Omnomicon

The holidays, as far as I’m concerned, are over. That’s because, to me, Halloween is like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve all in the same day. Just awesome. I also tend to throw caution to the wind with one hand, while unwrapping and cramming fun size bars and waxy orange sugar into my mouth with the other. This would all be well and good if I were one of those people who can eat forever and never gain weight, but sadly, I am not, and if I’m not losing weight, I’m gaining it. As such, I’m back on the wagon.

Now I’ve heard that it’s in poor taste for a chef to discuss calories (and if I could find that quote I might even link someone), but my foodie license feels a little safer knowing that I regularly blog baked goods that are not safe by the stretches of any diet’s imagination. And you know, even though *I* am a little calorie-conscious, that doesn’t stop me from reading all manners of delicious baking blogs (among my new favourites is Patticake), and I get really excited when I see something low cal enough to eat for dinner.

And this brings us to POACHED EGGS.

With a little somethin-somethin.

In this case somethin-somethin is a combination of a light (90 calories! 9 grams of fiber!) English muffins, fat free plastic American cheese (30 calories! No fat!) , a real live egg (twice the calories of the fat-free version, but it pays off here), and sliced ham, which is surprisingly not-that-bad-for-you (30 calories, just 1.5g fat). And then an attempt at veggies, a la the ever-versatile tomato and onion.

To poach an egg is a special process, and Smitten Kitchen goes through it pretty thoroughly at that link. My strategy involves the following

• put your egg in a little dish before putting it in the water
• having the water boiling pretty furiously when I throw the egg in, then immediately turn it to medium-high
• stir the water so it’s got a good whirlpool going and the egg has a chance to curl in on itself
• cook for only 1.5 minutes so as to preserve as much of that beautiful gooey egg yolk as possible

You can’t see it, but there’s an egg cooking here.

Then stack that thing on an already-high stack of the other stuff, and uh, voila! Diet dinner.

Put whatever you want on there, and even on your plate. It’s your dinner, and your eggs. Everything tastes especially yummy coated in that delicious creamy egg yolk which, for the calories, is a pretty good deal. You don’t have to be a dieter to appreciate this dish.

So what do you do with your poached egg, the creamy caviar of eggs that don’t belong to fish?

Also, a note on fat free fake cheese: don’t knock it til you try it melted on something. And of course, you can use whatever cheese you want.

Nutrition Information for Dieters
as pictured

230 calories
5.5g fat
9g fiber
4 weight watchers points