Poached Eggs

 

I ate poached eggs yesterday. The dish was a pork belly hash (mmmm, pork meat) with potatoes, onions and poached eggs. Although I hate to admit it, I'm that chick who wants everything on the side and can you please substitute this for that and hold the mayo on all of it (because reasons)? (We can talk all day about how if I'm paying for food, I should be able to have it the way I want, but that's another conversation at a different bar.) Yesterday, I left the dish as is. I did not ask if the eggs could be scrambled in organic butter or the potatoes to be gently salted with sea salt (preferably Mediterranean), with smoked ketchup (on the side, of course). The dish called for poached eggs and I ate it with poached eggs.

What does this mean? Do I now love my eggs to be runny?

Um, no. And ew. (I think scramble eggs would have been better. It would have also been better if the potatoes were cooked just a little bit longer - I ate them anyway. Minus the Mediterranean sea salt and smoked ketchup.) However, this small step was significant in that I am actively participating in trying to step out of my comfort zone. Lest you believe this a brand new phenomenon, you'd be wrong. Over the past few years, I've been gently encouraged (thanks Gastronami) to try other strange foods; I've tasted bone marrow, eaten sea urchin and became an avid lover of red wine by deciding to try something different. Now, I'm taking the next step - doing it by myself. It's easy to rely on others to push you, but to push yourself is the true challenge. Of course, this is not only about food; it's the other little things that we do all the time that keep us stagnant and cause us to plateau. I am making a commitment to not committing to the same old sh*t I've committed to for forever.

Could it be that I'm inspired by the new year? Am I making a resolution? Yikes.

Despite being resolution-averse, I do believe in the refresh button. It's a new year and why not try to incorporate some behaviors of the person I'm working on being? The trick is not to depend on it being January 1st (or Monday or the first of the month or the day after your Bar Mitzvah) to work on changing those behaviors or adapting  new ones. Every day when we wake up, it's a refresh button and we have the opportunity to do something completely different than the day before. So what are you going to do differently today?

I don't know that I'll always get poached eggs (and I'm going to refrain from ordering sea urchin again). But if the dish calls for it, I'm ordering it as is...unless it has dairy, gluten, non-organic butter, non-Mediterranean sea salt....dang, this is going to be quite the challenge!