Eggs and Cheese, Please

Ho hum, another rainy evening in Seattle. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with two cats keeping me (very close) company. The air smells of onions and butter, as I’ve got a large pan of both cooking away on the stove. I’m making an Onion & Leek Quiche for dinner, and I’m pretty excited about it.

Right now I’m smack dab in the middle of reading Julia Child’s memoir, “My Life in France,” which is all about food. Loving food, eating food, dreaming about food, cooking food, devouring food. Needless to say, I get hungry while reading this book. Most of the dishes she rhapsodizes about are beef or chicken or fish based, so I don’t want to eat them in reality, but they sound so damned delicious that I can almost convince myself…

But not really. Meat isn’t my thing, and it never really has been. I remember avoiding grisly steak bits and eating more bun than burger as a kid, but never knew I could avoid the stuff altogether.

My mom did bring home tofu one day, but it was the kind that came in small cardboard carton, and it was non-firm silken tofu. She’d heard about it in Weight Watchers, and it was the 80s. I’m not sure why the 80s makes a difference, but it does. We didn’t know what to do with it, so my mom just cut it open and dumped it over a plate. It slithered out like some slimy baby and collapsed into a pile of white, shiny stuff. We all stared at the pile for a minute or so and then ordered pizza.

I was on the bus home tonight, staring out the window, trying to decide what to cook for dinner. We didn’t have any vegetables in the house, other than some salad greens and onions. We had half a leek left over from some soup last weekend. Suddenly I remembered the recipe for QUICHE AUX OIGNONS I’d read in the hefty “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” the night before last. I grew tired of trying to imagine what Julia was talking about when she mentioned different dishes in her book, so I had been reading her biography and the cookbook in tandem for the last few days. I had onions! And cheese! And eggs! Half and half, even! Brilliant.

So now the onions are soft and yellow (mmmm), I’ve blind baked my crust, and all that’s missing is the lovely filling. I’m going to wait until Sky is at the door before I make that part — no lukewarm quiche for us, please.

I’m very excited about dinner, because I’m hungry. I’ve been experiencing a higher-than-usual rate of lunchtime ennui in the last few days. It strikes when I haven’t brought anything from home to eat. I’m overwhelmed by the possibilities of what I can eat and don’t know where to begin. This often results in me sitting at my desk for the first 15 minutes of my lunch hour staring at the wall. Then I get up and walk around the library like a zombie, stopping only when I realize I’m almost out of time, usually at whatever lunch place I’m standing in front of at the time.

I have no idea where this indecision comes from. My best guess is I’m just not really hungry when it’s lunchtime, or if I am, I just want to grab a nibble and get on with it. This elaborate going somewhere else and buying food thing just strikes me as odd in the middle of my day. It’s not like I can really relax in that short amount of time. Now at least I have a whole hour — I used to have a 30 minute lunch break, and that was even worse.

Luckily I was saved from decision this afternoon, as a nice coworker came up to my desk and told me where we’d being going and marched to the place with me in tow. I think maybe I will make a little chore-wheel type tool on which I’ll list place/things to eat – I can just give it a spin when the clock strikes noon and obey orders. So far on my wheel would be: bibimbap (lunch today, delicious), deli-type sandwich, soup, salad bar, tofu bánh mì, and Thai curry something or other. If I knew a nearby place that served quiche, I’d add that to my list, too – my kitchen smells amazing.