The Most Important Meal of the Day

I drove around most of the day with this in the seat next to me.

 

That is what’s left of a piece of crustless zucchini quiche. The teen wanted me to make it for her. That’s her slice, leftover from breakfast. No flour, limited amounts of cheese, plenty of organic eggs and shredded zucchini, and enough pepper to make it have some sort of flavor. Pepper, mainly.

Every so often, the teen and I decide we need to make some changes in our diet. For me, it’s the constant battle of the calories. After a very successful fall season of stress eating, I have managed to gain an incredible amount of weight, weight that has no intention of leaving my frame, thank you very much, aging metabolism. The teen wants a six pack, and six packs don’t come naturally to people who enjoy bread and chocolate. So that means more vegetables and less crust. Happy January to us!

We thought about making crustless quiches to have every other morning so we can just heat up a slice and eat it, perhaps with some turkey bacon or a small slice of dry whole wheat toast. Our first attempt was quite tasty, with its sautéed mushrooms and scallions and spinach, and I thought this week we would do zucchini, which is the teen’s favorite vegetable. I baked it last night, and we had a tiny little sliver to test it out. We both declared it delicious.

But that was last night. This morning, I heated up our two slices of quiche, according to our plan. It was still puffy and golden brown, but after a little visit to the toaster oven, it was still cold in the middle. Microwaving it took care of that, and I made sure not to nuke it to the gummy stage.

I ate my slice while checking out the free song on iTunes. The song sucked, but the quiche was really yummy, or would have been had I eaten it for lunch. The truth is, I don’t care what they do in South Beach or what Dr. Atkins has to say; I don’t want to eat vegetables for breakfast, especially not in my eggs. In fact, I don’t want to eat eggs for breakfast. Let’s just say that eggs and me, we aren’t on good terms in the morning. Also, I miss my gallbladder.

The teen, on the other hand, loves eggs, which is why I make things like crustless quiche. But even her “loving eggs" comes with a few restrictions. She doesn’t love runny eggs, which means no yolks. She doesn’t even like yolks in a hardboiled egg, but she doesn’t like scrambled egg whites either. And she doesn’t like fluffy eggs. I used to make perfect scrambled eggs until I got tired of watching the cat eat them under the table. Now, I make them firm and hard and dried out. The cat hates them like that. Everyone and their sensory issues.

Anyway, when I came downstairs after my emergency bathroom visit, to, um, brush my teeth, my teen stood there with a horrified look on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I don’t think I can eat this,” she said.

“Why not? What’s the matter with it?”

“It’s too fluffy. Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad at me.”

For the record, I don’t have Joan Crawford levels of anger. I have a Jewish teen with guilt in her genetic material.

“Let me get you something else real fast,” I told her. “You have two midterms today. You need a good breakfast.”

“No, I'll try another bite. I'm sure it will be fine.” She gave me a small fake smile and carried her plate to the car.

We were hardly out of the neighborhood when she took another bite and said,” I just can’t do it. I think it’s the texture. I can’t get it down.” She looked so crestfallen.

“Seriously, let’s turn around and get you something else. Or can you go to the cafeteria? What do they have there?”

“Hot pockets? Microwaved cereal bars? I’m not eating that.” My teen has not had a bite of school cafeteria food since she was in the fourth grade and found a hair on her square pizza.

“Well, what are you going to eat? You need breakfast.”

“I’ll get something out of my lunchbox,” she said, and looked inside.

She generally packs her own lunch, but was feeling lazy, so she only put a banana and a small bag of nuts in her lunch bag, along with a container of coconut water. That is not a lunch; it is barely even a snack.

“That’s what you have for lunch? What are you thinking? You have two tests today! Even supermodels eat more than that! Toddlers have a bigger meal. The hamster eats more than you.”

Maybe that’s why she has so much guilt?

“Seriously,” I said, “we need to go home and get a meal.”

“No, Mom, I’ll be fine, I swear. I’m not even hungry.” She took out the coconut water and drank that. It’s chock full of electrolytes and potassium. “But could you hold this?”  And she handed me her plate with the quiche.

Seeing as I was driving a car, I had nowhere to put the plate, so I placed it on the dash, where it slid back and forth while I drove, the slice of quiche gliding ever closer to the plate’s edge.

“What am I supposed to do with this egg thing?” I said to her. “I’m not going home until lunch time. I am going to have to drive around with old egg. Sure am glad it’s going to warm up a little today, that way I can smell it every time I get in the car.”

“Toss it out the window,” she said to me.

“I would be happy to, but knowing my luck, I’d get pulled over by a cop for throwing quiche out the window. It’s probably a separate charge from just regular littering.”

Did I mention it was raining? Well, it was, and not just sprinkling when we pulled up to the school.

“Here’s what I think you should do," I said to her. "Take it and throw it on the sidewalk, right there near the flag pole. In about five minutes in this rain, it will dissolve into a disgusting puddle. Then you can start a panic in school about a stomach virus. There’s a twenty in it for you if mayhem ensues.”

She snorted, and a little coconut water shot out of her nose. She grabbed her backpack and opened the door. “Bye, Mom,” she said.

“Hey, you forgot something," I said, waving the plate around. She slammed the car door.

Tomorrow we are having smoothies.