Lydia Likes It

Breakfast for a week, or for a crowd. Or for dinner.

I can't remember when I began inventing egg casseroles. Years ago, certainly, and more regularly, as often as once a week, over the past two or three years. Each casserole uses a dozen eggs and a 7-8 ounce bag of grated cheese, providing six servings. Packed solid with chicken andouille sausages (slightly spicy), something green (baby spinach, asparagus or green pepper), and something brown (sliced mushrooms, potatoes, butternut squash), along with spices of your choice (jalapeño flakes, thyme, parsley, basil, black pepper) and any kind of cheese (Mexican blend, mozzarella, cheddar), these egg casseroles will carry you through a week of breakfast, lunch or dinner. And you can bake them ahead, the night before, and reheat in the microwave for breakfast with houseguests the next morning.

Egg and cheese casserole 

Serves 6.

Ingredients

Cooking spray (PAM)
2 Tbsp butter
16 oz chicken andouille sausage, sliced
1/2 onion, peeled and diced
5 oz baby spinach, washed and dried (or any green vegetable)
8 oz sliced fresh mushrooms (or any brownish vegetable)
1 tsp jalapeño flakes
1 Tbsp thyme
12 large eggs
7 oz shredded Mexican cheese mix (or any shredded cheese)
1/4 tsp fresh black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 9x13 casserole dish with cooking spray, and set aside.

In a large nonstick frying pan, heat the butter. Add the sausage and sauté over low-medium heat for 5-10 minutes, until the sausage is lightly browned. Add the onion, green and brown vegetables, and sauté for 3-4 minutes. Stir in the jalapeño flakes and thyme. Remove from heat, and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until fluffy. Stir in the cheese and black pepper.

Spray the casserole dish with cooking spray, and spread the cooked sausage and vegetables in the bottom. Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables, and stir gently to bring some of the vegetables to the surface.

Bake uncovered at 375F for 35 minutes, until the eggs are puffed and brown around the edges. Remove casserole from the oven, and let it set for 5-10 minutes before serving. (Can be made ahead and refrigerated, and served cold, at room temperature, or warmed.)

Chain of Fools?

Awesome. Wow. Whoopie. She's not Aretha Franklin, who recorded this in 1968; she's Gezel Bardossi, a 12-year-old Australian girl who sang this for her audition for The Voice of Australia in 2023. Close your eyes when you listen to Gezel. You'll swear Aretha is singing in your ear. (Thanks to my husband Ted for finding this.)

They Arrived Homeless. Now They’re Helping Others Make New York Home.

This article appeared in the New York Times on November 11, 2023. It made me happier than almost anything I've read in a long time.

*********************

At a makeshift welcome center in the Lower East Side, those who came before help those who are new, and a community begins to grow.

 

Newly arrived migrants meet with volunteers at a weekly gathering on the Lower East Side, where they are connected to legal help and offered donated clothing and a hot meal. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

By Nina Agrawal

Nov. 11, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ET

The migrants started lining up by dawn. After trekking to New York from across Latin America, young people and families had made their way to an elementary school on the Lower East Side to be greeted, in Spanish, by immigrants who had come before them.

Most of the greeters were Venezuelan, and many had made the same trek just weeks before. They guided the newest newcomers to tables covered in clothes and shoes, connected them to legal services, or offered a haircut and hot meal.

Yicel Rondon arrived in New York earlier this year with her partner and two children, after fleeing Venezuela and Colombia. “We came here with nothing — just the clothes we were wearing and our documents,” she said.

The makeshift welcome center run weekly out of the cafeteria at P.S. 20 Anna Silver Elementary has become one of the first stops for new migrants as they get their bearings in a new country. Many arrive with few connections to New York and have ended up in homeless shelters, which officials have said are past the breaking point. The city has recently stepped up a campaign to encourage migrants to move out of the shelter system — or out of the city altogether.

But the center is also a sign that some of the new immigrants are settling in and, in some cases, becoming self-sufficient.

Before the latest influx, the Venezuelan diaspora in New York City was tiny, estimated at 21,000 in 2021, including about 14,000 persons born in Venezuela. In the last year and a half, the number has roughly tripled. Officials have estimated that at least 40,000 Venezuelan migrants have arrived in New York City since 2022. While other migrants might have a consulate where they can turn, Venezuelans do not. Their consulate is closed, a result of deteriorated diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela.

The city opened an intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown earlier this year to help place migrants in shelters and connect them to services, months after the city declared a crisis. The administration of Mayor Eric Adams set up an asylum application assistance program in June. It helped migrants complete more than 5,600 applications by mid-October, officials said.

But the city has received more than 130,000 newcomers, and their needs are enormous. Various volunteer groups and nonprofits have also provided clothing donations and other assistance. But migrants attempting to apply for asylum or protection from deportation need help to muster documents and navigate a complex court process.

Jesus Aguais and his nonprofit organization, Aid for Life, have since July 2022 tried to fill the gaps. Mr. Aguais, who is Venezuelan, has been established in New York for decades. His organization grew out of a sister nonprofit, Aid For AIDS, that Mr. Aguais set up in 1996 to provide free antiretroviral medication to people with H.I.V. in Latin America.

“We started providing nutrition to Venezuelans with the Venezuelan humanitarian emergency,” he said. “Then we expanded to migrants. This is all linked. We helped them in Venezuela, then in Colombia, then Peru, then Panama, now in New York.”

 

Many of the volunteers helping migrants are migrants themselves. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

In addition to weekly welcome events, called “jornadas” in Spanish, Aid For Life holds legal workshops explaining the asylum process and has clinics where Venezuelan paralegals volunteer. They help migrants submit asylum claims and applications for temporary humanitarian protection — both of which enable them to work. The paralegals, who have been flying up from Miami, are now about to open an office locally to help with the volume of cases.

“This is about building community from the inside out,” Mr. Aguais said. “It’s not just about humanitarian aid. This is the first step to integration.”

On a Saturday in October that topped 70 degrees, that first step began in line outside ABC Playground, next to P.S. 20. An Aid For Life staff member directed first-timers to volunteers who asked about everything from their nationality to their pregnancy status, and what services they needed.

Gelson Montero, 28, had come to the jornada a week prior, following the advice of an aunt who had arrived earlier. “Because of that I have these clothes,” he said, pointing to the sweatshirt and pants he wore.

Mr. Montero and his partner, Yusmely Parra, 24, arrived in New York on Oct. 5 and Ms. Parra gave birth the next day. It was the first time Ms. Parra was well enough to come to a jornada.

Breastfeeding her newborn with one hand, she sifted through piles of clothes with the other, pulling out a pair of jeans and a bra for herself, a princess dress for her older daughter, and a one-piece suit for the baby. Among a limited supply of shoes, she was lucky to find a pair of sneakers that fit. Volunteers handed her a pack of diapers.

 

Yusmely Parra gave birth the day after she arrived in New York City. She came to the Lower East Side gathering a few weeks later. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

Migrants also came for hot food: rice, beans, and chicken or meat prepared by the nearby Dominican restaurant, El Castillo de Jagua. “It’s delicious,” said Yusty Parra, Mr. Montero’s aunt. (She is not related to Yusmely Parra.)

Mr. Aguais spends about $3,000 each week on the food. Other expenses include the permit for the school, bags of dry goods to give away, and token thank you gifts for volunteers. Small grants cover the costs and are supplemented by donations of clothing and food. Each week, Mr. Aguais also enlists the help of 30 to 40 volunteers.

The jornadas have served more than 20,000 migrants, he said.

Yordany Corona, 16, came for a free haircut. His barber on this day, Roybert Suarez, arrived in New York in September and began volunteering right away. Yordany’s father chatted with other newcomers while Mr. Suarez closely shaved his son’s neck.

Nearby, Selitza Castro, 51, a volunteer, explained that she has come every week since she arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal last year. She moved out of a homeless shelter and into a rental apartment in Brooklyn a few months ago.

“Those of us who have been here longer, we are a little more established — not very, but a little,” Ms. Castro said. “We feel like family, helping others who have arrived more recently.”

Volunteers offer a haircut and shave to migrants who had been on the roads for weeks before arriving in New York City. Credit...Lexi Parra for The New York Times

The volunteering life {looking ahead}

One of the things my husband Ted and I like most about Opus Newton, the nonprofit senior living community where we'll be moving in 2025 (and which, as you can see above, is still a hole in the ground), is the volunteering requirement for all residents. Yes, Opus will have a cafe, and an art studio, and a fitness room, and gardens, and walking paths, and programming, but some of that will be managed or organized by the residents as part of their volunteer work. I'm hoping a few residents will pull together book clubs, and share their expertise in lecture series. Of course I'm planning for my own contributions, as I wouldn't make a very good bartender (don't drink) or aerobics instructor (don't hop). I'd love to teach some cooking classes, especially using the Instant Pot or slow cooker and vegetables from the Newton Community Farm, which is just across the road (at left in the photo above). I'm hoping to bring together ESOL teachers, of which there are at least a handful, to share tips and ideas. Maybe I'll organize a group to make and donate welcome blankets to refugees and immigrants, and help plan visits to Boston area museums. Lots to think about.

Collage kits for all ages

When it comes to art, sometimes it takes an artist to convince a nonartist to, well, give art a chance. My friend Laura Laramie, who graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, showed me a bit about the world of collage, and now she's found a great way to help you get started. Just in time for the holidays, Laura's offering wonderful collage kits on her eBay site. For $18, you get scissors, a glue stick, a frame, instructions, and a bag full of mix-and-match papers to cut up and create images, or extracts, or anything you'd like. These kits make wonderful gifts, or help you style wonderful gifts for your family and friends. No two kits are the same. The official name is Kitchen Table Collage Art Kit Journal Making Scrapbooking Junk Journal Ephemera; that should get you in the right frame of mind!