The .Plan

This is pretty hard core.

Ms. Fecske’s furniture foraging is the ultimate expression of one of Germany’s favorite pastimes: saving money. Even when Germans do spend it (they need to eat, after all), they aren’t looking to pay full price. Flea markets pull big crowds every weekend. Used goods are so popular that Germany is eBay’s biggest market outside the U.S.: Surfing the site accounts for nearly a fifth of the time Germans spend online.

Regular retail stores have a tough time. No-frills discounters such as Aldi dominate the supermarket sector. Even Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was too upscale for Germans: The U.S. giant finally gave up on the country last year, after failing to make a euro cent.
–Marcus Walker, “Dumpster Divers Go Mainstream In Thrifty Germany”, Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2007

One of my fondest memories from childhood is when my dad would cook breakfast. Mom’s breakfast involved healthful foods. Dad’s breakfast did not, and more often than not involved eggs. Crispy and over-hard.

When you cook eggs in polite company (say, for brunch: with bacon, hash browns, mixed berries, and hand-whipped cream — and Irish oatmeal if you want to be healthy), it’s fashionable to make omelets. Then you can have an impressive, if pedantic, discussion about how the making of omelets is an activity fraught with problems. So fraught that Alton Brown has an entire episode devoted to scrambled eggs. Just a few seconds’ worth of too much heat can render the eggs dark and rubbery; if you don’t cook them long enough, the cheese in the interior doesn’t melt completely before the omelet leaves the pan. And so on and so forth.

Not so with dad’s over-hard eggs. They were crispy and rubbery in all the right places.

I suppose that is the nature of comfort food. I associate the food with beautiful memories, and when things are not comfortable, the food, and its associated memories, somehow makes things more comfortable.

Memory is important. Maybe that is the profound wisdom in the Biblical injunction to remember, to write, and to proclaim. In all the details of life, our memories of God’s graciousness and lovingkindness have a way of reminding us of the past when we need help in anchoring our hope for the future.

‘Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
–Deuteronomy 6:4-9

My over-hard eggs have since become a little more sophisticated. But still unhealthy as ever. I probably shouldn’t eat any more eggs for the rest of the week.

INGREDIENTS:

few slices of stale ciabatta bread
1 oz. parmesean cheese
1 clove garlic, finely diced
few pinches of thyme
pinch of salt
extra-virgin olive oil
Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning

PREPARATION:

1. Throw the bread, cheese, garlic, thyme, and salt into the food processor. Process.
2. Mix 1 tbsp of this crumbly mixture with some olive oil.
3. Set in skillet on low heat. When crumbly mixture begins to toast, crack two eggs on top. Break the yolk. Dust with Tony Chachere’s.
4. When eggs are done cooking, slip off skillet. Dash some sherry vinegar into the skillet while scraping up the toasty, crumbly bits still left. Drizzle over eggs.

This has been making its rounds of the Internet for the past week or two:

If you focus, you are supposed to be able to make her spin the other direction. I have been trying to do this for days, and still I cannot.

So apparently, despite my best efforts, I am incorrigibly right-brained. Which means I am impetuous and guided by feelings, try to see the “big picture”, think about possibilities, and take risks. Even in situations where Robot is yelling, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

Were it only otherwise.