Oeufs en cocotte recipe

I can't take credit for this recipe - my roommate-slash-BFFF read about it in the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell and came up with this version. It's still one of my favorite breakfast-y things to make.

Preheat oven to about 360-ish F. I don't have a digital display, so I just estimate it to be somewhere between 350 and 375 F.

Gather stuff -- 4 oz. ramekins; a baking dish to put them in (for the water bath); butter; cream cheese (or whatever soft cheese-esque product you'd prefer to use); salt; pepper; eggs; herbs (here I've used fresh-snipped chives from the backyard -- mmm). There are endless variations you could do with this recipe.

Butter the ramekins and add a chunk of cream cheese to the bottom of each.

Spread the cream cheese around to cover the bottoms of the ramekins.

Crack an egg into each ramekin over the cheese.

Add salt, pepper, & herbs. The ramekins go in a bigger baking dish; add boiling water to the baking dish for a water bath. Fill it as high as possible without spilling too ridiculously & put into the oven. I usually set the baking dish onto the oven rack first and then fill it with boiling water.

Cook the eggs for about 13-15 minutes or until desired done-ness. Ideally, the whites should be mostly set but soft, and the yolk runny. Mmmmm.

Serve with whatever. I made toast and sauteed potatoes with onions & herbs. Oh, make sure to serve the eggies with a spoon; you'll want every last molecule, believe me.

Veggie wraps ftw.

Went shopping at Trader Joe's recently, & they had samples of a Mediterranean veggie hummus wrap that were just so amazingly good I had to buy the ingredients and recreate it at home.

What I used in this particular photo:

- Sundried tomato tortilla wraps (I prefer spinach wraps, but the store didn't have any at the time)
- Hummus (Cedar's original tahini)
- Green leaf lettuce
- English cucumber
- Trader Joe's Feta cheese with Mediterranean herbs

For the dressing:
- Lemon juice
- Trader Joe's white balsamic vinegar
- Olive oil

First I made the dressing -
I whisked together one tablespoon each of the lemon juice & vinegar, and two tablespoons of olive oil to make an emulsion (this will make enough dressing for 4 wraps).

To assemble the wrap --
I spread about a quarter cup of hummus on each wrap, right to the edges (it helps the wrap to stick closed).

On top of each went a shredded lettuce leaf, some slices of cucumber (wash but don't peel), a tablespoon of feta, then a tablespoon of dressing drizzled over that.

Wrap 'em up and EAT. Obviously, there are probably a zillion different variations you could make with this basic set of instructions. Could also very easily be adapted into a vegan version.

Srsly, this is my new favorite sandwich-esque food item.