I’m not a morning person. Let’s just say, I struggled to convince myself to get out of bed this morning by reading an article about the ten best ways that helped a sleepaholic get out of bed. That hadn't really helped.
I’m the kind
of person who shouldn’t try to cook breakfast until I’ve had a cup of coffee. I
shouldn’t even try to make coffee until I’ve had a cup. My spouse knows this.
As I
stumbled into the kitchen, he had three frying pans full of food cooking—onions
and peppers—which he alone eats nearly every morning, corned beef hash, which
he hadn’t made in some time, and a pan for fried eggs.
He started
my egg first since I like mine “over easy”, which takes longer and requires greater
subtly than hard- fried or sunny-side up. As a result, when that egg was almost
done, but before I had sipped any coffee, he consulted me on whether my egg was
ready for flipping for its eight seconds over.
I said it
was about ready and took the spatula in hand. As I did so, I noticed there was
a lot of oil in the pan, so I pulled a paper towel to blot the egg before its
planned landing on my nearby plate.
You know
what’s coming next. Somehow between pan, paper towel and spatula my egg, with
the yolk perfectly runny and the white just set, did a belly-flop on the
hardwood floor of our kitchen.
My two
pandemic passions have been baking and cleaning. Granted they usually overlap
in expected ways. This morning they overlapped in unexpected and nearly
spectacular synchronicity.
The night
before, in the hopes of having dinner prepared for several nights to come, we
had cooked a lot of foods, resulting in major messes on all counters and the
floor.
So, I had
run our robot vacuum-mopper not once, not twice,
but three times. The floor in the kitchen not only was cleaner than the
countertops, but also most surgery suites. So, yes, I used that spatula to
slide my egg off the floor and onto my plate, wiping it lightly with my waiting
paper towel. I had invented the over-easy-onto-the-floor egg, not a dog hair or
bit of grit in sight.
The floor
had taken most of the runny yolk and also excess oil. Not only have I invented
a way to produce a healthier egg with much less cholesterol, but perhaps a way
to make your breakfast overall better for you.
Stay with me
for just a moment. There are those who claim many of our modern auto-immune
diseases, allergies and the like can be traced to our too-clean environments.
Of course, my
recipe for “over-easy-onto-the-floor-egg” will only test that hypothesis if one
omits the three-moppings of the floor before making the crucial flip. Perhaps I’ll
try that tomorrow.
