I Hate Over Easy Eggs

I'm forcing out one last post, because if I update one more time before 2024, I'll have met my New Year's Resolution for the main blog. I recently made a Christmas 2023 post, so if you haven't read that one, you can find it below.

Anyway, the arbitrary topic I'm choosing to tick my blog number box is my feelings toward over easy eggs.

I don't actually hate this style of preparation for sensory reasons. I hate the psychology that has come to be associated with it. Imagine this: you're at a diner for breakfast with friends. You order the classic breakfast: home fries, your choice of protein, and your choice of eggs. The server arrives, takes your order, and asks the fateful question, "How would you like your eggs?". It invites the thought of a wide spectrum of options, encouraging creativity and opportunity for customization.

But secretly, there is only one "correct" option, and it's over easy. The server knows it. Everyone at your table knows it. They're all waiting to see if you will comply to the social norm, or if they will subject you to judgment.

Let's go over the snarky comments you'll get if you order any other way.

Sunny side up, or soft boiled: it hasn't been cooked long enough, you'll get sick

Scrambled: That's childish

Hard, over hard, hard boiled, medium, over medium, or medium boiled: It's been cooked too long, it has no flavour

Of course, if you order a specific egg-based dish like an omelet you're free from judgment. This only applies to meals that offer "your choice of eggs".

These sentiments are silly of course. There are no health risks associated with a runny yolk, the restaurant wouldn't offer it as an option if there was. There's no inherent reason that scrambled eggs are "childish", and eggs cooked for longer are perfectly fine.

So why is it that people box themselves in with over easy eggs?

I think one reason is that there are a lot of people that aren't very good at cooking, but they're pretty good with eggs.  This is because the barrier for entry is so low. At its simplest, you can turn on a pan, crack an egg into it, wait until it looks like a cooked egg, and you're good. Give it a little swirl and you've got scrambled eggs. Now you know how to cook two things.

Then it's easy to experiment by putting salt and pepper, or thowing in some cheese or diced ham. Each individual step is pretty lenient, and if you screw something up the end results are usually edible. 

Often times, the best showing of skill for someone experimenting with the basics is over easy. Waiting just long enough, then flipping it so that it's cooked on all sides, and has a runny and intact yolk. Eventually, someone who isn't confident in the kitchen will begin to think "I might not know how to cook, but at least I can do eggs"

End result is that you have a person whose sense of culinary worth is wrapped up in their ability to make over easy eggs, and they're dying to let you know why your order is objectively wrong. Problem is, enjoyment does not always equate to difficulty in preparation, and so it might be hard for a person who thinks this way to reconcile themselves with the fact that on their journey to mastery, the best thing they ever did might also be the second thing they ever did, the little swirl.

I think this is where the "scrambled eggs are childish" sentiment comes from. They likely learned how to make them when they themselves were pretty close to childhood.

Another hot take I've got is that scrambled eggs are not inferior to omelettes. That's another case of people thinking it's a better experience simply because it's harder to do.

Another falacy some people have when assessing eggs, is that they subject them to steak rules. The other dish that is best known for giving an array of cook time options, with a not-so-secret "correct" answer is steak. Chef's choice is medium rare. You can maintain your dignity if you want it cooked less, but not if you want it cooked more.

I'm a little more sympathetic to the steak snobs. When it comes down to it, I like to live and let live. That being said, steak has some unique qualities that disappear when cooked past medium. So when people say "If you like your steak well done, maybe you just don't like steak", I can understand the perspective. Although I think steak is overrated in general.

Anyway. Eggs are not steak! Eggs don't have a "disappearing quality" when they pass a medium cook. They have a pretty even gradiant of textural differences, so if you like a hard cooked egg, I don't think there's any valid argument against it.

As far as runny yolks are concerned. People worry about catching salmonella. It's easiest to get it from undercooked chicken. Eggs come from chickens, and people make this association.

You get salmonella from undercooked chicken meat. Not the eggs. Don't worry about this.

All this to say, I do think over easy eggs are a valid style of preparation. Since I'm advocating for choice, it would be hypocritical of me to discourage it as an option. Still, when the server is going around the table, and everyone's ordering over easy, I can't help but feel resentment brewing in my chest as the tension mounts and I feel the shackles of social obligation tighten.

And I feel quite rebellious when she gets to me, and I look her in the eyes and defiantly growl "Scramble it".

Christmas 2023

It's become a bit of a pattern that we'll be visiting Lee-Anne's family at Christmas, and then see mine on New Years. The big gathering usually happens on Boxing Day, as it did this year. 

It was a green Christmas and Boxing Day. Regardless, last year with my post titled "White Christmas" I committed to end my colour-themed holiday tradition, even though I don't think I ever used green. If memory serves, I had blue for 2019, grey for 2020, brown for 2021, and white for 2022. I'm almost regretful I'm not continuing the theme, but it's probably best to end on a high note. Also best not to tempt fate to keep justifying new colours, or we'll wind up with a Red Christmas eventually.

It was very rainy, and continues to be as of this posting. We'll still probably get some cold weather in the back half of the season. That seems to be how it works nowadays, but it's still weirdly temperate.

I got a set of dummbbells as a gift, one 20 pounds and one 30. That might seem odd, but it was to match the ones I have at home, so now I have a pair of each. After getting them home, I noticed that while the newer ones are the same weight as the older, they're significantly larger. Must be a difference in material.

These weights will be useful for working out, but I'll also use them to cat proof the house while we're away. Right now, whenever we leave overnight I jam all the doors by putting towels in their top joints, as our cats are capable of shutting themselves in rooms. I've also been putting weights in front of the two doors I feel like they're most likely to mess with. Finn can climb on top of the bathroom door, so I worry about him either jumping up and knocking it down, or using the towel to climb up and pulling it down in the process. There are four doors in our apartment, so now I've got a weight for each.

Lee-Anne got a set of drawers and she brought back an office chair. I think she already owned the chair, she just brought it back since we had the opportunity. It's useful for me, as this year I finally returned my work office chair to the building. During lockdowns, we got permission to bring some of our stuff home as that was where we were doing most of our work, but since we've fully reopened it stopped making sense. Now we have two office chairs in our apartment again.

Lee-Anne got me The Anti-Planner, a resource for people with ADHD. We have one at work, and I've used it a few times to help me navigate through some tougher days. It's mostly a tool to help with emotional regulation. It's got a series of categories of difficult emotions that people with ADHD are prone to, and then sub-categories that narrow it further. Each of these sub-categories have a series of activities that can help provide clarity.

For Lee-Anne, I got her two tarot decks. One was a newer version by the same person that developed the one she's been using. The other was Cat Tarot, which is not faithful to the universal symbols set by Rider-Waite, but I figured she's got two legit decks already, she can have a gimmick one. Every time we'd checked out the tarot section at Indigo she'd taken note of the cat one, so I figured it was time to get it.

They finally dropped their holiday offer of a discounted throw blanket with purchase at Indigo. We have three Indigo throw blankets from doing holiday shopping there the past three years. I'd joked that in 20 years we'd have 20 blankets, but I guess not. 

Everyone Got Better

Last Saturday Lee-Anne got a negative test for COVID. We celebrated by going to a smaller local restaurant that we hadn't been to before. It felt appropriate to go somewhere cramped with necessary social interactions to celebrate not having a communicable disease.

I got the chicken and waffles, probably my most diabettically unfriendly meal since being diagnosed. Fried chicken on dough with maple syrup. Never had it before. Seemed aggregious. 

I've been experimenting with certain foods to test my body's ability to manage insulin. The first test was a waffle with jam, which was the first meal to put me out of my glucose target range. A year later I revisited it and I was fine. At another point, my sugars spiked after drinking a mimosa. Recently I had a glass of orange juice and it barely effected me.

Chicken and waffles is not an intuitive meal for a Southern Ontarian. I had pictured it as a chicken sandwich with waffles replacing the bread, although I had heard accounts of the waffles being treated traditionally, with maple syrup. Despite a cutural bias in favour of the sauce, to me it made no sense with chicken. Ultimately, enough people were vouching for it that it piqued my interest.

To my surprise, the savouriness of the chicken combined with the sweetness of the syrup was pretty pleasant. Something about the waffles themselves worked with the chicken too.

On Sunday, my mother and brother tested negative for COVID. Duncan still hasn't fully recovered his sense of taste and smell, but I heard on the radio that the rapid tests don't determine whether you're infected, but rather if you're infectious. So while he's not fully recovered, he shouldn't be a danger to anyone.

Earlier in the pandemic, it was my intention to announce my status should I ever contract the illness. However, when it finally came time for me, I didn't feel the need to. At first, if you heard that someone in your sphere had caught it, the instinct was to wish for their recovery, as it seemed possible that they wouldn't survive. Nowadays, people just say "It's going around" when you let people know that someone got COVID.

I've gotten a little better at doing these rapid tests. I swab my cheeks, tounge, and the back of my nose when I do them. It usually results in lots of gagging and sneezing, as it did while I was testing during my sick period. 

By the end however, I was able to forego gagging, and was managing to stave off sneezing until I finished swabbing. I'd still sneeze at the end, though.

Recovered from COVID

 

Last Sunday marked a week from my first symptom, and the day I received my negative COVID test. This was sufficient to return to work, but the World Health Organization's current guidelines say that you might be contagious for ten days after showing your first symptom, so I'm still wearing a mask until Wednesday.

Apparently this year has been twice as bad as last year for rate of infection. They're calling it a wave, which is a term I haven't heard for awhile. Although that might have less to do with the word losing relevancy, and more so be because I, like most people, haven't been listening to the scientific community on the topic as much lately. I didn't know rates had doubled or that we were in a wave until after I got sick, which motivated me to look into it. 

Even if it's infectious, I think lethality is still not as bad as it once was. Last I checked, even though we're still considered to be in a pandemic, we lost our status as a Global Health Emergency, and I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it if we regained that title.

They can't gather data like they could before the home rapid tests were made widely available, so they're getting it from rates of hospitalization and wastewater.

I remember when the Omicron variant came out in 2021. I hadn't heard of a variant since Delta, which I knew was the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. I looked up where Omicron was and it was the 15th. I was shocked to see how many strains had developed without my hearing about it.

Since so much time has passed, I decided to see which variant we're on today and it's... still Omicron. I'm wondering if new types were coming out fast enough that they gave up on the Greek letter theme. Apparently we're dealing with "subvariants" within the already established strains. They haven't bothered to give them catchy names, though.

One contribution to me getting sick for the first time could be that I missed a round of vaccination. Last time I was in the doctor's office there was a poster with suggestions on whether or not you needed to vaccinate. Because I wasn't within a certain age range or met the criteria for being immunocompromised, it suggested it was unnecessary. However, now its being suggested that everyone get it every six months. Although, apparently getting sick gives you three months of natural immunity, so I have to wait for that to be used up now.

In my last post, I said that the lower line on the test that indicates COVID was lighter for me than my brother, and since my symptoms were also lighter I wondered if there was a correlation. Well, after I began to feel better, the bottom line continued to get fainter, so I really wonder if it is the case.

I had a COVID app on my phone that at one time gained a bit of traction. Users were supposed to let it know when they were infected. It would then backtrack the signals of the phones of people whose paths you'd crossed with the same app and alert them that they'd been exposed. It never told me it suspected anything. Every once in a while it would tell me it hadn't detected any exposures, and I would always be surprised I still had the app. I used to think there was a non-negligible chance that I'd forget to input my own status if I ever got infected.

 In fact, it took me until just now to remember that I should have let it know when I got sick. I just looked into it and it says the app isn't compatible with my phone. I changed phones a little while ago and it transferred my apps but I guess the creators didn't bother to keep it relevant. Pointless thing.

Lee-Anne, my mother and my brother are all still sick. I was the first to recover. I mentioned that Duncan had it the worst with a high fever, but I only recently learned that he's lost his sense of taste and smell. This always sounded like the most unique of the COVID symptoms. I wondered if it was just the usual sense of distortion that comes with congestion, but from how I've now heard it described, it sounds a bit different.

I wanted to do something productive with my quarantine time, especially after I started to feel better. To be honest with you, basically all I did was binge read an online comic. Our cats got used to having me around again, like they did during lockdowns.

Finally Got COVID

 

The dreaded double bars.

Earlier in the pandemic, I liked to imagine COVID as a zombie survival game. Getting sick was the equivalent of getting bit, and the amount of time you avoided the virus was how long you'd survive in a zombie apocalypse. So this means I survived, what, three years and nine months? Not bad.

Last Thursday, me and Lee-Anne went to Brampton so that we could more easily reach something in Toronto on Friday. After that, I went solo to Guelph to meet up with my family and went back home Saturday evening. Felt kind of sore and achy on the Sunday, and on Monday I wasn't feeling better so I called in sick. Partway through the day, Duncan sent a message saying that he did a COVID test and it came back positive. I did one and so was I.

Lee-Anne's had COVID before and even though we were living in the same space, we did some rudimentary safety precautions and I managed to avoid catching it. We tried the same things but this time it didn't work. She caught it, and eventually Mom did too.

It's not just my first time, it's the same for Mom and Duncan. Since almost everyone I know has had it at least once, I had come to think that we might be immune. Maybe some new strain has mutated in a way that bypasses our immunity.

There's no saying for sure where it came from, but I think I was the initial carrier. I was the first to show symptoms and I did the most recent traveling. Still, the incubation period must have been short, since I was only in contact with them for a night and a day, and Duncan got sick only a day after me.

As far as symptoms go, it hasn't been too bad. I had a low grade fever for a couple of days that has since died off and I have a dry cough. It's been the same for Lee-Anne, but she's still in an earlier stage so she's a bit more uncomfortable presently. Duncan got it the worst, with a pretty mean fever, and apparently Mom's pretty miserable too. They both say they're beginning to feel better, though.

It's interesting, if you look at the picture of my COVID test, you'll notice that the bottom line is darker than the top. That's the one that confirms the virus. Duncan sent a pic of his test and the bottom line was darker than mine, and his symptoms were worse. Now that my fever has died down, I'm still testing positive but the lower bar is even fainter. I wonder if the darkness of the line indicates intensity of the illness.

I'm kind of glad I went back on Saturday instead of Sunday, because if I'd waited I would have started showing symptoms in Guelph and likely would have had to quarantine there. I'm also happy that I called in sick even though I didn't think to test for COVID.

I've had to take a week off so far. To return to work, I need to either be without symptoms for five days or test negative. A lot of the time people continue to test positive long after they stop being infectious. But I've had a lingering cough from a previous cold, so if that counts as a symptom things could stretch out for awhile.

Luckily our house was pretty stocked when we got sick, and since we've been healthy at different times we've been able to rotate cooking duties. So our COVID meal plan so far has included chicken soup, pulled pork, and shepherd's pie. We haven't lost our sense of taste or smell.

RIP Thor

 

Last week one of the Guelph cats, Thor, passed away. 

Originally my mom and brother got him from a Kijiji ad just before I left for Canada World Youth. At six years old, he was a package deal with Luna, who was then one, and joined then five-year-old Blackavar who was our present house cat.

His previous owner explained that they were going to have a child and felt they wouldn't be able to give Thor adequate attention. After taking the two in and seeing how Thor and Luna didn't get along, it was easy to imagine that they got Luna with the intention of keeping Thor company, and then chose to adopt them both out when it didn't work.

Thor had a heart-shaped tattoo on the inside of his ear, indicating that he was originally a rescue, meaning that by the time he came to us he had been displaced at least twice already.

But his life was smooth sailing from thereon out. He liked it in his new home well enough that despite already being middle aged, he decided to live an entire extra life expectancy.

His relationship with Luna improved, his previous owners probably just didn't give them enough time to acclimate to each other. He developed a deep bond with my brother Duncan. When we first got them, there was a bit of an assumption that Thor, being the big cat, would bond with me because we share a similar stature, while Luna would bond with Duncan, but the reverse turned out to be true.

He was a quiet and patient cat, although he could be quite insistent at times. It was always an event to hear him meow or murble. He liked to flop on his back and get belly rubs.

Despite being the oldest cat in the household when we got him, he wound up surviving both Blackavar and Luna. He also survived Cassidy, who was adopted to replace Luna and passed unexpectedly three years later, and lived long enough to meet Castor and Pollux.

I was concerned about how Thor would adjust to the kittens when they were adopted. Common knowledge dictates that you should have cats in a similar age category. It has always always been the family policy though, to have an older and a younger cat. The idea being that the younger one brings out the kitten in the older one. So far this policy has worked out for us, but even so, two three month old cats integrating into a household with a twenty year old seemed extreme.

But the transition worked out fine. Thor seemed happy for the company and would cuddle, groom, and sometimes even engage in play with the kittens, and Castor and Pollux never seemed too pushy with their elder roommate.

He never experienced any serious health concerns except for a little arthritis. As he aged, he began to thin but they started giving him a higher-calorie cat food and he plumped up to a healthy weight again. A week before his passing he was still getting the zoomies, begging for sour cream, and playing with kittens. In his final days he began to slow down but didn't seem in discomfort. In the end, he passed while sleeping in my brother's bed, near his favourite human.

Thor's passing isn't a tragedy, but as it is follows Cassidy's, which also happened this year, and Blackavar's the year before, it all comes to a lot of cat loss in a relatively short span of time. It marks the passing of a generation of Guelph cats, and a new one set by Castor and Pollux.

It will be sad not to have Thor around anymore, but it's encouraging that he had such a good and long life, with such a peaceful end. He remains a huge symbol of success for my Guelph family.