7.20am. It is so dark this morning. I want to make egg in a cup but only have vegan butter from a cake I made a while ago. There’s a bit of a butter ban in this house, purely for our waistlines. We have fluctuating love bellies - that little bit of weight you gain when you’re ‘comfortable’ in a relationship. Lockdown didn’t help. But I think it’s more to do with luxuriating in the shared experience of food and drink. Every meal can be a special occasion, as it should be. An activity of supplementary pleasure and romance. A chance to make something special for the two of you, at every mealtime. When I was single I’d barely survive by grazing on crusty scraps of cheese and dubious unfinished tubs of houmous, like Bridget Jones in the depths of her despair. In any case, butter has now been uninvited. What was a staple of mine is now a rationed treat. I used to joke that I would get anxious if I didn’t have butter in the house. I guess now I’m okay. Butter is so part of my DNA and familial line - my dad is that person with teeth marks in the butter, tandsmør personified. After a bout of gout I noticed he only bought unsalted butter from then onwards. Compromise. My old Granny Baird, was a bacon sandwich with butter fiend. In her last few years of dementia it was all she knew how to make. I associate my other granny, Granny Mac, who’s still around, with luxurious Lurpak. She had one of those cream coloured lurpak butter dishes that I remember so well sitting on her kitchen counter.
So when our love bellies needed saving from expanding further, my Spanish boyfriend criminalised butter as the root of our breakfast evils. I get it, the butter in Spain is shite. I can smuggle the Scottish stuff through this house’s customs department if a recipe or baking calls for it. Of course I can go without it, but I am incomplete! Oh... but ‘healthier’ Spanish extra virgin olive oil is still in abundance. Butter discrimination me thinks.
Looking in the transparent plastic fridge door shelf I worry that Naturli Vegan Block won’t give the same soothing smooth creaminess that egg in a cup embodies, but I am actually pleasantly surprised. I can’t tell much difference and I am indeed charmed in the homely nostalgia that egg in a cup provides. It’s a seldom craving. To me, egg in a cup is a typically Scottish thing, I guess made by parents for growing children as an easy, appealing option in its taste, texture and method. Online forums do highlight its prevalence in neighbouring countries. You wonder why it works so well, what makes it so vastly different from scrambled egg? It’s just boiled eggs mashed up in a mug with butter. That’s all. But why is it so unique? A boiled egg on buttered toast cannot even compare. Is it the way the butter gently melts and coats the boiled egg, rather than emulsifying with it? Is it the mug? Whatever magic is going on, it definitely appeals to a child’s palette anyway. It’s the taste of being cared for. When you grow up you have to make it for yourself, maturing it by adding a bit more salt or pepper. Self-care? I presume hazy histories around dishes like this are down to their simplicity. Hardly a recipe and too unoriginal for cookbooks, the nurturing egg in a cup is passed down through generations instead. My sister remembers Granny Mac making the egg first in the microwave: “she made the best egg in a cup,” taking it out at just the right moment so it was still “a wee bit runny.” My mum, who is less of a cook, would make it this way too. I remember once in her haste the yolk exploded all over her. I prefer the slicked chopped chunks that hard-boiling gives. I don’t know who I could pass egg in a cup, or even butter, on to. My dad says the Baird line in our family tree will die out, a patriarchal concept I don’t care for, but an interesting observation. Both me and my sister are not interested in children and even then, she took her husband's name. All our cousins have died or are dying. The Mac genes are saving us. I suppose egg in a cup could belong on the less demanding form of food blogs, or be revitalised through a viral Tik Tok sensation for the unaware, along with Ale’s Tostadas! Thankfully the fate of egg in a cup does not rest on my shoulders. I can count on the rest of Scotland to flourish that.
At work. Coffee. Banana. Lunch is the leftovers of an Ottolenghi dish I amazingly managed to make on Sunday’s not too aggressive hangover. I love his food, but the recipes can be so overly complicated and multi-component I sometimes think I’m a glutton for punishment. Roast butternut squash and onion, through a cumin spiked Greek yogurt sauce with pasta. It gives off mac n cheese vibes, without the cheese.
Home from work. Urgent snackage required. 2x rice cakes n peanut butter. I’ve been restrained in snacks today, perhaps because I’ve felt the pressure to write about them in a significant way. How funny. I realise the most potent narratives around food come naturally. Why bother to write about the rest of the day?
A veg box cauliflower needs used. A usual task of mine, I’ll go to the contents pages of my cookbooks and see what I haven’t made with the desired vegetable. I settle on one from Anna Jones’ One: Pot, Pan, Planet because I have all the ingredients and therefore don’t need to go to the shop.
The jury is still out on Anna Jones, she’s popular but I’ve been pretty disappointed with some of the recipes in this book (quantity over quality?). But this was not one of them. The cauliflower is breaded and baked before sauced and baked again, giving it a mock breaded chicken feel. I try to make Canarian potatoes (without the salsas) and as usual, not following a recipe, I use nowhere near enough salt. The skin should be a dried white crust from the salt. It is a faint ghost on mine. Still nice though. I anoint the potatoes with Tabasco to replace the missing intensity. Leftovers are tubbed for tomorrow, but I won’t write about it again.
Find Conor on substack at ‘Mud Tracks’, on instagram @lifeisthefarce, and on his website here.