Cheap Eats: Egg on Toast

I've mentioned before that my very frugal Depression-era maternal grandparents usually rose early and at the same breakfast every day, together on their back porch as the sun came up...egg on wheat toast and bad bad instant Sanka or Nescafe. By the time I remember the meals very well, they'd been convinced by my parents that cracking an egg in a pan over a pat of real butter and cooking it that way was arterial pergatory, so Grandma instead began poaching a cracked egg in a small amount of water. She seasoned it with salt and pepper and they each had an egg of a piece of wheat toast.

I've never been a big egg lover. But eating REAL eggs from happy, unconfined chickens tastes and seems different to me. And though there is absolutely NO difference in nutrional content, I prefer brown eggs over white.

My husband, until we get our own chickens, will not eat eggs by themselves. So I usually buy eggs to use as ingredients in other things, but seldom just for the eating solo.

I woke up today just before sunlight and remembered my grandparents porch dates and simple breakfasts of egg on toast. I mentally calculated just how frugal a meal this is, and how satisfying. So I shuffled to the kitchen to see if I might approximate it...minus the rubbery texture from cooking it with water, and with a couple simple additions.

I took a small amount of diced onion and put it in a little pile and then flattened it gently while it sauteed in a drop of olive oil. When it was getting nicely cooked, I cracked an egg over it...would have used two, but there was one lone egg left in the fridge. Then a grind of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper, which added a nice red. I allowed it to cook till semi-firm (wasn't in a runny egg mood today) and then with spatula scooped it intact, cooked onion on bottom and egg on top, onto a hot piece of toast. Then topped it with salsa (didnt have fresh, so used canned.)







That's not quite how grandma made it...but oh, it really hit the spot!


I'm thinking of how filling that was, and how inexpensive. I'm trying to be more and more aware of just where the grocery money is going these days, in anticipation of the days when we hope to have very little outgoing money for food at all, and grow our own. Eggs, sauteed onion and salsa on toast...wouldnt be a bad way to start a morning on a back porch :)