Tag: eggs

I like Easter

We can say Hallelujah! again

I like Easter. It’s much less a theological thing, though. For a brief time, I had a pastor named Matt who described himself as more of a Lenten than an Easter person.  And I get that.

There was a meeting I was supposed to attend this week, but I blew it off because it was on Maundy Thursday. Someone said that he didn’t know what that was. I noted that if you’ve seen the painting of The Last Supper, not just the one by da Vinci, you have some idea. Or if you’ve listened to/seen the latter half of Jesus Christ Superstar, which ends before the resurrection.

Those Lenten songs, Requiems, and the like resonate more with me than the triumphant Easter anthems.

I like going to church on Easter Sunday. One year during the first decade of this century, my wife and I were driving to Charlotte, NC, to visit my family. But I hated not singing. Listening to church music on the radio merely made me more melancholy.

I love to see the C&E people at church. C&E refers to those folks who come only on Christmas and/or Easter. I do think about the limited theological picture they get. “They sing the Hallelujah chorus almost every time I’m there,” they might determine, but so it goes. Do people still wear Easter bonnets?

When is Easter?

I’m a fan of Lent and Easter bouncing around the calendar. It’s like jazz; ya gotta riff with it. As timeanddate.com notes:  “Easter falls on the first Sunday after the Full Moon date, based on mathematical calculations, that falls on or after March 21. If the Full Moon is on a Sunday, Easter is celebrated the following Sunday.

“Although Easter is liturgically related to the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (March equinox) and the Full Moon, its date is not based on the actual astronomical date of either event.

“March 21 is the Church’s date of the March equinox, regardless of the time zone, while the actual date of the equinox varies between March 19 and March 22, and the date depends on the time zone.” And it’s even a little more complicated than that.

The art piece was created by my daughter, who writes: “Re-coop-erations – Recuperations Project – Scale Shift. Eggs represent a very literal sense of recuperation, new color, new season, and new life. In many traditions spanning geographies and time, many cultures have used eggs in customs, especially those around the time of the Spring Equinox. During Nowruz, the Iranian and Persian New Year, families decorate eggs to bring good luck and fertility. Pre-Christian Ukraine brightly decorated eggs.”

Of course, Christianity leaned into the spring festivals, just as they positioned Christmas to coincide with the Roman holidays of the winter solstice.

Happy Easter!

Spinach, ham, and cheese omelet

a certain baconlike quality

spinach ham and cheese omeletj
The American Egg Board omelet LOOKS much better than mine.

As I’ve noted several times, I don’t think of myself as much of a cook. My wife is much better. But I prepared food for myself many times when I was single. During the COVID lockdown, when I was retired, but my wife (teacher) and daughter (student) were doing education remotely, I often prepared lunch during the week. It was a good way to get me out of my office, frankly.

Recently, I made a spinach, ham, and cheese omelet. My wife RAVED about it. I thought it was fine. There are a couple of secrets, though, that enhanced the flavor.

Take one or two ounces of fresh spinach. That’s quite a bit, BTW. Put it in the frying pan with 1/4 cup of water per ounce of spinach until it reduces as it cooks. Put the spinach in a small bowl, and dump the water.

Spray the pan with non-stick whatever. Put three slices of deli ham in the pan at medium-high heat until it begins to carmelize, then flip them over and heat them. Take them out of the pan; I put them in the same bowl as the spinach.

Make an omelet. I used five eggs – two for me, two for her, and one for the pan, as my father would say – and about 1/4 cup of milk. As the eggs are beginning to cook, add the spinach – I use a fork – and the ham – you could cut it, but I tear the slices.

Clean-up is fast

When it’s almost cooked, turn down the heat to medium-low and tear up (or cut up) one slice of cheese. I used low-fat Swiss cheese but use what you like. Cover the omelet until the cheese melts, which happens very quickly.

This is extremely easy. The keys are using fresh spinach rather than frozen. (Canned spinach, BTW, is an abomination.) And frying the ham. It takes on a bacony flavor, which is good in my book. I suppose you could use butter or olive oil on the pan.

In any case, it’s easy, fast, and went over well with the better cook in my house. There aren’t many things to clean up – a small bowl and the pan, besides the eating utensils and plates.

Small Lid Stuck in Larger Pan

This happened to me recently. I put a too-small lid on the pan to melt the cheese. It vacuumed shut.  

This site suggests placing the pan in the freezer. If that doesn’t work, then try tapping the pan with a wooden spoon.  Repeat as necessary.

Only then did it recommend what I found in this video, which is to heat the pan. It may be counterintuitive, but it worked!

The very few things I know about cooking

I’d rather do the dishes than prepare them

CookingThere are very few things I know about cooking.

1. In general, longer is better.

I discovered this when my father would spend hours cooking spaghetti sauce on the stove at low heat when I was growing up. Ask any barbecue chef and they’ll tell you that time is their ally in creating a great taste.

Bt it’s even true with mundane food such as oatmeal. My wife makes instant oatmeal in the microwave most mornings. But she always says it tastes better when I just boil a pan of water and cook it on the stove for a minute. The process takes an extra four minutes, vital for her on a weekday morning.

2. Water is useful.

I was watching the CBS morning show on Saturday earlier this year. It always has a cooking section. The chef was apparently world-famous, white, male, older, and I think with an accent, but I had never heard of him. He was frying eggs when he put a little water into the hot pan, much to the puzzlement of host Jeff Glor, and me.

I started cooking eggs that way and discovered that, for the first time in six decades of cooking eggs, I could successfully prepare them over easy.

Also, I make omelets with fresh spinach. I would prepare the spinach with a little butter/margarine/Olivio. But my wife wanted to avoid the calories and suggested I use a pan spray. For me, the spinach did not reduce properly. But it did with relatively little water.

Cleanup time 

3. All things being equal, I’d rather clean up afterward.

I’ve noticed that when my wife or daughter prepares food, they use far more dishes/pans/pots than I do so. As I try to keep up with the dishes, I’m forever surprised by that fact. If money were no object, I’d eat out or get takeout every other night. Maybe it’s that I’ve had more experience cooking for one.

But playing in soapy water: now THAT’S something I can get into. I get a certain joy from the cleanup than I ever get cooking or baking. At Thanksgiving dinner in 1987 with over a dozen people, I really didn’t mind the cleanup at all. It’s…USEFUL. Whereas others groan and kvetch about the scalded pots and sticky mixing bowls, I rather enjoy the challenge.

Coverville 1381: The 18th Annual Beatles Thanksgiving Cover Story

Odd habits: Ask Roger Anything

eggs

odd eggYou could Ask Roger Anything. About his odd habits, for instance. Of course, he might tell you that he has no odd habits. This would mean one of two possibilities. Either he’s totally self-unaware or he’s lying.

Is my sleeping pattern a habit? Here’s an article about sleeping in two shifts. This is definitely me, especially in the last year. So if I’m writing to you at 3 a.m., my time, it’s likely that I just got up, read my email, and will probably go to bed in a half hour.

I have had the habit of playing music related to the birthdays of the musicians. But in retirement, I have fallen well behind. I used to play 6-10 CDs at work each day, but I’m not at home now nearly as much as I was at work then.

OK, I suppose this is odd. When I take eggs out of a carton, I remove a egg from one end, then the one from the opposite corner. The last eggs in the carton are in the middle. This has something to with me once dropping a carton because I grabbed it at one end, which was empty, and I didn’t anticipate a half dozen at the other end.

The ask

Want to know more odd habits, or anything else about me? This is your lucky day! It’s that time again for you to Ask Roger Anything. I mean anything. Based on my track record, I’ll even take the time to answer them, most likely within a month. That’s the swell guy I am!

Per usual, you can leave any of your questions and/or suggestions, in the comments section of this blog or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can do that. However, you need to SAY so specifically. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to be unnamed; otherwise, I’ll assume you want your moniker to be noted.

Len Wein, egg salad and other things

Arthur wants to know:

Have you ever run across anything about YOU that you didn’t know about?

Nah. I get Google alerts for Roger Green but it’s usually some Brit or another, although it might be a Denver musician or a high school teacher in Texas.

Just recently, someone told me there used to be a New York state assemblyman named Roger Green, as if I didn’t know. I started adding my middle initial or name to distinguish myself from him, for he, like so many other state legislators, got into legal and ethical problems.

There was a time I used to write more regularly a blog for the local newspaper. Since I was usually behind in my reading, I’d discover that the paper had excerpted part of my post, not from reading the paper, but from people telling me they saw it.

Jaquandor inquires:

Favorite Len Wein character?

#1 would have to be Swamp Thing. I know it better from the Moore-Bissette-Totleben period that Wein edited. But I discovered the Wein-Wrightson origins after that.

#2 is probably Storm, which he and Dave Cockrum developed in Giant-Size X-Men #1.

Interesting that you asked the question on the very day there was a Final JEOPARDY! answer about Len Wein.
Only the defending champion, who had been in third place, got the correct answer, which got her the win.

So Wolverine is probably #3.

But I also liked the characters he wrote that he didn’t create, such as Spider-Man in Marvel Team Up.

What do you think of egg salad? (I thought it was gross for years but I’ve recently converted.)

I ALWAYS liked egg salad. You NEED mustard if it’s to be any good.

When I was a kid, I ate it on white bread, or as we called it in those days, bread. As an adult, I developed a preference for it on seeded rye.

I like almost anything with eggs, BTW. When I’m eating out, I often order an omelet, not because I can’t make one myself – I surely can, and have since I was about 10 – but because I usually don’t have the variety of ingredients I’d need to keep fresh on hand.

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