Fried Eggs with Apple & Sweet Potato Hash, and my Rosh Hashanah Best Laid Plans

Last night was supposed to be spent making homemade applesauce. Today was supposed to be devoted to baking up a batch of deliciously festive applesauce cinnamon rolls, complete with honey drizzle to ring in the Jewish New Year for the belated family dinner I’m having tonight. But you know what they say about the best laid plans, and instead of doing all of that baking, I find myself pathetically just barely able to cut a chicken breast by myself – much less peel, core and chop 3 pounds of apples, knead the dough, and roll it all up into a irresistibly crafted confection.

You see, I finally got what I had coming to me. I’m not the most attentive in the kitchen. I don’t always curl my fingers under when chopping a carrot, I have a bad habit of using my hands to try to clear out sharp utensils like vegetable peelers and used cans of food, and I definitely don’t spend enough time cutting away from my body. And so, it was only a matter of time before karma came around to see me. On Wednesday I was trying to separate two frozen-together tortillas to make a wrap to take with me to a meeting around lunch time, and I chose a very sharp serrated knife for the job. Unfortunately, halfway through the prying process, my knife decided that it would much rather peel apart my left thumb, so it slipped right through those stinking tortillas and jabbed me smack down the side of my finger.

Four hours and five stitches later, I was asking my roommates to just this once please do the dishes for me, and watching a marathon of Say Yes to the Dress to counter the “trauma” of my first real ER experience. Now, that ridiculous bandage is off, but there’s a smaller one in its place to keep the stitches clean, and I still am having trouble with some fairly mundane tasks. So, it’s probably best that I wait on those beautifully tempting cinnamon buns. Just be sure that next week when I come home for Fall Break, I won’t be able to park my car and get in the kitchen fast enough to get these babies baking. Recipe to come, indeed.

Now, though, I can at least give you a recipe that involves apples. There’s no honey and it isn’t a dessert, so I’m afraid that it isn’t entirely festive, but it is breakfast. And we did just recently wake up and welcome in the Jewish year of 5772 with the first meal of the day. And it could have been this recipe for fried eggs with sweet potato and apple hash. And if it had been, it would have been a mighty fine start to the year. Cooking the egg this way is unbelievably easy, but if you like liquidy yolks, definitely keep the cooking time to a minimum – I thought I did, but in the end I would’ve preferred it even less cooked. The apple:potato ratio is perfect, though I might like the potatoes to be a little bit more cooked if we’re going to get really knit-picky. I mixed some of the leftover potato hash with chicken sausage for lunch the next day, and that was equally fantastic. The colors are vibrant, the meal isn’t greasy or heavy, and it’s super tasty, so definitely give this a shot!