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Crab Avocado Toast

one and a half slices crab avocado toast healthy recipe eggs breakfast
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Maryland Crab Avocado Toast

one and a half slices crab avocado toast healthy recipe eggs breakfast

2022 was supposed to be the year of risotto. And here we are midway through the Fall and I have yet to make or attempt risotto. Instead 2022 has been the year of Aperol (Aperol Spritz, Paper Plane), the year of putting chimichurri on everything, the year I learned to make authentic tiramisu, and the year of Crab. (and, yes, for all you Chinese Zodiak fans out there, I realize that 2022 is actually the year of the Tiger). 

🦀🐯

New people, big love, and good life have found me tucked away in corners of Saint Michaels, Maryland and the like splitting crabs open down the middle and pulling out that sweet meat for hours on end under hot sun with an orange crush to keep me company. I entered a raffle for a baby blue Mustang and it was worth the entry price for the dream of winning. Someone almost pushed me into murky canal water and crab meat has saved many an idle Thursday afternoon when the work day was just a little more oppressive than the August heat. I’ve grown accustomed to the smell of Old Bay – even come to love it – and relish the tiny plastic containers of leftover picked crab we diligently carry home with an eye towards another meal. While crab and scrambled eggs has been a favorite, nothing compares to finding yourself with leftover crab meat and leftover chimichurri on the same day. On that day – on that very special day – the scrambled egg, crab meat, avocado toast with chimichurri is ripe for the making and there is no resisting the most elegant of all possible brunches. Local Chesapeake crab meat, vibrantly green chimi, scramble, avo, and oil atop a slightly crisped sour dough. Nothing says summer brunching like this. So even if you aren’t from Virginia or Maryland, find a bit of crab meat and let this one change your morning. 

🥑

what you need

2 slices of sourdough or bread of choice

Good olive oil

3 eggs, scrambled with a splash of milk, salt, and paprika

1 avocado, cut in half and thinly sliced

5-6oz fresh crab meat

(optional) leftover chimichurri

how to make it

Toast sourdough lightly on both sides (I typically do this in the broiler in the oven). 

Drizzle lightly with olive oil and add a layer of chimichurri, if using.  

Layer on the egg, the avocado, then the crab meat. 

Sprinkle with salt, cracked black pepper, and a dash of paprika or cayenne. 

Serve warm. 
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Borek

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Sweet Potato Biscuits

As if the OneandahalfSlices flaky biscuits weren’t delicious enough, this variation on the theme is the perfect spring, summer, or fall use for that extra large, earthy sweet potato you ‘ll get all season long.

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June 11, 2022 No Comments
Categories
Local

Longstone Farm

cows local farm oneandahalfslices farm-to-table beef
OneandahalfSlices food blog recipes One and a half Slices Virginia eat local

Longstone Farm

cows local farm oneandahalfslices farm-to-table beef

The OneandahalfSlices About page presents somewhat of a mission statement for the blog. Why am I doing this and why are we all here? – aside from the obvious: all the good food! (for the genesis of the name OneandahalfSlices, see Skillet Cornbread). The mission is simple.

 To explore ways to procure local ingredients, to cook more seasonally, and to make food healthier and more delicious at the same time. 

For those of you that know me well, you know that this topic of local, sustainable agriculture is of great importance to me and I do my best to ‘vote with my feet’ when it comes to what I eat. Once a good batch of recipes were up on the site, it was always my intention to bring the focus of the blog to the ingredients that go into those recipes. Because “when you are chasing after the best flavor, you are chasing after the best ingredients and when you are chasing after the best ingredients, you are in search of great farming.” – Chef Dan Barber (who has left his upstate NY Michelin restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns to consult at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee). I have many a friend and colleague who have said things like “I don’t eat seafood” or “I really hate green beans” or “mushrooms are gross,” and then proceeded to devour fresh caught Kingfish ceviche, grilled pole beans from the CSA, and fresh foraged morel and chanterelle risotto. You may not think you like green beans if you’ve only ever had them out of a can from the grocery store or slathered in Campbell’s mushroom soup in a Thanksgiving green bean casserole. But a fresh, crisp green bean, with all the flavor and sweetness of summer and sun, is something else entirely. Chef Barber said it more eloquently than I ever could. Food simply tastes better when it’s fresh. And made from ingredients that are in season and are grown in healthy soil that is part of a fully organic ecological system. 

Part of that system is meat (well, animals, really). Enter Longstone Farm in Lovettsville, Virginia. There are few farms in Virginia as dedicated to the narrative described above as Longstone Farm. Family owners Justin and Casey have gone all in with their lifestyle, their family, and their footprint, investing in the recursive, sustainable tenets of organic farming and local community, and producing some of the highest quality meats in Northern Virginia. The cream of their crop are their hogs and I firmly advocate that there is no better porkchop than a Longstone Farm porkchop. They also raise chickens and cattle. I have a lot to learn from the purveyors of Longstone Farm who engage in a lot of community outreach. For example, the photos you see here are from their Sunday Suppers, typically held over the spring/summer/fall seasons once a month, featuring local chefs who craft custom menus using Longstone Farm products. Before that dinner, Casey and Justin host a farm tour complete with hay ride where they show you their farm and briefly explain the rationale behind what they do every day and why. The evening is luxurious, relaxing, and enlightening for those who have never had the opportunity to think of food in a different way – food as community, food as nourishment for muscles and sinew, food as your personal connection to place, purpose, and your own body. 

Here is what you need to know about Longstone Farm:

  • They practice 100% organic, sustainable farming.
  • They have a self-service farm store in Lovettsville where you can buy as much or as little as you desire on your own time. Think it’s not worth the drive? Think about making a monthly trip out to beautiful Virginia countryside to buy local meat in bulk for the freezer to cook incrementally over the next 30-45 days. Not so difficult. Your meat would taste better and you’d be doing your part by supporting local farms!
  • They also have a smaller market on Rout 9. 
  • They offer bulk beef, pork, and chicken shares for those who want to purchase, say, half a cow.
  • Sunday Suppers are amazing but you have to be on their e-mail list to be notified of dates. Drop a comment if you want to be added. 
  • The farmers are serious, knowledgeable, and extremely open and generous with their time.

There will be more posts like these to come on OneandahalfSlices in the future as there are many great farms to explore in Northern Virginia. Ways to eat more locally and sustainably are things I very much want to explore through my cooking and, as mentioned previously, this blog is the chronicle of that exploration. I welcome you all to the OneandahalfSlices table for a 100% local dinner whenever you schedule permits – maybe join us for a Saturday Supper in Arlington and cook with us! And I challenge you all to take one step this year to do something slightly different around your relationship with food. Choose something like a Sunday Supper or The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm for date night. Stop eating foods that come in packages (chips, cookies, soups, instant meals and sides – it doesn’t take that much longer to make those things yourself if you know how – enter OneandahalfSlices). Sign up for a vegetable Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. Stop buying meat in the grocery store and try Longstone Farm, Spring House Farm Store, or Whiffletree Farm meats instead. Challenging yourself or your household to do just one of these things will make a difference and may just begin an unexpected journey (there and back again) for you and your family. 
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one and a half slices local simple recipes food

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rabbit chicken cassoulet recipe simple one pot one and a half slices

Rabbit Cassoulet

Here we are with Protein #2 in our Protein Trio and it’s a bit of a non-standard one. We don’t often cook rabbit but… we totally should! It is more delicate than chicken with more flavor, but still not too gamey. Cassoulets are bean-based stews with a protein that can stew all day or come together quite quickly. They are hearty and Fall-ish, and I am thrilled to have this one on my table. You can make this with roasted chicken or a sausage if the rabbit is a stretch for you.

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September 22, 2023 No Comments
one and a half slices

Salt

“I have two lovers in life that I have never slept with. The city of Paris and potatoes.” – Francis Mallmann. The taste of empanadas, parrillada, and red wine came to flavor my adolescence, calibrating my tastes – both for food and experience – for something deeper.

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one and a half slices Christmas 2022 present package recipe gift

Happy Christmas 2022

Happy Christmas 2022 and a Rice Krispie Treat with #holidayvibes If you worked for me, with me, or with Merigold Analytics in 2022, chances are you got one of these in early December. These little boxes are filled with the stuff dreams are made of – stickers, marshmallows, and Oreo cookies. This Christmas season, OneandahalfSlices made layered rice krispies stuffed with Oreo, Biscoff, Graham, candy cane, and many, many, tiny marshmallows. We celebrated Christmas this

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One and a half Slices october oktoberfest fall vibes

Oktoberfest

October has always been my favorite month (for cooking, for being). Let me tell you why.

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Categories
Local

Sumac

OneandahalfSlices food blog recipes One and a half Slices Virginia eat local

Sumac

If you’re a Northern Virginia resident and looking for your next day trip out to the Virginia countryside, keep reading…

The two places where I have spent the most time in my life – Florida and Northern Virginia. (We will leave Georgia, Argentina, Pennsylvania, and Northern Spain aside for the time being). Both have the welcome benefit of being “agg states,” or states where agriculture flourishes almost year round. This, in concert with my mother’s perpetual distillation of food philosophy from the vapors of Florida coastal living, bred in me a deep appreciation and genuine curiosity for local agriculture, slow food movements, and organic farming. (I was, after all, raised on books like The Man Who Cooked For Himself and Ishmael). To this end, you all know I have a CSA and routinely patronize local establishments with a focus on procuring local, seasonal ingredients – produce, meat, and dairy alike. 

There are two places in particular in Northern Virginia that live into the #locallysourced theme extraordinarily well – one of those two is featured here today. 

The purveyors of Sumac, Northern Virginia’s newest local food pop-up kitchen in Sperryville, VA, are as down to earth as the stone fruits and cherries they are serving up this summer. Sumac (follow their Insta) was born from a love of local cooking.

Sumac is a spice grown in East Asia and Central Africa. A favorite flavor of mine, the Lebanese and Turkish have the most common varietals, the former a deep crimson, and the latter a lilac purple. As it turns out, Sumac grows in Northern Virginia as well. As the Sumac chef began planning his menus, it became apparent that a 100% local menu required some substitutions for common ingredients like oils, vinegars, and spices. Something that is not available in Northern Virginia is citrus, for which the sumac plant, with its citrus-y notes, became a viable substitute. 

Fennel Pie
Steak
Stone Fruit
Chicken
Fruit & Cheese

Sumac is housed at Penn Druid Brewing’s new location out in Sperryville, so barrel-fermented, natural cider and beer are available to accompany the Sumac menu. With 6-7 items split evenly between mains and desserts with a snack, Sumac announces its menu each week for its Thursday-Sunday opening. For fourth of July weekend, we were delighted with some of the best steak I have ever tasted, fennel pie topped with a light meringue (amazing!), chicken over a cornbread-esque base, an apricot tartine, and many local fruits and cheeses. It was quite the feast enjoyed under a vibrant sun, a strong wind, and in the company of the beautiful Shenandoah mountains. With picnic tables in a wide open field serving as your backdrop, this is easily the most peaceful, inspirational restaurant ambiance you’ll find in the area. 

While Sperryville can be a bit of a hike for us Northern Virginian-ers, there are other things to do out there as well like Mary’s Rock hike with fantastic views (which does not require entrance to Skyline Drive) and the Copper Fox Distillery. So if you’ve got half a day to fill, I highly recommend the hour drive out West to experience some of the cleanest, most creative, most sustainable food in Northern Virginia. May all restaurants follow your example, Sumac – keep cooking!

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