My Little Bon Vivant

I love have a daughter who eats anything. Well, except meat since MiMi is still a vegetarian. But even before she opted for the herbivore life, she would try anything.

This morning, as I was contemplating what I could make for breakfast. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day -- especially when I have time to make whatever. I had arugula and goat cheese in the fridge and I wanted to do something with those ingredients. I found this recipe and was figuring out how to incorporate my on-hand ingredients into this dish.  While brainstorming, MiMi walks in and asks what I was making for breakfast.

"How about baked eggs with goat cheese?" She nods her head in acknowledgement and approval, then walks back out.

OK. That was easy. And wow, she is just amazing...I think to myself. What 8 year old would just accept it and go on? Certainly CJ at 8 wouldn't, nor would she do it at 13.

I am just tickled as I get my ingredients out. I modify the recipe to my own and start chopping up some arugula. I LOVE arugula. It's one of the most appealing greens I have ever encountered and the smell of it, as I chopped it, was just wondrous. MiMi walks in and I ask her to smell the chopped arugula. She comes over, takes a whiff, puts her hand over her chest and closes her eyes in bliss: "I can't wait to eat it!" I ask her if she knows what it is. She tries: basil? parsley? lettuce? I let her peek at the lid and she says "ah roo goo lah". I love it...I actually say "ah roo gyoo lah". She's right; I'm wrong but I don't care.

"Can I eat one?" she asks. "Go for it". And she grabs a piece and eats it.

She then asks if she can help and immediately washes her hands. We work together to get the butter melted, mix the cream, add it to the dishes, then bake them. Once we got those out of the oven, I let her add the eggs to each dish, sprinkle the arugula-garlic mix, crumble goat cheese on top, then salt & pepper it.

I followed the recipe except for the herbs portion. I chopped about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of arugula (did I mention how much I loved it) and a whopping humongous garlic clove. If it wasn't so big, I would have used two garlic cloves (I love garlic too; it scares the vampires away).

I put two eggs in each ramekin and baked it much, much longer than the 3 minutes cited in the recipe. I prefer my egg whites more done so I probably kept them baking for about 5 to 6 minutes. This allowed the whites to cook more and leave at least one yolk runny and the other done but not like a boiled egg done.  They came out wonderful. I served it with buttered toast but next time, I would serve it with some really good buttered bread, such as a slice of french bread.

This one is MiMi's, along with her gummy bear multi-vitamins.

What did the other child have? A nice cheese omelet.