BACHELOR MEAL #1 - SCRAMBLED EGGS

The Southern Woman That I Married is visiting family in the Colonies. I'm on my own. That's not to say that friends haven't stepped up with dinner invites. They say that they are 'taking care of me' as if I'm incapable of feeding myself. But I do know my way around the kitchen. And I don't mean that I can heat a frozen pizza.(Well, I can. But only once in a while.)

Every student, solo apartment dweller, and spouse winging it alone has relied on scrambled eggs for sustenance at some point. They're cheap and they're easy and we know how to fix them just the way that we like them. So why am I writing about scrambled eggs? Well, you've got your recipe and I've got mine. After a great deal of experimentation - and not a few failures - I've finally come up with a method that works for me. Every time. Since I've probably tried your recipe already, it's time to see if you are willing to try mine.

Now, I know that there are many schools of thought. Mix the eggs in a bowl. Add water to the eggs. Add milk to the eggs. Add cream to the eggs. Salt in the pan. Salt on the plate. Use a nonstick pan. Use a cast iron pan. Cook in butter. Cook in vegetable oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, olive oil. The possibilities are endless. And, of course, every cooking site has seventy-three recipes and every chef/cook/blogger has THE answer.

I have THE answer.

MY answer, anyway.

Here goes:

Note the ingredients. Two eggs - locally sourced, fresh, and never refrigerated. Saucisse de foie, a livery bit of hard sausage from the local butcher. Bleu de Causses, my favorite bleu cheese. Olive oil, locally sourced, fresh, and buttery. Slices of petrissane, a soft and crusty, slightly grainy bread fresh from the local bakery, preferred over a baguette. Tomatoes fresh from the garden of a local producer who sells them in the market a few steps from our door. And garlic. Locally sourced. Of course.

So I pour a bit of olive oil into a cast iron skillet and heat well. Then I toast one side of the bread. While warm, I rub the toasted side first with the cut side of the garlic and then with tomato.

Then I crack the eggs into a bowl and dump them into the hot pan, stirring with a flexible spatula.

As I scramble the eggs, I add the saucisse. The bleu goes in just before the eggs are done. The heat of the eggs will melt the cheese and I don't want the cheese to stick on the pan. Cook the eggs soft or hard, to your taste.

Arrange on the plate. Sit down and eat up. No salt or pepper. The cheese is quite salty and the saucisse is well spiced. Just eat what comes out of the pan. You know what I really like about this method? The colors of the eggs stand out, yolks and whites, not mixed together but truly scrambled.

And there you have it. Bachelor Meal #1.