I posted a picture on Facebook of a breakfast I concocted a while back, and a friend asked for the recipe. And since I’m a very talented writer with an arsenal of thesauruses and dictionaries at my disposal, as well as a well-traveled and wizened vocabulary, I came up with the highly intelligent, image-provoking recipe title of ‘Breakfast Goo.’
I have no idea how I’m not on any best-seller lists yet.
Here tis:
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First, you wake up, go potty, feed the cats, scratch yourself, yawn largely, and make the coffee. Then you put on your second favorite apron, because your favorite moose apron is currently in the laundry having been covered in Rum Ball dough, and look in the fridge to see what you could make especially for your Beloved.
When you open the fridge, you see 4 dozen eggs, because you kept buying eggs, because you kept thinking you didn’t have any. Now you do. A lot of them. So you pull the eggs out. Then you open the freezer to see what you could put in the eggs. When you open the door, a pound of frozen, cooked shrimp fall out onto your bare feet because you’ve over-stuffed the freezer. Again.
THAT is when you decide to make a ‘Shrimp and Grits’ breakfast for your honey.
But since you don’t have any grits, and you have 4 dozen eggs, you figure you could use those and claim it’s ‘No-Carb-Sunday.’
THEN you remember to put the Sonos radio on, because everything you cook tastes better when you’re singing with Frank Sinatra.
Now this is the most important part. Go back to the fridge and extract: 1 lb. of bacon, 1 red pepper, 1 slightly moldy yellow pepper, heavy cream, butter, a chunk of sharp cheddar cheese, and white wine, which may, or may not have not been drunk straight from the bottle the night before. Go to your pantry and extract 1 onion that is starting to sprout, and 1 clove of garlic that is so old it is harder than a rock. Chop everything that looks choppable. Grate the cheese, leaving most of your thumb’s epidermis intact.
Then remember to run the shrimp under water in a colander so it is not frozen when you put it in the pan.
Violently throw the bacon into a large sauté pan. The largest you’ve got. Go big, or go home. Get it nice and medium cooked, and then violently throw in your chopped Portobello Mushrooms. You did pull those out earlier, right? I may not have mentioned it, but you, being you, would have remembered anyways. And gosh, you are awfully darn violent.
As the Portobellos get nice and golden (don’t stir too soon or too often! Let ‘em get crispy on one side first.) grab your chopped mess and throw it all in there. When all of that deliciousness is tender, pour in a mess of wine and a mess of cream. Send up a prayer to our Lord and Savior, thanking him for these things, for they will surely make us see him sooner because of the quantities in which we consume them.
Did you remember to throw in a tablespoon or so of flour before you added your cream and wine, and give it a minute to cook in order to thicken your sauce? Good. I didn’t, so I added it now.
Now bring that wondrous, lovely stuff to a boil for a moment to thicken, and then add your shrimpies. Let ‘em get nice and hot, but don’t re-cook them. They’ll get nasty and tough if you do.
Sprinkle your cheddar cheese in, and stir ’til it melts. Then pour that thick wonderful goo into a big serving bowl that you’ve been warming in the oven. If you put that warm goo into a cold bowl, it will be bad, and all will not be right with the world. Do you want that on your conscience? Of course not. So for all that is good and right in this world, warm your daggum bowl.
Then break about 3 eggs per person into a bowl and beat the snot out of them. No one likes snotty eggs. And for heaven’s sake, get a fork and snag that nasty white stringy thing out of the eggs. Ew. Just Ew. Now, get those newly stringless eggs really nice and fluffy. Add some salt and pepper (but not too much salt…you’ve got bacon and cheese to contend with!) Be sure to beat them so well that some slops over the bowl onto your counter so you can now get raw egg on everything else you have out. Send up a thanks that the government never inspects your kitchen.
Melt butter into the sauté pan you used earlier, and then rinsed out for this purpose, because you have only one super big pan and who the hell wants to make more dishes to wash later? No one, that’s who. So melt the butter in the used pan, pour the fluffy eggs in, and cook them gently while scraping the bottom ‘til they’re firm.
To serve this hot mess, put your cooked scrambled eggs into a different warmed serving bowl (you had one in the oven, right?) and let everyone at the table slop their own serving of eggs onto their plates, followed up with the creamy, wondrous, bacon, shrimp goo.
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It smells heavenly, your husband is drooling in his seat, and you feel like your purpose on this earth has suddenly risen greatly. He will look over at you with a newfound love, and total forgiveness that you washed his favorite white t-shirt with your son’s orange Reese’s Pieces t-shirt. This is a powerful breakfast, man!
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Now, eat in your apron, because you and I know that food is more likely to fall on your boobs when you are eating, than it is when you are cooking.
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And THAT, my friends, is how you make Breakfast Goo.
p.s.: I didn’t actually eat breakfast with the serving spoon.
Not this time, anyways.
Love,
Mama
Mama Boe 