Scrambled Eggs + A Spectrum of Effort

Keep it simple, stupid.

I read once, somewhere, that if you are going to go out to eat, it really only makes sense to go somewhere really, spectacularly expensive or somewhere really, spectacularly cheap. The thought being that going out to eat at an expensive restaurant is an experience, and in paying for that experience, you are paying for quality. On the flip side, at a cheap, restaurant¹, you’re not paying for pretense, you’re just paying for good food.

In between those two are mostly mediocre restaurants and chains². You’re paying for a façade of experience and, generally, just okay food. There’s very little you can order at California Pizza Kitchen that you couldn’t just as well make at home, with less chaos, more health, and a simpler menu.

My friend

Sam Sager

commented on my inspiration post a few weeks ago, chastising me, a no recipe guy, about how he, a No Recipe Guy (TM), doesn’t need to look elsewhere for inspiration, since cooking, like fitness, is intuitive for him and he practices Embodied Meal Planning³. And I get that — in fact, most of the cooking I do, for myself, is rehashing a few staples in different forms. It’s simple stuff — rice and beans, roasted veggies and a protein, something braised in tomatoes and red wine. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each week, and cooking for yourself shouldn’t feel like high pressure cooking⁴.

I think, really, what you cook for yourself, or your family, probably should balanced very much like when you eat out — firmly planted on either side of the spectrum. What you cook should either be exceptionally simple or something that is a full-blown cooking production. A tuna melt or a chateaubriand. Roasted veggies or 3 Cup Chicken. You should be done cooking in fifteen minutes or after at least four hours — it’s the in between where you run into trouble.

Today’s recipe, of course, falls squarely on the simple side of the equation: scrambled eggs. It’s loosely inspired by the way Tim Ferriss cooks them in The Four Hour Chef, but gives you the latitude to use almost anything you have on hand to flesh them out. I did mine with a little Mexican flair⁵, but since this recipe is so simple, I’m not even going to write out instructions: just give you pictures. See if you can guess the ingredients!

The recipe is also inspired by a conversation I had with a reader, who admitted he’s never made any of the recipes I’ve posted, since he’s not as comfortable in the kitchen and doesn’t map out his meals ahead of time. He asked if I could post something with what he might just already have on hand. So, here’s my response. If you don’t have eggs and cheese in your pantry, I can’t help you.

As always, if you have any questions, drop a line in the comments.

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So, GCS, there you go. Hopefully this is something you feel like you can cook with the ingredients you have on hand⁶. Feel free to play around with what you add in — tomatoes, peppers and onions, bacon, steak — and for how long you cook the eggs — more or less runny⁷. Try beating the eggs before you start cooking them, appreciate how the flavor and texture changes with separate whites and yolks versus them mixed together. Above all, get comfortable experimenting with something like this (because even bad eggs aren’t that bad⁸ nor that expensive⁹), so when you try something more involved, you’ve flexed your improvisation muscles enough to feel secure playing around with a more involved recipe.

Above all, like Miamoto Mushashi wrote, in the kitchen, as in life, you should “think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”

Enjoy your weekends.

1. Probably more accurately described as a “dive,” though thanks to Guy Fieri, dives may not necessarily be cheap.

2. This is coming from a guy who ate mostly at chains growing up. I’ll, to this day, take Outback’s King Cut Prime Rib with a Spotted Dog Sundae even over the best Bern’s can offer.

3. I’m paraphrasing and dramatizing here, Sam, so don’t get all hot and bothered! That being said, since you told me you don’t read the footnotes, you’ll probably think I’m being mean spirited. On the chance you are reading this, I’ll remind you that you owe me a recipe and a guest post.

4. Pun!

5. I also used duck eggs, since one of my neighbors sells them for $5 a dozen which is an absolute steal.

6. If you don’t have eggs and cheese, I simply can’t help you.

7. As you can probably tell, I like mine with the consistency of snot.

8. Unless you absolutely overcook them, but you’ll hopefully only make that mistake once.

9. Compared to a rib roast, at least…