HOW TO PRODUCE A GOURMET BREAKFAST FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY WHILE SITTING ON YOUR ARSE

Okay, so my ten year old daughter had a friend sleep over last night and they stayed up late. The delightful darlings, having no idea how much sleep a Lazy Person needs, or how a night of prancing around the house as dress-up divas while singing at the top of their lungs, can punch the eye out of bleary-eyed and produce a living, breathing zombie-mother (pardon the gross conflict of terms... okay, and the annoyingly long sentence).  

Needless to say, when I woke up my body took my still-vacant head on a dead walk straight to my touch screen espresso machine. Somehow I got a sublime latte out of it without even focussing my eyes and was just parking my arse at the breakfast bar when the darling starlets burst into the kitchen demanding breakfast! Did I say demanding? I meant screeching like baby vultures in a carnivorous frenzy. The assault on my eardrums jerked my brain back from its leisurely float down the River Styx, albeit reluctantly, and I had to do something, anything. They were barking all these impertinently ridiculous suggestions at me like, "Can we have french toast, pancakes, waffles? We'll make them! Oh, please, please, please, please, pleeeeeaaase?"

Pfft! Of course I spat an emphatic "NO!!!" at them because then what would I eat, being gluten intolerant and all. While they harped away at me with all number of outrageous proposals, I slurped my hot frothy wake-up essence and waited for the torpor to dissipate and my brain to deliver me from this evil with some sort of solution that would stop the rancor and get us all fed without providing famine-relief for the sixteen million sugar ants standing at attention just outside my kitchen window. By the time their enthusiasm was transmogrifying to a hypoglycemic frenzy, I was having thoughts of abject self-pity, blaming them for mental cruelty, and had one foot pointed toward the exit, when a lightning bolt pierced the fog bubble encasing my brain and a picture slapped me in the face with its simplicity and elegance. It was something I had seen on Pinterest a couple of days ago, something that could potentially resurrect my morning. Here's the link http://pinterest.com/pin/115264071683848967/.

Assuming that you are as lazy as me and you can't be bothered checking that link I'll tell you what it is: a picture of a muffin tray with a raw egg cracked into each muffin cup with a couple of leaves of spinach, presumably all ready to shove into a hot oven and cook up into a hardly-any-effort-or-mess breakfast. Okay here is a picture that's sort-of like it, but it's not the one... 


Yeah, I know, like WOW! That's every Lazy Person's dream, right? Just crack some eggs in a pan, shove it in the oven and, bam! Breakfast defeated! Well, almost, except that when first I saw that picture, I thought, yes, that looks like it would be easy to do without turning my kitchen into the sweat-shop of dish-doing hell, but it looks kind-of bland and tasteless. Now, I don't know if it was the freshness of the coffee beans or the rare burst of creativity that comes from a sleep-deprivation hangover, but I got a major hit of the truly gifted Lazy Person magic that eludes me most of the time. The picture that hovered before my eyes was a fully formed hybrid of that Pinterest pic and yet so elegant in its flavoricious simplicity. It was, well, let me just give you the recipe, because every Lazy Person should have this in their tool belt... 

Epicurean Egg Nibblies

Italian Version (You can make them Mexican, Thai, Indian, etc. Ask me...)

INGREDIENTS:

1 dozen eggs

1lb. thin-sliced bacon

12 fresh basil leaves

6-12 cherry tomatoes

1 cup finely chopped kale, silver-beet or spinach (or any other green stuff that can be cooked)

½ cup grated cheese (I like a mixture of parmesan & English cheddar)

METHOD:

1. Grab your 12 x muffin pan and lightly spray it with canola oil spray.
2. Cut your bacon strips into thirds and line the muffin cups with them.
3. Finely slice your green stuff (kale, spinach etc.).
4. Sprinkle a little green stuff into each muffin cup.
5. Season each cup with a little pepper, tabasco or whatever.
6. Crack an egg into each cup.
7. Slice your cherry tomatoes into halves and place one or two on top of the egg.
8. Put one basil leaf onto each egg.
9. Sprinkle some cheese onto each egg.
10. Place in a moderate oven (around 375˚) for 23 to 25 minutes.
11. Pull your muffin pan full of eggy deliciousness out of the oven and let stand for 5 minutes.
12.  Carefully ease your tasty tastebud teasing tidbits from the pan and onto a plate.
13. Stand for a minute in gob-smacked reverence of your Lazy genius.
14. Gobble them down as fast as you can before anyone else in the house notices.
15. Alternately, you could serve them up on plates with some perfectly toasted um, toast and freshly squeezed OJ, present it to your family and bask in their adulation of the “Lo chef genio pigro della casa” which is Italian for Lazy chef genius of the house!
16. The other option, which is the only real way to go if you aspire to Lazy Person greatness is to use your LP powers to convince your enthusiastic children that cooking for the family is more fun than watching thirteen new Adventure Time episodes in a row, and that it’s the only way they’ll get anything good for breakfast, so that they volunteer to do it for you... 

And here is that version in pictures, because you know, LP is what I do...