Who wakes up early on a Sunday morning to cook breakfast? I did!

Till last weekend, my culinary expeditions were limited to (distant) inputs of a strategic (and speculative) nature. Cooking was simple then. It’s always easy to sit in the control room and bark out orders.
Sunday I decided to get into the field and show them that I could fight the battle as well as I could shout instructions.

Scrambled eggs, toast and sausages it was to be.

The eggs (four, no less) were broken into a pan with hot oil (rationed; just a little, because of global oil prices). Breaking eggs is slightly more tricky than it looks. What seems like an innocuous tap is actually a carefully judged and precisely executed gracious maneuver that is mastered over time. This lesson was learnt after bits of shell landed up in the pan. And egg landed up on the face.

By the time the fourth egg was broken (shattered) and its contents emptied into the pan, the first two had promptly turned into glorious sunny-side-ups. There seemed no option other than planting the spatula straight into them and splattering them around in an attempt to scramble them (splatter, spatula; is that why it’s called so?). Usually I hate to disturb a nicely formed SSU (perhaps that’s why I have a huge problem beginning to eat them), but this is battle. Action must be swift and merciless.

The slices of bread were forgotten. Unfortunately, they were forgotten inside the toaster. They came out as charred remains.

Meanwhile, salt was forgotten. It was added at a stage much later than it should have. The eggs had scrambled themselves by then. And the salt and pepper that were added seemed to have some issues mixing themselves uniformly.

In other parts of the pantry, the sausages were forgotten. In the freezer. So they were hard round bricks when they were remembered. Many hours of defrosting in a microwave just about seemed to infuse some juicy life in them.

By the time this struggle was beginning to end. The eggs had burned themselves.

The toast had charred itself.

And the sausages resolutely refused to thaw.

The kitchen was in a mess. A little SSU had made itself in the place where some egg white had spilt onto the hot plate. There were breadcrumbs all around. And bits of chopped onion.
This was a disaster.

By the time the sausages were done getting thawed and cooked, the eggs had gone cold, the toast had gone charred-coaled and the orange juice had gone warm.

But it was the best breakfast I have had in recent memory. The effort put in, the filth spread around, the shattered eggs, the bruised ego. All made a wonderful meal.

It’s that feeling of satisfaction that comes from earning something. I had to earn my breakfast, I didn’t get it on a china platter. It felt good.

I might have stumbled upon a remedy without knowing it.

For those chaps sitting on benches in various organizations around the universe, cook your own meals. Twice a week. It’ll make up for the misery that comes from getting a salary every month without earning it.