This morning I had the breakfast of the effete barbarian: soft-boiled eggs.

I’m pleased that I got them just right — the whites were solid, and the yolks were runny. Cooking an egg like that when you can’t SEE how done it is, that’s a real trick. That’s not the kind of seat-of-my-too-large-pants cooking I usually do. This requires an actual TIMER. I suppose I could do the spaghetti trick, and throw them against the wall to see how done they are, but I’m betting Sandra would quickly make the cleaning of the kitchen my exclusive responsibility.

Effete barbarism… see, you cut off the top of the egg with a knife, and then take a spoon and scoop the edible bits right out of the shell. If I had egg cups I’d feel more effete and less barbaric, but there’s still something primal about breaking an egg open and eating gooey stuff right out of it. I suppose it’s a little less primal for me using a spoon, and adding salt, but when the yolk spilled down the side of the eggshell and I licked it off? Hey, I felt like a ferret, or maybe a velociraptor — salt and spoon notwithstanding.

I HARD-boiled some eggs yesterday so I could have ham and egg salad. In this case “ham” is replaced by “TREET,” which is Armor’s answer to Hormel’s SPAM product. It was roughly half the cost, and they said it was supposed to taste like a Virgina Baked Ham. They can’t print lies right on their packaging, can they? Maybe they can get away with it… I have no idea what a Virginia Baked Ham is supposed to taste like, but I assume by its mention on the side of the tin that it’s supposed to taste GOOD.

The TREET did not taste good. The egg-salad was great, though. On a lark I went ahead and added chopped TREET to it, and behold! A miracle! Egg-plus-Miracle-Whip is a strong enough flavor that I couldn’t tell that a pseudo-Virginian ham-bake had occurred anywhere NEAR my bowl of fats and proteins. I guess that’s why they call it Miracle-Whip.

(Note: I know, I know. Miracle Whip has sugar in it. The total carb-count of my two-egg salad was around 7g, max. I do keep track of these things, you know.)

Well, I was on a roll, so I tried another experiment. I asked Sandra to tear off a couple of leaves of Romaine lettuce, and I spooned the Miraculous Egg-TREET Salad onto them. The effect was interesting. The flavor changed a bit… the Romaine sort of “legitimized” the whole concoction with a green crunchiness, as if to say “NOW it is a REAL SALAD.” Then there was the VISUAL effect. “See, honey? I’m eating a fancy thing-on-a-leaf, instead of spooning a bowl of yellowish slop into my cake-hole.” Amazingly, it was tasty enough that Sandra liked it too, and since I’d made more than I cared to eat myself, I gave her a leaf-full.

I bet barbarians ate off of leaves ALL THE TIME.

–Howard