August | 2013 | Pen & Palate

Article

Curried Egg Scramble

illustration: tram nguyen

When it comes to breakfast foods, I’m all about eggs. Scrambled, hard-boiled, poached, or fried, eggs are delicious, healthy, variable, cheap, and easy to prepare. As a kid I relished my dad’s delicious Sunday feasts, a weekly towering egg pile surrounded by bacon and several bread varieties. When I started working in offices, I’d go for the subpar cafeteria egg concoctions. I’d grab an egg sandwich from the deli for lunch. Somehow, I still have decent cholesterol.

Or at least I did as of my last doctor’s appointment, which was before I started working from home. At that point I started eating a lot more eggs. Like, every day, sometimes twice a day. Did you know a hardboiled egg with horseradish is a great midday snack? And that fried eggs create almost no dishes, especially if you eat them straight off the pan, like a heathen? Eggs! I ate them constantly. For a few weeks, anyway, until, predictably, I got really fucking sick of eggs. The problem was I didn’t know what else to eat for breakfast.

At this point a more creative person would probably have discovered some alternative, hearty kasha-based concoction that is low-fat, heart-healthy, blah blah blah. I simply “borrowed” an idea from a South Asian friend’s mom, who a few months previously had fed me a delicious meal of (hardboiled) eggs with curry. Then I cut it down by a few steps, because I am lazy.

Article

Health Cocktail

illustration: tram nguyen

A few weeks ago I started doing the dreaded Paleo diet, because I was turning 30 and felt I wasn’t living a GOOP enough life. I didn’t think I would be able to do the diet, however, unless I could snack on a lot of green juices (see: GOOP aspirations), so I borrowed my sister’s juicer, as she is a school teacher and has not nearly enough time to waste on this labor-intensive activity.

In addition to being a well-respected teacher, my sister is also something of a Paleo guru, in that she has gone on the diet to great effect and generally knows what works and what doesn’t. (“Effect” in this case meaning both feeling healthy and losing a few pounds, JUDGE ME.) She gave me a very strict regimen to follow for 10 days, which involved eating only vegetables, protein and, when one is very desperate, a handful of almonds.

“But what about wine?” I asked her.

“Oh, wine is fine,” she said.

That seemed wrong somehow.

“Well, red wine. Red wine and vodka are okay when necessary.”

Article

Crab Cakes

illustration: tram nguyen

For years, my family took summer vacations at the beach in North Carolina, where we’d all compete to see who could get the worst sunburn (“best tan”) and otherwise lie around a rental cottage stuffing our faces. This was the one time a year my siblings and I were allowed to eat junk cereal, so we really went for it, inhaling those miniature cereal boxes starting at about 9am until they were all gone, which was usually about 9:30. Then we’d move to ice cream. Dinner, however, was always an elaborate family ordeal, involving thousands of dishes and (once we aged into it) copious amounts of white wine. The culinary highlight was always toward the end of the trip, when we’d gather our innumerable relatives together for a crab feast.

I loved our crab feasts for a few reasons: I’m from Maryland, so I am bound by honor to like crabs, and I’m also a little bit attention-starved, so I really enjoy wielding anything reminiscent of a gavel. Smashing a defenseless, barely-dead crustacean with a huge mallet and then literally picking its guts out can be a real pleasure when you are a tween with low self-esteem.

Article

Grilled Pineapple with Chili Lime Salt

illustration: tram nguyen

Last summer, I was hanging around the guacamole section at the grocery store, gently squeezing the avocados in a non-creepy manner, as one does. These two cargo shorts-clad frat boys hovered nearby, presumably arguing over which avocado would pair well with the 24-pack of Coors Light in their grocery cart. I was mostly minding my own business, silently judging them for having crappy taste in beer, until one of them approached me cautiously.

“Excuse me, Ma’am…”

He then proceeded to explain the debate he and his bro were having. Should they get one of the rock hard avocados or a sad mushy one? Not that I heard any of this, as my mind was too busy lingering over that one word. Ma’am.

Ma’am.

Ma’am?!

This has been happening more frequently of late. I made a note to myself to make an appointment with my dermatologist for a vat of industrial grade Retin-A. And then I sent them back to the frathouse with a too-ripe avocado, which as soon as they cut it open, they would soon discover that like my own rapidly deteriorating visage, it too was speckled with brown age spots.