more than the instant tran­si­tion to a child that hap­pens within me when it snows. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to enjoy it tomor­row. or at least shower.