CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPE WITHOUT SHORTENING

I made scrambled eggs for dinner last night. As is the case with at least 23% of all plates of scrambled eggs, they appeared on the evening's PowerPoint agenda as "Ham and cheese omelette with toast."

Alas, I failed to put enough butter in the pan or something because the center of the omelette refused to release. I tore the thing all to hell trying to get it to "float" in the pan before adding the fillings and folding it over. I was ultimately forced to exercise the better part of valor.

It was a fine dinner but it left me with a dish full of ham and cheese, all chopped together and ready to be dumped into something.

I was left at a loss for what to do with it. I'd already messed up the pan (and I was suffering from Omelette Demoralization™). But I had some fresh baby spinach that was about to go bad and a thick heel of homemade bread that was getting stale.

Home cooking is often motivated by a desire to use stuff before it has to be thrown away. Thus armed with a mandate of which my Mom would have approved, I looked at these random Lego bricks and decided that I could snap them together into something vaguely shaped like a quiche.

Ham, cheese, chopped spinach, milk, and two eggs were beaten together. One thick slice of stale bread went into the bottom of my Bachelor-sized casserole. In went the batter, then a second slice (pre-toasted) went on top. Baked it for a half an hour at 375 or something.

Results?

Promising. Very, very promising. The top slice was a bit like a tough crouton and I discarded it after a bite or two. But the batter had seeped through the bottom slice, making it into sort of a heartier, meatier form of french toast that had me looking back in the casserole dish to see if maybe there was still a corner of it stuck to the side or something.

I'll give this another shot, that's for sure. I'll bake it a bit longer and figure out how to get all of the ingredients to hold together a bit better; maybe I'll actually cut the bread into a "bowl" so that most of the liquid can seep into the bread while the cheese, meat, and other bits can sort of set together.

Life is an enigma at times. Such a gift might melt the heart of the biggest scrooge. The lady that baked this wonderful gift for me is so special that I would fumble attempting to describe her. Today, I thought about how others touch our lives without our ever knowing. For instance, I drove through a snowstorm to gather three hundred pounds of turkey and ham for our community Christmas dinner, all donated. I drove them to our community soup kitchen and placed them in the freezer until the volunteer cooks pick them up. The wonderful woman who works in the soup kitchen was preparing dinner for the United Way fund raiser by herself because the volunteers couldn't drive in the snow storm. She put me to work and we enjoyed gabbing while preparing dinner for an undescribed amount of people who were due to eat in two hours. After driving back home, I realized how fortunate I am to be a part of a community that embraces giving. No one will know or probably even think about how the community Christmas dinner or the United Way dinner were prepared ( I sure hadn't before). I suppose that is my gift too. Seeing the larger picture. I can't remember when I enjoyed the Christmas season so much. I have been singing Christmas songs for weeks because of the gift of community (much to the dismay of my colleagues). How fortunate am I!?!