How (Not) to Fry An Egg

It takes a certain courage to flip an egg. At least, if you're me it does.

I made eggs and bacon this morning and, as usual, messed my eggs up. First of all, when I crack an egg into a hot skillet I can never make the white stay where it's supposed to. And then when I usher the white back around the yellow, I inevitably break the yellow. To top it off, I'm terrified of the flip, sliding my spatula hesitantly around the imperfect circle until, finally--more terrified now that my egg will burn--I inexpertly turn my wrist sending the egg in a sort of somersault onto itself. What I end up with, a few minutes later, is an ugly egg-over-hard when what I wanted all along was an egg-over-medium.

By any measure, I am a novice in the kitchen. I make a mess, and I panic, hence my egg failures. But I do try. In fact, I love to try, even with the panicky mess.

Yesterday--Day 1 of Tiffany's infamous weekend chemistry class--I made my first batch of black-eyed peas, cooking them slow so they were ready when Tiffany walked in the door (in fact she could smell them in the hallway!). We had cabbage and cornbread too--the Southerner's start to the New Year. (I started the New Year a bit differently for lunch with a coke, potato chips and french onion dip... hey, when the trainer-girlfriend is away...)

"Mmmm," Tiffany said when she tried my peas, which I'd cooked with bacon. "Did you put onion in this?"

"Yep," I said.

"Was it on the recipe?" she asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Way to go!" she said.

Indeed, it's no small feat for me to venture off the printed page, but I cheated somewhat with the peas. I actually worked from a couple different recipes and then threw in the onions and some tomatoes for good measure because I thought both recipes were wrong to leave them out.

Acting without a thought for the recipes' integrity was a big step for me, but I've still got a long way to go. Friday night we made salmon and had planned to cook it with fresh dill because that's the way Tiffany's mom cooks it. But when I got to the store, they were all out of fresh dill.

"Why didn't you pick up another fresh herb?" Tiffany asked.

Well, as it turns out, that hadn't occurred to me at all. Only "dill" was on my list. "Or another fresh herb" was not.

When we went out to get our new dishes later that night, we realized I'd forgotten the lemon for the salmon, so we stopped at a tiny Asian market to pick one up. I grabbed one--the biggest lemon I'd ever seen. It smelled delicious.

"I wonder where they get their produce?" I said as I climbed into the car.

Later, Tiffany squeezed the lemon onto our fish.

"Wow," she said. "It smells... almost sweet."

We both bit into a piece.

It was a grapefruit.

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