A Philosophical Question at Breakfast

Eggs are easy to screw up. That doesn't mean that they don't taste delicious or provide incredible nutrition, but everyone can think of examples like a runny quiche, a souffle that sank so much it looked like it self-imploded, or, more often, a broken omelet.

Omelets are sometimes used as cooking tests in restaurants. That's right, sometimes you don't just sit down with the chef and manager, tell them you'll work hard, and negotiate a wage. You actually have to prove that you are not going to burn the place down with your special brand of culinary chaos. So, sometimes they give you an hour on the hot line during a busy night. And sometimes they give you a test, like "Why don't you make us an omelet?"

An omelet sounds pretty easy, right? It should be, it's just some folded-up eggs. But you have to be comfortable with a pan in your hand. And it has to be any old pan, not a $400.00 perfectly-balanced, anodized specialty omelet pan from the gourmet shop. You have to be comfortable controlling the flame and heat on a gas range to get the temperature just right. You have to know how much beating of an egg nicely breaks down the protein bonds in the whites without over-whipping. You have to know how much butter or oil to put in the pan--if you don't use an adequate amount, your eggs will stick but if you use too much, your eggs get greasy. If you don't move your pan enough, your eggs will be too thin, and probably taste dry. If you move your pan too much, you'll break the uniformity and have plain old, garden-variety scrambled eggs. It certainly doesn't look like it, but there's a lot to making an omelet.

I only have a little bit of a problem admitting that I usually crank the heat too high on my range and wind up breaking my omelet. It's a little embarrassing, but I'm not alone in the I-Break-Omelets-Like-You-For-Breakfast Club

Still hazy with sleep and noticing a cold frosting of snow on the ground outside, I decided this morning would be a good one for eggs. So I pulled an old, warped Revereware pan from out of the cupboard, beat a couple eggs with a fork boasting crooked tines, and put the oiled pan over a low flame, though I was cognizant of the fact that I was using the wrong burner. (You know how some gas ranges have turbo-charged super powerful burner for boiling big cauldrons of pasta water and stuff? Well, that was the unforgiving burner I chose, because I wanted my French eggs middle-America FAST).

I swirled my pan a little bit, but not with any special attention since I was trying to load the dishwasher at the same time. I couldn't decide if a fork or an old pancake-turner was a better tool for lifting the edges of the egg in the pan, so I ditched them both in favor of an offset palette knife I use for frosting birthday cakes. With my groggy lack of care and lazy refusal to dig out better tools, I simply knew I was going to have my typical broken omelet.

But magically, it did not break. It folded over like a dream. It slid out of the pan like it could hardly wait to get onto my breakfast plate. The eggs were creamy and divine, definitely not overcooked and dried out. It was PERFECT.

But mi esposo was still sleeping and I'm not very good with food photography, so I did not snap any pictures. So, really, I have absolutely no way to prove that I am capable of the perfect omelet. None. Conversely, however, I have, over, the years, proven that I am all too capable of a broken one. *Sigh*

So, how will anyone know? I wondered this to myself and thought about the philosophical riddle: If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Really, that's not too far off from: If a cook executes a perfect omelet and there is no there to eat it, did it really happen?

You'll just have to take my word for it.