What to do with these common ingredients? Please suggest!

I'll lead with my feeble defense that I believe I can cook. What I can cook is simply limited. Most often dinners are the result of sporadic creativity and curiosity. Now I'd like to learn other ways of preparing ingredients to broaden that fundamental repertoire, answering the question, "What can I do with this?"

Thus, I plan to undertake a learning experiment, selecting one very simple ingredient as the representative of the week and exploring ways of preparing it, learning foods with which to pair it, and cooking recipes that contain it.

I mean very simple ingredients, and my selections are such:
1) Eggs

2) Bread (not baking it, but using it)












3) Lemons











4) Potatoes

5) Beans

So I ask you, what should I do? Do you have a recipe with one of these ingredients? Please, do share and, well, advise!

If I had children, I'd want them to date at the library.

This past week I rediscovered an institution that made me feel good about myself and helped mitigate my distaste for our society's creation of things like Jersey Shore or Tool Academy (despite my hidden enjoyment of these shows.)

I was assuaged in my concern by visiting the public library--an institution that just exudes wholesomeness, in my opinion. It seldom changes over time; there are still the pleasant older women there to greet guests, recommend books, and gawk at the young man looking for American classics for pleasure. As I checked out To Kill a Mockingbird and classical music CD's, I like to believe that they were compiling lists of young single women for whom they had someone to introduce--so go my delusions. That or they wished they were years younger, similar to the words of my 7th grade science teacher who once regretted she wasn't my age and was hence unable to date me. Only in my old age do I now question that comment's appropriateness. Hmm.

During my visit, I saw a most peculiar event: two teenagers, clearly dating, were flirting with books in hand in the seats across the way. Innocent and pubescent, I couldn't help but wish to compliment their parents. No chaperoning parents in site, which would have been unnecessary as these two were doing nothing crude, simply conversing at a polite decibel. Had I kids and I accepted the fact that teens date, I couldn't think of a better place for them to loiter than inside the public library. Heck, I'd drive 'em.

I best relate to middle-aged women.

As I continue my job search, I find myself with ample time in the days. Chinese lessons, job searching, and correspondences fill only so much time. So I spend my time "becoming cultured". This overstatement simply means I'm reading again--items such as stage dramas and Sedaris--watching foreign films--thank you Netflix subscription--and cooking--random selections of vegetables, starches, and meats collide and simmer in a pan. To keep sanity I also leave my place at least once a day. I am still befuddled that I look forward to my one errand of the day. Today, I couldn't even fill that and simply went to a coffee shop for a change of scenery. And as I sat reading my Minneapolis fiction, I noted many others around me doing the same. It is the middle of the afternoon as the sun slowly sets and casts warm rays on one's shoulder sitting in a comfy leather chair. I enjoyed this along with a multitude of others--the middle-aged women doing the exact same thing. Really, no men; no one under the age of 30. And for this afternoon, that was my peer group.

It's a simpler pace at the moment, one I can certainly enjoy and respect. Soon, I hope, I'll be back in chaos mode tossing around lines like, "I just don't have the time." But for now, it's new to admit, "yep, I do have the time for that."