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2012-03-18 15:06:57 UTC
I write this after having eaten six and a half eggs in the last 24
hours. Breakfast yesterday: Salad with two fried eggs. Lunch: Many
things, including an egg-enriched corn bread (that’s the half-egg).
Dinner: Pasta carbonara. And breakfast today, my favorite of all:
Grits with two eggs cooked therein. I did happen to be visiting
friends who raise hens, but that only made things easier.
You know that eggs are simple, almost infinitely useful; these are
clichés I can barely bring myself to repeat. That people have trouble
embracing them — this is perpetually baffling. Part of this perception
problem comes from the cholesterol scare of a generation ago, from
which we’ve barely recovered. (Six eggs every 24 hours may be a bit
much, but they’re hardly among the worst foods in our diet.) Part
comes from a general fear of food: for many of us, the natural state
of the egg is a McMuffin; a raw egg demands more of a commitment. The
egg-combination generator is a way of dealing with some of these
issues. (I also devote a bit of space to this very subject in my new
book, “How to Cook Everything: The Basics.”)
If you can cook an egg, you can cook breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks
— not only for yourself but for almost anyone else. There are things
that turn people off at different times of day, but unless you’re a
vegan, an egg is not likely to be one of them.
If you can imagine eggs in slightly-out-of-the-ordinary dishes —
salad, pasta, grits — you can begin to imagine a world of inexpensive,
blazingly fast recipes. Start with a runny egg on a lightly dressed
salad, maybe with a little bacon and some croutons. Yes, it’s damned
good without the egg. With it, it’s transcendent.
hours. Breakfast yesterday: Salad with two fried eggs. Lunch: Many
things, including an egg-enriched corn bread (that’s the half-egg).
Dinner: Pasta carbonara. And breakfast today, my favorite of all:
Grits with two eggs cooked therein. I did happen to be visiting
friends who raise hens, but that only made things easier.
You know that eggs are simple, almost infinitely useful; these are
clichés I can barely bring myself to repeat. That people have trouble
embracing them — this is perpetually baffling. Part of this perception
problem comes from the cholesterol scare of a generation ago, from
which we’ve barely recovered. (Six eggs every 24 hours may be a bit
much, but they’re hardly among the worst foods in our diet.) Part
comes from a general fear of food: for many of us, the natural state
of the egg is a McMuffin; a raw egg demands more of a commitment. The
egg-combination generator is a way of dealing with some of these
issues. (I also devote a bit of space to this very subject in my new
book, “How to Cook Everything: The Basics.”)
If you can cook an egg, you can cook breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks
— not only for yourself but for almost anyone else. There are things
that turn people off at different times of day, but unless you’re a
vegan, an egg is not likely to be one of them.
If you can imagine eggs in slightly-out-of-the-ordinary dishes —
salad, pasta, grits — you can begin to imagine a world of inexpensive,
blazingly fast recipes. Start with a runny egg on a lightly dressed
salad, maybe with a little bacon and some croutons. Yes, it’s damned
good without the egg. With it, it’s transcendent.