Reason Enough

Have I ever told you how I feel about eggs?  It's been a love-hate relationship since I was young.  I pretty much stuck with eggs, scrambled hard.  Eggs kind of creeped me out, but I was still curious about them.  Mom used to eat hers over-easy sometimes and I was fascinated, watching as she broke the yolk and dipped her buttered toast into it.  But my young mind saw something runny and immediately connected it with raw and  uncooked, and therefore, GROSS.  At Easter, the egg holiday of the year, I loved dyeing those hard-boiled eggs all sorts of pretty colours, and once or twice even ate them.  Let me correct myself...I only ate the egg white, and only if it was coated in about an inch of salt.  Then there was a time in my teen years where I had runny scrambled eggs, where I was totally turned off from eggs and didn't eat them for years after that.  The key word again was 'gross.'  In my mid-twenties, after spending way too  much time at the Perkins in Montgomeryville, PA, having breakfast at all times of the day and night, I discovered that scrambled eggs tasted pretty darn good with apricot syrup.  Then another couple of years where I didn't really eat them, and in my mid-thirties, it was back to the same old, same old.  Scrambled, usually hidden in the depths of a breakfast burrito where they served as a backdrop to potatoes, onions, and bacon.

Egg salad?  Don't even get me started.  I used to think it was one of the most unappealing foods known to man.  Slimy-looking, and a sickly pale yellow.  I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.  Then, it happened.  The mind (and palate) opened.  I found myself strangely fascinated with the egg again.  I don't know where exactly the lightbulb went off, but it did.  I started with making egg salad.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A friend convinced me that I could put anything I wanted into it, so it wouldn't be a slimy, sickly yellow goo.  My favourite mix-ins are sweet relish and olives.  Then it was the Big One.  The Poached Egg.  Thanks to a breakfast date at Philippe downtown, I finally tasted that poached egg with its runny center, and after all those years...I liked it...a lot.  At Phil's Diner in North Hollywood, I had a bite of a burger topped with a fried egg.  It was getting better and better.  I made a fried egg at home for the first time a couple of weeks after the burger bite, so I could savour it on its own.

And now...this past week I saw a glorious post on TheKitchn, where an egg was baked in an avocado half.  I wasted no time in trying this one, the avocado on the counter ripe and waiting to be used.  How easy does it get?  Split the avocado in half, pry out the pit, make the hole a wee bit larger, crack your egg into the hole, top it with what you like, and bake it in the oven.  I sprinkled mine with shredded Parmesan, a shake of oregano, and black pepper.  Besides tasting good, it made me want to throw a Sunday brunch.  Of course, wanting to see your friends is reason enough to invite them over.  But think how snazzy the spread will look with the addition of these on the table.

Have I told you how I feel about eggs?  It's love.

Check out TheKitchn's link here and the original post on LifeHacker.