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I don't care which came first, I'm just glad we have eggs. I love eggs and while I have suffered through the dismal pallor of conventionally raised eggs, I feel blessed that I have a steady supply of "good eggs." I buy the same eggs from Mark and Catherine Anderson at Champoeg Farm that our lucky Grand Central customers enjoy on all of our breakfast sandwiches at the bakery.

My mother spoiled us on farm-fresh eggs. I cannot remember a time when we did not have chickens. When we introduced the first egg sandwich to the Grand Central line-up, finding eggs from pasture-raised, free-roaming chickens was a priority. Eggs from happy chickens that live on grass and eat a diverse diet are magic. If you doubt this, just check out the yolk... bright yellow, sometimes orange. There is a debate in our family whether the intense color is the result of eating the carotene in green grass, or bugs. Whatever the reason, you can rest assured that Champoeg Farm chickens get their fill of both.

Poached eggs on a buttery slice of toasted Como are delicious, and so are creamy scrambled eggs piled onto thick slices of toasted peasant loaf. When you eat a pasture-raised egg you know it, but is it worth cooking and baking with these gems? Yes! Any custard, cake, or soufflé will improve when made with made with a "good egg."

My brother Ben feeds his three kids crêpes several times a week and he shared all of his crepe-making secrets with us for our book — the top priority is to start with a good egg. The color and texture of these crêpes is just perfect and they are suitable for sweet or savory applications. I'm having them for breakfast with powdered sugar and lemon.

On Monday, I complained about being sick of pie — well, I'm over it. I love to eat pie, I love to bake pie, it's time for pie. Last night I baked my first apple pie of the fall because my mother, and bakery founder, Gwen Bassetti, made her annual trip to town yesterday with a truckload of her big bumpy "Basssetti" apples. Grand Central Bakers will use these unique apples in pies, tarts, and cakes, but I could not resist taking a few home to make dessert.

Everybody brings some baggage to a marriage, especially when it's the third time around for both parties. Fred Bassetti brought an unidentified heirloom apple strain that he casually had named "the Bassetti." More than 80 years ago, the mother of the trees that produced these apples was producing apples in front of the house where he grew up in Foster, ten miles south of Seattle. Fred had propagated a few trees from the original and the apples were popular with a loyal few, until a friend in the orchard business convinced my mom and Fred to graft scions from the old tree and plant an orchard where she had once grown shallots. Today there are 75 trees that produce 6-8 tons of apples a year.

For years, the apples remained unidentified... and the Bassetti name stuck. Both my Mom and Fred believed them to be a "sport" (essentially a happenstance). However, last year at the Seattle Fruit Society fall show, the mystery was solved when a panel of experts decided that it must be a "Spokane Beauty."

The apple's story goes something like this. In 1859, Stephen Maxson, Sr. came west on the Oregon Trail, bringing a bag of apple seeds. He settled about six miles east of Walla Walla, and planted the seeds. One of them grew into a tree that produced particularly fine apples. He named it a Spokane Beauty. One nursery catalog described them as follows: "Largest apple known, a prodigy for size; of extraordinary beauty... crisp, juicy, rich with a delicious, high flavor. Unsurpassed for cooking and drying; a very long keeper..." While they never caught on commercially, probably due to inconsistent yields and its unwieldy size, the Spokane Beauty lives on at our farm in Goldendale and in many of the apple-filled treats you can find at Grand Central this fall.

The eight-grain cereal, whole-wheat flour, and brown-sugar caramel say it all; the Grand Central Cinnamon Roll was born in the '70s. 1972 to be exact, in Grand Central's predecessor, The Bakery. My mother and her original partners Marion and Marian opened a café in the newly renovated Maynard Building (former home to the Grand Central Railroad offices) in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. For breakfast, the idea was they would offer a different fresh-baked breakfast pastry each morning, along with a selection of simple egg preparations and healthy hot cereal. My mother whipped out batches of fresh buttermilk biscuits (p. 96) and offered up trays of streusel-topped coffee cake (p.30); but when she served her cinnamon rolls (p. 42-45), people lined up the next day asking, "where do I buy those cinnamon rolls?" That day, the cinnamon roll became a fixture in the Grand Central repertoire.

I'm 44 and our cinnamon roll is 38 ? that means basically my entire conscious life I have been eating some version of this roll. Now that I think about it, some of my most delicious memories are of warm cinnamon rolls served alongside scrambled eggs, or rolls pulled apart and smothered with butter, next to a dark mug of coffee.

Like many of her cohorts, my mother's baking was heavily influenced by The Tassajara Bread Book, published in 1970 by the Chief Priest Zen Center in San Francisco. The whole-grain bread dough that is the core of our cinnamon rolls was born from this seminal, hippie baking book. It is just like my mother to transform "healthy" whole-grain bread dough into gooey, sweet cinnamon rolls. I've seen her do it many times. She rolls out the dough, smears it with soft butter, tops the butter with a generous amount of brown and white sugars mixed with cinnamon, then coils it up into to these yummy breakfast rolls.

Today our cinnamon rolls remain one of our best sellers, and I can't help think that avid fans will love baking them at home. Our version, scaled for the home baker, yields a smaller roll that can be timed to rise overnight and be ready to pop into your oven when you wake up in the

David and I have the best visits with my brother Sam and his family, when we just drop in on them. They live and farm in Underwood, Washington. Sam spreads a vibe of pleasant productivity and there is a pattern of work, chatter, and eating that feels nourishing to be around. Last weekend when we dropped by, Sam was busy shelling beans from his garden. His patio was covered with wire racks full of different kinds of fresh dried shell beans. They all looked alike from the outside but once the brittle shell was shed, their distinctive, vibrant insides appeared. Sam ordered these heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, California. They sport colorful names like cranberry beans, yellow-eye beans, Christmas limas, and yellow Indian woman beans (I said colorful, not politically correct). The wire racks were stacked up and separated by variety; it was clear Sam was working on an efficient system but had tired of the project. He told me we could take home whatever I shelled. We set right to work.

Tonight I'm going to cook the cranberry beans that Sam gave us. It's 5:20 p.m. I have not started and they are not soaking. And we will eat tonight and long before midnight. One of the best food realizations I have had this year is that fresh-dried shell beans are superior. Not only do these beans cook quickly, they don't require soaking and they taste great. The less you do to them, the better. I know "fresh-dried" sounds like a contradiction, but once you've had them you will realize why I call them that. They are dried beans, but they have just dried and are still fresh. The moisture still in the bean means they cook fast. That said, I do need to get them cooking.

Dice and sauté a medium-sized white onion in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Make sure to salt the onions and take your time to caramelize the onions before you add diced garlic. When the garlic has cooked, add 3 cups of water (every bone in my body wants to use stock, but I know when the beans are this good it's only gilding the lily) and a cup of fresh-dried beans. Bring the pot to a full boil then turn it down to a simmer. Check the pot every now and again. It really stinks when you burn beans. Add more water if it gets dry at all. In about an hour taste the beans. Add salt and pepper to taste and cook until they are tender. Enjoy as a main course with rice or tortillas or as a side dish. I'm having a lamb burger and my pescatarian mate, David, will be enjoying a yummy fish sandwich. We'll both enjoy a large serving of beans on the side.

Tomorrow I promise I'll talk about

Has anybody else noticed just how delicious everything has been this summer? I don't know if mind-bogglingly sweet berries, melons, apricots, plums, and tomatoes are the upside of global warming or if I'm just paying closer attention, but I've...