Same Recipe, Different Outcomes

This past week, I wanted to try out a cute recipe I found at The Noble Pig.  It's actually a cute brunch idea and the first time I made it with my sister and her kids.  The idea is to take sturdy rolls, cut off the tops, hollow out the middle, put an egg in them and bake them.  Sounds simple, right?  And it was.  My sisters' kids had a ball scooping out the bread, breaking the eggs into them and then putting cheese, cream and herbs on top of them.  They baked for about 20 minutes.  We took them out and realized that we didn't want them that soft, so we baked them for another 5 minutes.  They came out great! Other than the fact that the sturdy rolls came out a little crunchy, they were great!  We served it with asparagus and it made a wonderful brunch that day.


So I decided to do the same thing for my husband at home.  I showed him the beautiful pictures on the website, told him about my first experience, and so he was really quite excited about it.  That's great, because he is an unadventurous sort when it comes to cuisine.  He knows what works for him, so he feels you don't mess it up by trying funky new things.  I'm just the opposite and love trying new recipes and ingredients.


I confidently went to the Super Market to get the rolls and some herbs and cream.  I had a successful trial run under my belt, after all. Well, I live in a different town than my sister, who lives in Sugarhouse, a suburb of SLC.  I live in Provo.  I chose to go to Macey's for my shopping.  Do you think they had nice firm beautiful Batchi rolls?  No, just flimsy dinner rolls, the kind with sesame seeds on them.  So I decided to get them anyway.  Next, the cheese. No fancy cheeses here.  Just the regular chedder and mozarella, etc.  I chose the chedder. Next the herbs.  Well, here is the frugal part of me that belongs right here in this frugal giveaway blogasphere world. There were actually some fresh chives there but jeez, a little fingerful for $3.00?  I just couldn't do it. I needed even less than that and then the rest of them would go to waste!  (Now that is definitely revealing as to what an inexperienced and uncreative kind of a cook I am, not to think of something else to do with some remaining leftover chives, not to mention cheap, but my parents grew up in the depression and wasting food was not tolerated!) I decided to play around with what herbs I already had in my cupboard at home.


Long story short, I came home, put my 'eggs in a basket' and got them out of the oven.  They seemed a little runny so I put them back in for another 2 minutes.  Got them out and served them with asparagus.  Served them to dh, and ugh!  Not a good reaction.  The eggs were still very runny, my herb combination of thyme and basil were horrible with the eggs and chedder.  The rolls were a disaster.  My dh couldn't finish even one of them and he had requested I make 3 for him. I ended up throwing it out.


Moral of story: Use good ingredients and don't cut too many corners b/c you'll end up wasting a lot more than just a few sprigs of chives!


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