A Tale of Two Yolks

You know that Italian hash I make? So the yolk is technically supposed to remain intact. I never managed it, ever, and was frankly thoroughly puzzled as to how one could even achieve a non-broken yolk when dealing with fried bread.

Success! Unbroken yolk!

But then a miracle happened!

OK, it wasn't a miracle. I just figured out that to not break the yolk you needed to make a little well in the middle of the fried bread, hot pepper and cheese and put the egg in there. Then you had to be very, very careful about flipping the entire concoction (yes, it requires flipping).

Failure. Broken yolk and sheepy cheese.

And this was how I managed to not break the yolk for the first time ever. Big round of applause for me!

I was so impressed with myself that I then decided to demonstrate my new mad non-egg-yolk-breaking-skillz to Spousal Unit. Unfortunately, I managed to break the yolk in the bowl before even dropping it into the pan. (Yes, I always crack eggs in a bowl first. This way I can check whether they're fertilized or bad. Yes I do realize this is somewhat crazy.)

Spousal Unit looked at the broken egg and asked me exactly what I wanted to show him. I lied and told him that I wanted to show him how if you mix Crotonese cheese with the Parmigiano it gets even gooier and tastier. And then Spousal Unit said that he didn't like sheep's milk cheese and that was the end of that.

Non-Vegan Beans on Toast

I was made with animal products.

Once upon a time, I did a radio show about books, and I was a vegetarian.  One day this vegan cookbook comes my way.

Now, my show was not a book review show, but an author interview show. I used to read the books, then interview authors about their books. Hence how I met Kirsten Koza. If the author wrote, say, a cookbook, I would have to, you know, make at least a few recipes from that cookbook.

This wasn't the first time I had a cookbook author on the show. On an earlier show I had eviscerated poor Evelyn Raab, author of The Clueless Baker, because my boyfriend at the time (aka Spousal Unit) totally fucked up every recipe he tried from that cookbook. And if my clueless boyfriend couldn't follow a muffin recipe from a book called "The Clueless Baker", then obviously that cookbook wasn't really made for the clueless.

Of course, the recipes rocked otherwise, but I still grilled that poor woman about why she claimed that the recipes were for the clueless when she had, evidently, never tested them on the clueless. It was ... not pretty.

Anyways, I decided that I would be nice to this vegan cookbook author. The problem was that I really hate tofu, I can't stand eating meatless (read: fake) meatballs, and, at the time, had the tiniest kitchen in the universe (that was also somewhat crawling with roaches). So any recipe that used tofu, required loads of kitchen prep, or involved faking meat was out of the question.

In other words, all I could make were the bean dishes.

So I made her black beans on toast. Of course, I made a million substitutions, like using real garlic instead of garlic powder, and using tomatoes and hot peppers instead of bottled salsa. I also added maple syrup, grated (real) cheddar all over it, and topped it off with a fried egg. It was very tasty, if not exactly vegan -- or anything like the original recipe.

It's a meal I enjoy to this day.

PS: The vegan cookbook author was really nice. I interviewed her over lunch at a vegan restaurant. I ate kohlrabi, chickpeas, and chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was made with tofu and its "frosting" was made with avocado and cocoa. It was OK, but I farted a lot.

Eggs: In Greasiness and In Health

My new trainer -- the 24yo ultra-buff rugby player -- practically begged me to switch from fried eggs to soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. I told him I'd try it. And I did.

It tasted less like cardboard than I expected.

It wasn't as awful as I thought it would be, but contrary to what he claimed, I still needed to sprinkle a generous amount of salt all over the eggs to make them tasty.

I had them atop honey whole wheat bread to make the breakfast super-duper ultra healthy. And that whole wheat bread? It wasn't the supermarket variety with glucose-fructose -- it was the all-natural variety from the hippy bakery. It was somewhat cardboardish, but not as much as I expected.

If you fry whole wheat bread in olive oil, it's totally healthy.

But then I slipped back into my old ways. I really wanted a tasty breakfast, so I decided to make myself Italian Hash the Way My Mom Made It. I made it with the whole wheat bread, though, so it was somewhat healthy. And the oil was olive oil, so it was heart-healthy, too! It's the, um, Mediterranean Diet.

Grease is the Word

My mom made me breakfast.  It was an Italian version of hash made with stale baguette, chunks of parmiggiano cheese and eggs.  It was the most revolting, greasy mass of food I'd ever tasted.

Basically what my mom did was warm up some olive oil in a skillet and then she threw in the baguette  chunks.  While those were frying/sauteing, she cut up small cubes of parmiggiano.  When the bread had fried up and absorbed a lot of the oil, she threw in the cheese and some hot pepper flakes, and mixed it all up.  Once the cheese started to melt, she cracked two eggs into the oily mass and fried them.  The yolks broke, of course, and spilled all over the fried bread. 

It's going to take more than just Dawn to clean up that grease!

In the plate, it looked like a giant mass of oily stuff with egg yolk all over it.  I had a moment where I considered not eating it.  I was like, "What the hell, Mom?  Is this some kind of a joke?"  My mom rolled her eyes and told me that  my dad loved this dish, and that I could either eat it and shut up or make my own damned breakfast!

Anyways, despite the fact that the grease literally dripped off my fork, I ate the whole thing.  I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

It was the greasiest, most revolting breakfast ever.  EVER.  But it was also the most tastiest breakfast in the history of breakfast!  It was like all these elements in my mouth combined to be the Perfect Storm of umami salty spicy fat to start a morning. 

Damned.

Now I have to try making it myself and I'll probably get evicted for smelling up the floor.

Breakfast, Lunch and The Redemption of Silvia

I am going to admit something:  I don't care how much everyone says that oatmeal is filling and full of protein and complete and whatnot, but it doesn't fill me up.  I'm, like, hungry about ten minutes after I've eaten a big bowl of the stuff.  So this morning, with my oatmeal and OJ, I had scrambled eggs.  Hopefully the oatmeal's cholesterol-busting abilities negated the cholesterol from the eggs.

OK, oatmeal, mop up that cholesterol!

But whatever.  I wasn't hungry until lunch, which was a good thing because the snack closet was totally bare.  I'm talking all-the-Ritz-crackers-are-finished bare.  I'm talking people walking in my boss's office mid-meeting to eat the chocolates on her desk.  BARE!

A guy brought in a whole apple pie and it was gone in less than 5 minutes.  By the time the people who weren't in the breakroom got the email announcing the pie, it was gone.

Morning brew, water, lunch, snack and afternoon espresso.

For lunch I had leftover fig, mascarpone, parmegianno, prosciutto and honey pizza that I obviously didn't make myself.  I mean, who the fuck keeps mascarpone in their fridge?  And would you buy mascarpone just to make a pizza?  No. Oh, if you don't know what mascarpone is, it's this cream-cheesy Italian cheese that is probably as fatty as butter.  No amount of oatmeal could have undone the cholesterol in that pizza.  

I finished the meal with some crackers I had brought from home (in the paper plate) and an espresso I made using Silvia and the cheap-o Aiello coffee I bought at the grocery store next to the office.  Anyways, I have determined that the problem really is the Black Cat coffee because the cheap-o coffee made a really good espresso.  I even made one for the guy who used to sit in the cube next to me.   Yeah.  Desktop Espresso looked kinda lonely today.