CW: Photos of food.
More than anything else in life, I love food. Cooking, to me, is like an art, and eating is the best way to enjoy said art. It's incredibly stupid and corny, but I've come to accept that it's also perfectly fine to be cringe about the simplest things.
And, sure, I like a terrible fast food burger once in awhile - I think anything with a mouth does - but making something I really enjoy at home outweighs that. It satisfies a different part of the soul to cook at home.
That's where the egg comes in. Obviously, pretty much no matter where you are, you're gonna have access to some kind of egg. Over the years (mainly when I was living alone from 2020-22) I've perfected a number of different "eyeball all the ingredients" type egg recipes for myself. A lot of them boil down to whatever you have on hand, whether that be only packaged ramen and soy sauce or an entire boomer's unused spice cabinet.
I think my personal favourite will always be fried rice with egg - even just those two ingredients together (plus whatever spices I can get my hands on) is enough to satiate me until dinner. I'd make it right before I had a day of classes and work, and then I wouldn't have to worry about being hungry until after dark. The more time I had to devote to making my breakfast, the more complex my recipe became. It started with making my own spice blends to have on-hand ahead of time, then making the eggs different ways, and finally yolk sauce and kewpie mayo became staples of it.
Sticky rice with scrambled egg, a soy-yolk sauce (soy sauce cayenne, garlic, onion, white pepper, and cumin), kewpie, and black sesame seeds - 05/12/23
Of course, there's a billion other combinations you can do with rice, but another one I've started to explore is sandwiches. I'm on sandwich TikTok, I enjoy learning about both historical and randomly-generated sandwiches, and I have a constant supply of homemade, fresh sourdough on hand to experiment with. My parents are major health food nuts, so I can usually make whatever veggie-heavy combo I want if I feel like devoting the time to it.
My most recent Ultimate Sandwich (NSFW) was actually made on a sesame seed bagel - toasted light brown, one side got dijon mustard and the other got mayo. I made an egg over hard, grilled two pieces of ham, and added two slices of gouda, cucumber, and tomato. No photos of the thing survived, I was starving that morning, but it was glorious.
One of my creations that did survive to the photo op was a variation of an egg sarnie I saw @whatwilly on TikTok make (if it isn't obvious, recipes are about the only thing I use TikTok for at this point). The egg was cooked for about 10 minutes on a medium boil, and the mayo mixture was made up of kewpie mayo, dijon mustard, paprika, salt, black peper, green onion, and a pickled friggitello pepper. I buttered both sides of my cheap ass white bread with Kerrygold, slapped the egg and mayo mix on, and decimated the thing mere moments after I took a picture for my friends.
The mock-sarnie in question.
Not all of my breakfasts are as extravagant as I wish they were (today's brunch was 10 Korean pork-beef-veggie dumplings doused in soy sauce, nothing picture-worthy), but I think the joy I get out of making them once in awhile makes up for all the days where I can barely manage to make a sandwich first thing in the morning. Cooking means a lot to me, and I've learned it's one of my many hobbies I could never do as part of a job. Working in fast food ruined any want I have to work in a restaurant, lol.
☣ Feeling: Hungry
☣ Playing: Ninja Sex Party