Egg-ceptional omelets

Omelets are a tricky business. First, since they were French, they were deemed too difficult and fancy for an ordinary breakfast. Then, typical American ingenuity came up with the omelet pan, which meant your scrambled eggs could come out shaped like an omelette. But they sure didn't taste like one.

I rarely order them in restaurants. Few busy breakfast places take the time to swirl the beaten egg around the pan until it is evenly distributed, season, wait until it's set and then add the filling and cheese. Usually they come with interior runny. Undercooked egg whites give me the creeps.

For just my husband and me, I use a 12" crepe pan. I beat 2 eggs, nothing added. When the pan is heated on medium low, I spray it with olive oil (or sometimes I melt a pat of butter). I add the beaten eggs in the center, then swirl them around until they are distributed evenly. I then season with a few grinds of black pepper, some gray sea salt, maybe some other seasonings, depending on the filling. I then put cheese all over and fillings down the middle. When cheese melts and the edges are dry and curling up slightly, I loosen the omelet all around the edges, then flip one side over the middle, then the other side. I then cut it in half with the spatula, and serve.

For fillings, I often:

• broil a half-pint of grape tomatoes
• saute mushrooms and shallots
• dice ham
• use bacon crumbles
• chop sun-dried tomatoes
• use tapenade
• use leftover caviar
• use leftover asparagus

If the fillings need to be cooked, I usually do it before or right as the omelet is cooking. You don't want to be waiting on the filling. I like my eggs well-done, but overdone is a definite no-no.

The bread of life

This is a blog about food, so one of my other interests, religion, doesn't often get explored here. But I wrote this meditation on one of the lectionary readings for today, John 6:27-40, and since it has to deal with food - bread, to be precise - I am posting it here.

Reflection for the fourth Sunday of Lent

It is said that John is the most mystical of the Gospel writers, yet he has Jesus telling his disciples: “I am the bread of life.” What can be mystical about bread?

Bread has sustained humankind since before the written record of history. It can be made a number of different ways, with many kinds of grain, but it depends on a living organism, yeast, to make it what it is. The yeast takes the dense flour, feeds on its sugars, multiplies, raises the mass into a bubbling sponge, full of air pockets that will make the inside of the loaf soft and cloudlike while the outside, the crust, contains it and absorbs the direct heat, turning brown and stiff in the process.

The process is somewhat of a miracle.

Bread has about 60 percent of the amino acids we need to sustain life. (Add cheese and mushrooms and you get as much protein as a chicken breast. Or look for Ezekiel bread; it has all eight essential amino acids in it.)

Yet as good as bread is, it can still go bad. Molds love to grow on bread, an excellent food source for them. Some molds are beneficial, such as penicillin; ergot, another bread mold, causes hallucinations. Some are just toxic.

But Jesus told them of a bread that held no such perils: “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” No wonder the disciples said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

A hymn I often find myself humming is based on this passage:

I am the bread of life 
He who comes to me shall not hunger 
He who believes in me shall not thirst 
No one can come to me 
Unless the Father beckons 
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
And I will raise you up 
On the last day.

– Lori Korleski Richardson