Goat Cheese, Sun Dried Tomato and Sauteed Onion Omelet

First of all, I am so EXCITED about this post because it contains my first photograph!!!! I have been toiling with my camera for years now trying to take an acceptable picture to start blogging with. Finally, my mom got me a lamp (with instructions to buy energy efficient DAYLIGHT bulbs) for this very purpose. The lights in my apartment give my food a sickly yellow appearance when the photo is snapped. My what a HUGE difference this lighting makes. I am beyond satisfied with the outcome and can't wait to blog with even more pictures. :)

What a great Saturday breakfast this was. :) Upon my very first visit to Montreal, to tour McGill Campus, my parents and I ate at this little cafe inside the Desjardins shopping mall. Sadly, I think this cafe has since closed, but it was a wonderfully unexpected find near the other more food court-esque stands. Their water pitchers contained a variety of fruits in them (I don't quite remember what kinds exactly as this was now about four years ago) which infused the water with a light, fruity flavor. That, however, was not the best part of our meal. Here, at this little cafe in the mall, my mom and I were introduced to goat cheese and spinach egg white omelets. So simple, but so delicious. It has since become one of my favorite breakfast meals (with the addition of a little tabasco thrown on top when I have it).

This morning, though, I lacked spinach, but did have goat cheese and was craving an egg white omelet. So, I took a look in the fridge to see what other ingredients lurked behind the door. Happily, I came upon sun-dried tomatoes (in oil) and some onion. What a fantastic combination. There were only three eggs left in my carton so I decided to use the whites of all of them for this omelet, sauteed the onions, chopped up the sun-dried tomatoes a bit, crumbled some goat cheese and threw it all together. Well... I suppose it took a little more effort than just "throwing" the ingredients in a pan and watching this beautiful omelet magically take shape. It takes a bit of skill to transform your eggs into an omelet, as opposed to a scramble. I've adopted the "scrape-and-swirl" method. This method starts off with a heated and greased pan, lest you want your skillet to turn into the omelet itself as the egg will never come clean from an un-greased pan. I separate my eggs into a bowl, add salt, pepper, and a few drops of milk then scramble it all up with a fork. Next comes the part that requires a bit of skill, but nothing that can't be easily learned. Pour the egg into the pan and swirl it around so it covers the bottom of the pan. Then I take a spatula, scrape up some of the cooked egg on the edge, and tilt the pan to fill in the new emptiness with some uncooked egg resting on top. I do this all around the edge of the pan until the egg is still slightly uncooked on top, but, when given a tilt of the pan, none of it makes enough of an advance to fill in a new gap. This is the point when I add my fixings. Usually I'll add the cheese first so that it has longer exposure to the heat and thus more time to become ooey gooey. Then comes the spinach, normally, but in this case it was my sauteed onions and chopped up sun dried tomatoes. Once I'm satisfied with the egg-to-other-ingredients ratio, I top the pan with a lid for a bit. (When using spinach, this encourages it to wilt a little more but also makes sure that the eggs get fully cooked.) Oh, also, I only cover one half of the pan with the filling because it's folded in half anyways. Next, you turn off the heat, fold over the omelet, and slide it onto a plate. And voila! A beautifully delicious omelet awaits your knife and fork (and your mouth :P).

Yummy! Look at that cheesy, oniony, tomatoey goodness seeping out. This is a good contender for my normal spinach-goat cheese omelet. All this need now is a giant latte sitting nearby... and it's perfect. :)

Saturday Morning and Quantum Physics

SATURDAY! It's finally here! This week has been one of those agonizing, never-ending ones. I've been a day ahead of schedule ever since Tuesday. (I attempted to attend my class usually held on Wednesdays, only to enter a large, full lecture hall (lecture in progress), climbed over some students, realized it was most definitely Tuesday (thus, that this was most definitely NOT my class), and clumsily climbed back over the same students to exit. Whoops.)

This morning is being spent much more to my liking than last week's Saturday, as on that day I awoke to a kitchen eye sore of dishes piled high in the sink that gave me a headache just to look at. There was no way I could ignore the mess. Now, I don't really mind doing dishes so much (as long as I have my pink gloves), it can be a relaxing experience to put on some music and just focus on getting the job done. However, I was really looking forward to sipping my latte and finishing up 1984 (great book). I think I might have scared my roommates into making more of an effort to keep the kitchen clean when I lamented my morning activity on facebook, because this morning there was no mountain of dishes awaiting me. :)

Today, however, I AM sipping on my latte while blasting music through my Bose headphones (there's something about loud music that makes it so much better :P). Although, by this time, my latte is now a bit on the cold side on account of I forgot about it while I was obsessing over making an iTunes playlist. :/ I must admit that I considered skipping my morning latte as I've had one every morning this week, but in the end my addiction gave in and I had to make one. :)

On to the true subject of this entry...

At the beginning of the year I purchased a basil plant in the hopes that it would last me longer than fresh, packaged basil. Much to my dismay though, the sorry little herbage lasted only about a week. Determined to maintain and utilize one of these poor plants throughout the winter months, I went back to the grocery store and bought another one. This time, however, inspired by the movie What The #$*! (Bleep) Do We Know?, I decided to write out the words "I love you" on a sticky note and attach it to my little basil plant. (In case you haven't heard of this movie, it is a difficult one to swallow as it deals with quantum physics and the idea that we create our own world, what we see around us may not be what is actually there. We're conditioned our whole lives to perceive our surroundings in a certain way. Anyways, there's an excerpt that explores the power of words in regards to molecular structures wherein a scientist wrote several different thoughts on bottles of water, such as "You Disgust Me" and "I Love You". Then he proceeded to photograph that water and the outcome was astonishing. These words manage to change the way in which the molecular structure of the water appeared. The ones with the more hateful remarks looked disorganized and sickly, while the water with the loving expressions took on a more appealing, intricate structure. There's a line in this scene when an older man comes up to the main character and says "Makes you wonder, doesn't it? If thoughts can do that to water, imagine what our thoughts can do to us.") Well, I'm proud to say that after months of neglect, my little basil plant is still chugging along. Albeit, looking a little sad and worse for the wear, but it really has been months and for a long portion of time I wasn't even here to watch over it.

I don't know if the prosperity of my plant has anything to do with my sticky note of love, but I'd like to think that the power thought and love can have this kind of effect. :)

Alright, latte's finished. Time to start this day. I'm off to the herb store to buy ingredients for some home remedies. :)

More posts and pictures to come for now I have proper lightening for better, less yellowy results. :D