Proust Lives

While being unemployed, I continue to bake, perhaps in the hopes that some magical world will come along wherein I can just bake and still manage to live . . . And very very slowly,  I'm going through old crap that got moved with me without my purging (please make your own sound effect here of a barfing sound, thank you) any garbage.  Garbage, is of course, in the eye of the beholder.  Although some things would take a really odd eye (and I don't mean here anything derogatory about my friends with one brown eye and one blue eye, be they people or Australian Blue Shepherds, or Australian actual sheepherders with one brown eye and one blue eye) to see anything but garbage.

On the other hand, I did do service as an undergraduate to a professor who would ask me to sweep the lab and then would go through the dustpan picking out paper clips and tiny screws.  And he was a brilliant man.  Taught me very many things.  Gave me my first HP programmable calculator.  Those were the days.  Check this out!

God, do I love Google Images or what?

Anyhow, I hastily return to the topic at hand, which actually I haven't revealed to you yet.  But here it goes.  Among the stuff I did find before leaving Beautiful Downtown Weehawken, was a bunch of my Mom's old recipes.  I shoved them into my three ring binder recipe collection that was started by Sandman's sister some years ago.  This past two weeks, I've made an extra sour sourdough recipe, an ordinary sourdough recipe, a challah recipe, and several pie and pie variations.  Plus lots of dinners.  Looking through my three ring binder recipe collection, I spotted one of Mom's classics--oatmeal bread.

I remembered immediately the taste of the slightly sweet and sticky bread.  I remembered it toasted, made into grilled cheese sandwiches served with Campbell's Tomato Soup, tuna melts, and especially as eggs in nests.  If you've never had an egg in a nest, you have to try this next time you've time on your hands for breakfast.  You need a good hearty bread--oatmeal, or challah, or sweet wheat, or rye.  Slice it a little on the thick side if you have a choice.  Cut out a square about two inches on each side.  Butter each side and the square.  Set the bread and the square in a non-stick pan and turn up to medium-high heat.  When the butter starts to sizzle, drop an egg in the middle.  When the egg is nearly cooked to your liking, Turn it over and let the other side brown a little.  If you like your eggs cooked through, turn the heat to low and leave it for a few minutes.  Otherwise, flip it out onto your plate and enjoy.

The memories it brought back for me . . .