#3 - Ham & Cheese Crepette

*Preparing Basic Crepettes

1. Eggs for the crepette have to be prepared one at a time, to do this:
- Break egg into bowl
- Add spices that recipe calls for
- Mix well

2. Take a 7" microwaveable plate and spray with oil. Pour in egg mixture and move around plate to allow egg to spread out as thin as possible.

3. Place plate in microwave and cook egg for approximately 2 minutes on HI turning at least once, or until egg is cooked.

4. Carefully remove egg with spatula and lay on flat surface until needed.

5. To prepare ricecake, place called for ingredients on surface. Fold egg in half, then quarter and place on ricecake.

6. Insert ingredients of recipe into layers of egg topping with whatever recipe calls for (cheese, yogurt, etc.)

(p. 57)

Ham & Cheese

4-6 ricecakes
8-12 slices of cheese
4-6 slices of cooked ham
1/2 cup diced onion

Add a little onion, pepper, and Vegit to egg mixture before cooking.
Place a slice of cheese on each ricecake.
Top with folded egg.
Insert ham, pepper and cheese into each layer.
Top with a slice of cheese.
Heat in microwave for 40-60 seconds on HI or until heated through and cheese is melting.

Makes 4-6 crepettes.

***

So the only differences between this and the meal I made yesterday are that the egg is thinner, here, and the that it uses a lot more cheese, ham, and onions. Oh, and pepper. Not mentioned in the initial list of ingredients are pepper and Vegit (again, Mrs. Dash was substituted).

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Mostly because I'd been dreading this meal all day. I kept putting it off. I finished my book (Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Amazing! I can't believe it was written by a 25-year-old! And it made me miss post-colonial lit. with Dr. Macfarlane. I wish I could talk to her about this book!) and I cleaned my apartment while avoiding ricecakes. But my ham and cheese crepette exceeded my incredibly low expectations.

The cooking the egg part was a problem. First of all, I seriously don't understand dimensions or space or anything with even a whiff of mathematics. Seriously, if you want to tell me the dimensions of your new home, go ahead, but my eyes will glaze over and I will never be interested in what you're telling me. I need you to relate to me in a way I'll understand, like "the size of your bedroom on Sarah st.," or "from the beginning of the bar to the washrooms at the Granite." That, I can conceptualize. So for a "7" microwaveable plate" I substituted the only size microwaveable plate I have, and it may well have been far too large.

Maybe because of that, or maybe just because I have historically sucked at omelets (maybe because of that?) the egg concoction didn't exactly stay together when I flipped it. And it fell apart even more when I folded it over.

I don't even know if I folded it properly, the falling-apartness aside, though I tried to follow the directions! It just seemed a bit too towering for one person's mouth. Although, I suspect Janet MacNab anticipated I would be using pre-packaged sandwich meat and processed cheese slices, and I didn't. I used the remainder of my ham from yesterday, and boring old marble cheese. I don't mean old like the good kind from yesterday, just old like usual. But I'm sure it was far thicker than it was meant to be.

You can't tell, because I used trick photography, but I took a bite out of the crepette before I heated it. Ricecakes taste infinitely better before they are heated in a microwave, but, again, it was still okay.