Vegetable Garden Medley in an End of August Omelet

It’s Labor Day weekend, and the summer is coming to an end. The sky has begun to turn that deep blue at the end of the season. The morning air is clear and crisp and cool like the first bite of a perfect apple. Everywhere the signs of abundant harvest and turning seasons greet the eye.

Thistledown puffs float in the wind, scudding up the slope on gentle gusts of a little breeze that carries two lone cotton balls of white cloud overhead in the impossibly even deeper blue at the center of the sky.

Squashes and tomatoes load vines with heavy fruits that glisten in swollen ripeness and the giant leaves of the climbing squashes go yellow and brown on their edges.

Time to harvest. Time to eat this abundance until your body is full of the goodness of summer, all wrapped up in a perfect Sunday brunch of exquisite taste and texture that leaves you savoring every bite and lingering over the incredible bursts of complex flavors in each morsel.

This is what the summer garden is all about. That moment in time when it all comes together in a great symphony of delicious abundance.

This is what makes all that hard work of planting and weeding and tending and watering worth it.

And everyone is in on the act. Even the chickens, whose exchange of greens and garden weeds and bugs yield us perfect fresh eggs. Here is the quintessential egg and garden vegetable omelet to end a lovely long summer – serve it for brunch or as an early evening supper as you enjoy the last of the longer days of the turning season.

As you take in the delicious flavors you are feasting on a rich tapestry of the best sources of vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and phytonutrients that come from eating fresh garden vegetables in all the colors of the rainbow. This is the true harvest of a healthy organic vegetable garden. Add healing and an exquisite depth of flavor by using turmeric as a beautiful glowing yellow accent seasoning.

End of August Omelet – Take One

Vegetable Garden Medley in an End of August Omelet

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Servings: 2

As you take in the delicious flavors you are feasting on a rich tapestry of the best sources of vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and phytonutrients that come from eating fresh garden vegetables in all the colors of the rainbow. This is the true harvest of a healthy organic vegetable garden. Add healing and an exquisite depth of flavor by using turmeric as a beautiful glowing yellow accent seasoning.

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Ingredients

• Fresh coffee set up in the pot and ready to start
• 4 tablespoons butter divided
• 4 slices Canadian bacon
• 4 good sized green onions or greens from one large stalk (washed, roots and outer tough greens removed)
• 5 or 6 mushrooms of your choice
• 1 baby zucchini no more than 6 inches long and 1 inch diameter
• 4 baby stalks celery from the center
• 1 Italian red pepper or red bell pepper
• 1 large ripe tomato
• 4 to 5 spinach plants bottoms cut off and tops washed well
• 1 large bunch about two handfuls of curly parsley stems removed
• 4 stalks of purple and green basil stems removed
• 5 eggs plus one tablespoon filtered water
• 2 to 3 ounces goat cheddar
• Turmeric, salt and pepper to taste when serving
• Fresh bread ciabatta is nice, sliced thin for toast

Instructions

1. Remove the eggs from the refrigerator and place, unbroken, in a bowl of hot tap water. Let them sit while you gather the other ingredients and begin chopping the bacon and vegetables.
2. Wash and chop and prepare the ingredients in the order on the list by cutting them to 1/2 inch pieces and setting into small piles on a clean surface. I like to use a wide flat soup bowl to gather the ingredients, two at a time in the reverse order they will go into the pan - for example, mushrooms and then onions on top of them, celery and then zucchini on top of them, so I can gather up and pour into the pan each next ingredient quickly and easily. I use the same bowl and just keep re-filling it with whatever comes next off my cutting board.
3. The main thing is to have the ingredients in the order they go into the pan (same as the list above) so you can just smoothly move through the cooking and keep it simple.
4. Start a large heavy bottom frying pan on medium high heat on the stove and melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in the pan. When it is sizzling, add the bacon and turn for about 1 minute until it is hot.
5. Add the green onion and stir continuously for about 30 seconds until it is all heated and has soaked up the butter. Reduce the heat to medium. Continue cooking until the pan starts to look dry and the onions are shrinking. Add the mushrooms and stir until they begin to weep.
6. When the onions and mushroom have reduced to about half their original volume, add the zucchini and then the celery.
7. Continue to stir until the zucchini and celery are well heated but not cooked, about another 2 minutes.
8. Remember, you can stop at any time by simply removing the pan from the heat, so if you need to gather the rest of the ingredients to get them ready to go into the pan, or want to go to the garden because you forgot the basil, (ahem) just remove the pan from the heat and go do whatever you need to do. Do NOT stress. The entire point of this meal is that it is enjoyable!
9. This is a good time to start the coffee machine.
10. Add the red pepper and tomato and mix well. Reduce the heat to medium low. Cook and stir for another minute or two and then put all the greens (spinach, parsley and basil) on top of the vegetables but don't mix them in.
11. Whip up the eggs in a large clean bowl with the filtered water. I use the same soup bowl that transported the vegetables to the pan to whip up the eggs in.
12. Get a large serving bowl and place it next to the stove.
13. Turn on the toaster.
14. Stir in the greens into the whole vegetable mix and turn and stir until everything is mixed well. Cook for one minute all mixed together.
15. Serve the vegetables into the large serving bowl.
16. Wash out the pan with hot water and wipe it dry, set it back on the burner. Put the heat back up to medium high and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter.
17. Put the bread in the toaster.
18. When the butter is sizzling, lift and turn the pan to coat the entire pan with butter and then slowly whisk the eggs in the bowl over the pan and let them drizzle into the pan. They should be sizzlign as soon as they hit the pan. Take your time pouring them in, not all at once, and allow the pan to stay hot.
19. Drag the egg across the pan with a clean sharp edged spatula as it cooks and gather the cooked egg on one side of the pan. Then do that again a couple of times until there is only a thin layer of uncooked egg on one side of the pan and most of the egg is gathered into a pile on the other side of the pan. The egg will not be fully cooked at this point, that's fine. The thin layer of egg will only just have 'set' on the hot pan and be mostly raw on top.
20. Now move the pan off the burner to a cold burner momentarily and put as much of the vegetable mixture as you can fit on top of the thin layer of egg.
21. Use a serving spoon to do this so you do not take up the liquid that will be in the bottom of the bowl. Spread the vegetables across the thin layer of cooking egg. Grate the cheese on top of the vegetables and distribute across the vegetables evenly.
22. Reduce the heat on the burner to medium.Return the pan to the heat. Slide your spatula under the pile of cooked egg and gently flip the egg up over the top of the vegetables and cheese. If you don't get it all in one go, just carefully and gently slide and flip until you get it all. Don't worry if the egg is not all cooked through, it is easier to move around in the pan when it is still wet.
23. Arrange the egg across the top of the vegetables. Then slide the spatula into the pan next to the omelet and use the side of the spatula to push the whole omelet to the center of the pan. Turn off the heat and put a lid on the pan.
24. Leave the pan on the hot burner that is turned off while you pour the coffee and butter the toast. Then serve when you are ready and the omelet has cooked all through and is not runny or too wet in the middle. You can take from 2 to about 5 minutes at the end with the heat off and the lid on the pan to get the eggs cooked to exactly your preference. The cheese will keep it moist.

Recipe Notes

Don't forget to put in the toast about 3 minutes before you serve!

Most likely, you will not fit all the vegetables into the omelet. But that's okay. Put them in a Tupperware and heat them up for dinner, or if your garden is super abundant and you are feeling really generous, feed the left over vegetables to the chickens, who will love you for it and return the favor by giving you more beautiful healthy eggs.