It’s very quiet in the house, a few minutes past midnight on the day after Christmas. The only sounds I hear are the tinnitus that never leaves my head and the very faint whir of a fan in my computer.
I got up late Christmas morning, having gone to bed around 5 AM. I planned on fasting. And if that worked out, I planned to fast the next day. And the next day. Maybe I would fast until New Year’s Day. That was my plan. The only thing missing from the plan was willpower.
My plan lasted until I remembered that I had a pre-cooked sausage patty in the fridge in an already-open package and I should eat it today. I hate to throw out any food and especially a sausage patty, but I knew if it lingered in the fridge another day it might become iffy, spoilage-wise. So I put a pan on the stovetop and poured grapeseed oil into it. When the oil became dimpled from heat, I turned the heat down and cracked two eggs into the pan. While they cooked I heated the sausage patty in the microwave oven. I turned to the stovetop and contemplated the slowly cooking eggs.
When I was a child, my parents fried bacon in a cast iron pan on the stovetop (microwave ovens were still science fiction). After the bacon was cooked, the eggs went into the pan and were fried in the bacon grease. Cooking bacon and eggs was easy. I could cook eggs sunny side down without turning them over. It was just a matter of tilting the pan and using a spatula to toss hot grease over the yolks. Afterward, the grease went into a round, metal container beside the stove. The container was made specifically to hold used bacon grease. It even had a filter in the top to catch small bits of bacon that may have broken off in the pan. Bacon grease accumulated in the container until it was needed to cook another food. My favorite was fried corn: awesome. There are probably people who still fry eggs in bacon grease and use bacon drippings in cooking. And that’s okay. That’s why God invented coronary bypass surgery.
Many times I’ve cooked eggs in butter, though the milk solids burn easily which leaves a brown residue on the eggs. Clarified butter or ghee would have been better. For a while I used olive oil for frying and sautéing. Of course, it imparts a slight olive taste. Now I use grapeseed oil, a byproduct of winemaking. It’s nutritionally similar to olive oil but with a neutral flavor, twice the vitamin E, and a higher smoke point.
The eggs were done. I put them on a plate with the warmed-up patty. I ate in front of the TV, then dumped the plate and fork into the sink. I powered up my TV and my computer. I checked my email, watched some TV, read the news and surfed some web sites.
Around 2:30 PM there was a knock at my front door. My neighbor had brought me a Christmas card. I thanked her. She was in a hurry to get someplace so she didn’t stay and chat. When I opened the envelope I discovered a prepaid store gift card. That was sweet – an unexpected gift. Suddenly I decided to go to a Chinese buffet restaurant. I had already blown my fast all to hell. It would be my Christmas present to me: instead of a fast, I would have an anti-fast. And that’s what I did.
Hot buffet food is supposed to be kept at a temperature of at least 140° to prevent spoilage. The food on this buffet was barely warm. Oh well – in for a dime, in for a dollar. I ate three plates of the tasty but tepid food. I knew that if I returned it wouldn’t be until next Christmas, at least. I left a tip for the waiter/busboy, despite not seeing him at any time during my meal. (I had to ask someone else to bring me water and I got my utensils from a nearby wait-staff station.) And, there being nothing else open and nothing else to do, I returned home. And I watched some TV. And I surfed the web. And I wrote this little thing. And now I’m going to post it to my blog.
It is really quiet.
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