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Bread And Butter: Every Day Is Egg Day

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Eggs are eaten in our home every day. And I’m not exaggerating that truth, even a little. If they don’t show up at breakfast, they definitely come around for lunch or dinner. For a family of three, we go through around five dozen eggs nearly every week. 

We each have our favorites, but, as luck would have it, none of our favorites are the same. We work around this, usually. Scrambled for breakfasts and fast dinners. Fried if we need a topping to enchiladas or grilled cheese or pancakes. Hard boiled when any of us remember that they make the perfect snack or when it’s warm enough for egg salad to reappear as a dinner option. Other iterations show up, but not nearly as often, but I often look forward to one of my husband’s chocked full of pig of any kind and cheese omelets. 

 

Last summer, I ate soft boiled eggs nearly every day for lunch. I love soft boiled eggs. I grew up with them as a breakfast constant, but I notice that they aren’t shown as much love as fried or scrambled. They would, however, show up as a solid two if I were to ever make an egg top five list. Easy and packed with nutrition, they settled into a routine with me during the early days of the pandemic. I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult to suss out the whys – a routine and a childhood favorite in the face of uncertainty, but as fall hit and routines changed, so did my lunch.

 

Have you ever noticed how incredibly versatile eggs are? The mix-in possibilities are endless. Sausage, bacon, ham. Veggies. Even with fried, add some cheese and avocado and bread and you have a proper sandwich. Avocado, diced, also pairs well with my lunch on hold soft boiled eggs. I understand a lot of people add seafood to scrambled eggs, but I’ve never ventured that far. Maybe shrimp and bell peppers will find its way in our breakfast for dinner night, soon. 

 

Once you have the additions to your eggs mixed in, you have to decide what, if anything to add on top. I’m a ketchup girl (scrambled, fried or omelet) and grew up in a house where, as my Dad would say, both kinds of ketchup are allowed. The ketchup kind and the salsa kind. Salsa was often interchanged with ketchup on our breakfast table and treated as such. Hot sauce, which I could never really stomach, also makes an appearance on many favorites list and when I was serving in restaurants, I saw the changeover to ketchup only on tables in the morning to the now taken for granted ketchup and hot sauce options, solidifying the growing popularity.

 

A few weeks ago we upped our egg game and made a shakshuka for dinner. Or, at least we tried. It wasn’t the first time we had made it, but it was definitely the worst. Shakshuka, for me, hits all the right notes. A rich and delicious tomato sauce, simmered down and eggs cracked and cooked right in the sauce. The problem with this particular night is I chopped off, or up? more than I could chew. 

 

I was trying to do too many things at once and my sauce boiled down too far. I ignored my instinct and cracked the eggs in anyway. I covered the cast iron to gently cook the tops of the eggs and kept a side eye on them as I finished up the rest of dinner. When the eggs were done, I slid the pan off the heat and turned fully to my other tasks. It didn’t even occur to me to take the lid off or get the food out of the hot cast iron and onto plates while I finished up the rest of dinner. And because I forgot, we had possibly the worst egg dish I’ve had, possibly ever. Dried out tomato sauce and rubbery over cooked eggs. Unfortunately, the rest of dinner was also a bust and eaten out of obligation and not enjoyment. 

 

Fortunately that little mishap has not diminished our egg game. We’re still solidly buying and eating, at least once a day. Though it may take a minute before I attempt shakshuka again, I have been seeing eggs everywhere lately. In fact, I’m eyeing some perfect ‘70s fried egg print overalls online I’m tempted to buy. Why, you ask? What better way to honor my favorite way to cook and eat an egg? Especially since every day in our house seems to be egg day.