One of the joys of living by yourself is that you
have to make and eat your own food.
Now,
obviously as I’m still at least ten pounds overweight, I’m managing to do
alright in that I’m feeding myself with some success. So, tonight I decided to take on a new challenge.
For the first time in my nearly 47 of existence I tried to make an
omelet.
How hard can it be? I mean, it’s eggs, right? Drop a couple in a bowl, mix em up, throw
them in a pan and fold them over. How tough is that?
Oddly, tougher than you’d think. I’m going to give myself an
out and explain first that when I left Virginia, Shadow didn’t give me any real
frying pans. You see, these little excursions on my own are her chance to
divest herself of all the bad cookware she doesn't like; the cookware that’s just worn out or
the stuff she says I forcibly ruined by using metal implements in, or by
burning stuff in, or just by being in the proximity of in the kitchen.
Apparently, I
ruined a sauté pan at some point, because that’s what I have to use – for pretty
much everything, and I blame the failure of the omelet on the tool. (The pan,
not me.)
But aside from the pan, there’s a lot that can go wrong with
an omelet. If the stove isn’t level – which it’s not – the butter doesn’t
distribute evenly and parts of the egg stick. If you put in too much chopped
bell pepper it doesn’t let the egg firm up on the bottom – which it didn’t. And
if you don’t know how to cook an omelet, you inevitably ruin it – which I did.
The silver lining to all this of course is that a ruined
omelet is still scrambled eggs. It’s the food equivalent of a non-working
escalator. They aren’t as cool to look at but they're still stairs.
At the end of the day, those kinds of food misadventures are
probably what has kept me functioning for the better part of the last five
years, so I won't be too sad I failed to make an omelet on my first try.
I know the old saying, 'it’s a poor cook who blames
his tools.' In this particular case, that’s absolutely true. And to fix this,
the next time I go home to visit Shadow and the kids, you
can be darn sure I’m going to ruin some good cookware before I leave.
