Green Eggs and What A Ham!
I once thought I might trick my children into eating green food by reading them Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham while serving them an egg dish chockablock with green vegetables. (See the recipe below.) Well, they loved the book.
What was I thinking? At that time, my children only ate white food: spaghetti, mashed potatoes, milk, and chicken and bread. No amount of high-minded literature would change their food-i-tude.
Turns out Ted Cruz also thought he could use that charming children’s book as a tool to fool. Apparently he figured if he read that text during that filibuster last week he would trick us into liking him.
But just as my children are no fools, neither are we.
To paraphrase the good Dr., we do not like him here or there.We do not like him anywhere.
But these do like these Green Eggs and (Optional) Ham are growing on my kids. They now will eat them with a mouse, they will eat them in a house. (Next step, with a fox, then we’ll work up to in a box…)
1 pound of asparagus, steamed until tender and cut into one-inch pieces
6 eggs
¼ tsp. Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
½ c. grated Reggiano Parmesan cheese
¼ cup fresh chopped herbs (parsley and dill or basil)
3 Tbls. butter
Beat the eggs together until blended, then mix in the asparagus, salt and pepper and cheese.
In a large skillet, melt the butter until it’s foamy, then dump in the egg mixture. Cook it over very low heat, as low as it goes, until it’s mostly set but the top is still soft, 10-15 munutes.
Stick the skillet under the broiler for a couple minutes to firm up the top.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
(Serves 8.)
Variations: Use other vegetables, like chopped zucchini or green beans or whatever, and add some chopped Ham I Am if you like.
That does sound good. It’s hard to go wrong with asparagus, fresh herbs, and eggs. I’m a bachelor with taste, so I’m always on the hunt for fancy, low-fuss recipes like this. Dining out alone is okay, but I always end up feeling like Steve Martin in “The Lonely Guy.”
Cruz control!
I once thought I could trick my children too. Fat chance for that. They all ate pretty well, but they would only eat Heinz Ketsup. Ketsup is ketsup, was the expressed fatherly opinion. So when they almost finished a bottle of Heinz, I cleaned it out and loaded it back with another brand and put it back on the dining room table. They would never know the difference. However, that night I heard, ,”Dad, what did you do to the ketsup ??
With the same thought in mind, I added a few drops of green food coloring to our St. Patrick’s day eggs every year, when the kids were still home. They have families of their own now, and have carried on the tradition. Cool!
BTW, a moment of curiosity led me to your site this morning. I’d typed in 10-10-49, just to see what would come up. Lo and behold, there you were! You were the only person on the “people who have the same birthday as me” site I’d gone to, with exactly the same birthday as myself. So happy belated to both of us!