Isn’t the Light OK?

Last night I watched a cook­ing pod­cast about omelets. I’ve always con­sid­ered them to be a spe­cialty of mine, but the host of the show was mak­ing them a dif­fer­ent way than my usual. His tech­nique included a cool lit­tle pan flip once the first side was done and the edges had been folded over. I’ve never actu­ally attempted this kind of flip before, but between this video and a few min­utes of Google action, I was con­vinced it couldn’t be that difficult.

Fast for­ward to tonight — I come home from work hun­gry, with the house to myself for a few hours. We have eggs, veg­eta­bles, cheese — sure, why not? I cook the pep­pers and toma­toes as the host demon­strated, whisk­ing together the eggs, and pour­ing them over the veg­gies. Add some meat and cheese, fold over the sides. Now, it’s time for the infa­mous flip.

I decide to do this over the sink, just in case. Okay…just a flick of the wrist, as Fred­die Mer­cury might have said. I imag­ine a slow motion cop movie shootout mon­tage, com­plete with gun­shots and pitch-shifted screams of “Nnnnooooooo!” With anx­i­ety and trep­i­da­tion, I look into the sink to inspect the remains, and find — nothing.

My pan flip has passed the three most crit­i­cal tests: 1) The food is upside down, 2) The food is in the pan, and 3) The food is intact.

I return the pan to the stove to cook the other side. After a few min­utes, I can no longer con­tain my excite­ment at hav­ing com­pleted the flip, and have to try it again. A sec­ond lit­tle vic­tory. The omelet’s almost ready to eat now, and it’s a won­der to behold: eggs, veg­gies, turkey, cheese, a bit of Ital­ian sea­son­ing, all per­fectly formed and cooked to a golden brown. Just for good mea­sure, I decide to try the flip one more time. The third time, as it’s been said, is the charm. Or, in my case, more of an evil voodoo monkey’s paw.

(Cue Barber’s “Ada­gio For Strings” here.) I sur­vey the car­nage. Tomato slices, chopped pep­pers, egg and cheese melted together so they’re barely rec­og­niz­able as sep­a­rate enti­ties. My Pla­tonic ideal omelet is now reduced to the few bites that cling tena­ciously to the fry­ing pan, and the mess that now lines the sink. Yes, the few rem­nant bites are deli­cious, but at what cost? AT WHAT COST?!?

And so, another per­sonal tri­umph becomes some­thing more akin to a punch­line for Tri­umph the Insult Comic Dog. Will I try to flip an omelet again? Most likely. After all, if you want to cook some eggs, you’ve got to break a few omelets. Or something.

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