Monthly Archives: May 2012

"How would you like your eggs?" The waitress waited, pen poised over her order pad, while the customer pondered for a moment.

"Basted," he finally said.

Basted? Scrambled, sure. Over easy, okay. Poached, perhaps. Sunny side up, sometimes. Even Eggs Benedict, if you're up for something fancy to feed your brain while you wonder who Benedict was.

But basted? How many people order their eggs "basted?"

Especially when they (the people, not the eggs) are only seven years old. Several of our friends meet at a restaurant for breakfast every Saturday, and on this particular morning one of the women had brought along her grandson.

Listening to him order his eggs with such aplomb, I was jolted back in time to the first time I ever ate breakfast in a restaurant. We were on a rare family vacation, right here in the beautiful Black Hills. I was ten. With a little encouragement, I asked for eggs and toast, and the waitress asked me, "How would you like your eggs?"

I didn’t have a clue what to tell her. Oh, I knew how I wanted my eggs, all right—fried, with the white cooked all the way through and the yolk still soft. Just the way my mother cooked them, in other words. What I didn't know was how to describe them.

Seeing my baffled expression, my father chuckled and told the waitress, "Over easy."

It was the first time I'd ever heard that term. Eating in a restaurant was a rarity in itself for us. Until that day, it hadn't occurred to me that people would actually get breakfast at one. I knew all about where eggs came from and had a painful first-hand familiarity with the term "hen-pecked," but I had no idea there were various ways to fry eggs and various words to describe them.

For seven-year-olds like my friend's grandson, eating out is simply one of the available options for any meal, including breakfast. Watching him chat with the adults at the table while he ate his basted eggs, I didn't know whether to be amused or amazed at the different set of skills little kids learn in today's world. Of course he knows how to order his eggs just the way he wants them, just as he knows how to text or take pictures with a cell phone.

Trying not to feel too out of touch, too unsophisticated—okay, let's face it—too old, I shut up and ate my own eggs (over medium, thank you).

Later, pondering eggs basted and otherwise, I did some research. I discovered that there is some dispute over which of several contenders gets the credit for Eggs Benedict. Benedict Arnold is not one of them. I also confirmed my guess about how to baste an egg, which essentially is a matter of scooping hot grease over it instead of turning it over.

Learning all of that was simple; I just looked it up on the Internet. It only took a minute, and then it was over. Easy.

. . . microwave? For those of you who have been losing sleep wondering about this vital question, here's the latest scientific research. Like so many great scientific discoveries (think penicillin), it owes its most important conclusion to serendipitous accident.

Step One: Put muffin on plate. Decide to have it with honey. Get from cupboard one quart-sized plastic honey bear bottle containing about an inch of honey. Discover honey has hardened and can't be poured out of bottle.

Step Two: Place honey bear in microwave oven.

Step Three: Set timer to 30 seconds and power to 50%.

Note: Here's where the serendipitous accident comes in. The researcher had done this same procedure many times, with uniformly successful outcomes. This time, however, the researcher's thumb slipped too lightly over the button when inputting the power level. Instead of 30 seconds at 50% power, the microwave was inadvertently set for 3 minutes and 5 seconds at full power.

Step Four: Go into dining room and sit down at computer. Become absorbed in a project.

Step Five: When around two minutes have elapsed, the researcher's colleague, busy in the kitchen with a different project involving hot water and dishwashing liquid, says, "Your honey must be melted; I can smell it." (Note: the lack of precise timing here is troubling. In the interests of valid science, this experiment should be repeated under closer observation.)

Step Six: Rush into kitchen and open microwave. Observe results of serendipitous accident. The honey-melting part of the procedure has been very successful, given the pool of boiling liquid spread across the glass microwave plate. The bottom half of the plastic bear has also melted. It is collapsing onto the glass like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Step Seven: Carefully pick up glass plate. Carry it quickly to back door, keeping it as level as possible in order to avoid dripping boiling honey onto floors, furniture, or feet.

Step Eight: Carry entire mess—er, scientific project—outside. Rest glass plate on deck railing and tip it to allow liquid honey and semi-liquid plastic bear to slide off onto grass below. Plastic doesn't slide. Request colleague to bring spatula from kitchen. Scrape melted bear off of glass plate—very carefully, as plate is too hot to touch.

Step Nine: Lean over railing and observe free-form remains of honey-spattered plastic bear. Note its strong resemblance to something that died in the woods some time ago and was recently dragged home by the dog.

Step Ten: Go back into house. Place glass microwave plate on a cooling rack until it reaches a temperature at which it's safe enough to scrub off the remaining honey and melted plastic.

Step Eleven: Eat muffin with jelly instead of honey.

Step Twelve: Leave microwave open to dissipate slightly charred sweet aroma. Consider more research to investigate possible names and markets for desserts made with triple-melted honey. Just Bearly Honey? Honey Overcomb? OverBearing Honey?

They may be faint, but there are possibilities. After all, since its name just means "burned cream," this is probably how crème brule was invented.

I wonder how you say "burned honey" in French?