Here Be Dragons

2007-12-18

I�m home! Oh boy, am I home! I have a Christmas concert to go to tonight, tomorrow night and Thursday. I have bought gifts for only 4 out of about 24 people, luckily a lot of them would be thrilled with cash, including my two daughters. My side of the family exchanges this Sunday and I�m feeling the pressure. Besides this I also am trying to complete a job for my brother. I think I can do it. I hope I can do it. I want to do it. I�m doing my best.

I�ve also been on a wellness kick and I�m going to do the most miniscule of body cleanses aimed at the digestive system. It�s basically 3 pints of water starting with a glass of warm water with the juice of a lemon in it every morning then I eat at least 3 servings of fruit and at least 3 servings of vegetables. No additives, preservatives or fake sugars, like Sweet & Low. Then I cut down on milk type dairy as much as possible and only use organic fruits and vegetables as much as possible.

Sounds deadly boring, huh?

Well I didn�t think it had to be. Since oatmeal is allowed I had that for breakfast but I�ve been reading a cook book called Tapas. Tapas were little sandwiches and snacks served with your ale in the middle ages around the Mediterranean, especially Spain. They started with just a slice of bread over your mug of ale to keep the flies out and eventually added some cheese and finally each ale house became known for a certain snack, collectively called Tapas.

n. pl. ta�pas (-p�s, -p�z)
Any of various small, savory Spanish dishes, often served as a snack or with other tapas as a meal.

A lot of them looked like too much work for a snack and a lot of them used uncommon (for me) ingredients, but there were a few, more than enough to justify buying the book, that looked delicious. One in particular I had for breakfast.

What you do is slice off the top of a tomato and scoop out the insides. You crack a whole egg into the remaining shell, top it with a teaspoon of heavy cream and a sprinkle of grated cheese. (I know it�s diary, but the egg is ok as a protein source and it�s a teaspoon for gosh sakes and the cheese you could count the shavings. I mean how much can fit on the top of a tomato?)

Then you bake it until it�s all set, about 20 minutes. It�s called a Tomato Nest and has probably been around for ages but this was the first I�d heard of it and it�s freaking delicious!

But of course me being the microwave queen I changed it all and beat the egg so it wouldn�t explode in the microwave and I think we all know what eggs do in the microwave when scrambled. Right, they puff up like a souffl� gone wild and mine did the same thing and so most of it ended up outside the tomato shell. It was still wonderful but I don�t think I�d serve it to company.

Tomorrow I�m going to try piercing the unscrambled, whole egg every 15 seconds of microwave time to allow steam from the yolk to escape. Hopefully it will work and I�ll have an easy one minute meal for breakfast that is quick, easy and a great alternative to fried eggs. If I wanted to get very strict with my diet I could even eliminate the cream and cheese and it would barely top 100 calories, leaving enough left over for a slice of toast too.

Yummy!

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