About An Omelette

In Office Space, best movie of all time, there is one particular scene that is dear to my heart. Our hero, Peter, is talking to his next door neighbour, Lawrence, about their respective work. Peter works for a soulless software company and daily must deal with all the nonsense that infests the typical office. Lawrence works in construction. It’s been a rough day at the office for Peter and he poses the question to Lawrence:

“Hey Lawrence, if you were at work and maybe you weren’t feeling so great, would anyone say to you, ‘Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays’?”

Lawrence stares at Peter as though several heads have sprouted from Peter’s shoulders. He replies:
“No.”
“Shit, no.”
“Hell, man, I reckon you’d get your ASS kicked saying something like that.”

And thus, Peter’s reality is reinforced to his liking: in the real world, there are no perky Cathys like the one who haunts his office. There is hope outside his bubble. He’s not crazy (Institution!) – they’re the ones who are crazy.

I explain this scene to you now because it informs my experience with the mushroom omelette.

Last week we went for a couple of days to Vancouver Island, to visit our lovely friends, their adorable children and the new PUPPY! The road to Vancouver Island is never easy or without its challenges, however we made do. All-told, considering the bus got a flat tire on the highway, it was a good journey. We arrived at the ferry terminal 2 hours after we had left home and 1 hour before the ferry was scheduled to sail. At this point, my salivary glands rubbing together in glee, we went to a local restaurant for Restaurant Breakfast. Bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, ketchup, HP Sauce, the whole deal.

Inexplicably, when faced with the menu at Trolls, I ordered a mushroom and cheese omelette. (inexplicable because I am really quite addicted to bacon and obviously there is no bacon in a mushroom and cheese omelette. Perhaps I was thinking that the mushrooms would be healthier? Or perhaps I wasn’t thinking at all.) Saint Aardvark ordered the bacon and eggs and he claimed to be willing, if called upon, to share his bacon with me. He’s no dummy.

We waited, chatting idly and drinking our grapefruit juice. A while later, our breakfast arrived. His: bacon and eggs and hashbrowns and toast. Mine: a massive omelette, hashbrowns and toast. I drooled with anticipation and picked up my cutlery. And discovered within the lovingly folded omelette what I would declare a food travesty: a small farm’s worth of raw mushrooms looking up at me.

Oh there were LOTS of mushrooms. They hadn’t skimped on the mushrooms. I could barely see the cheese around all the mushrooms. But those mushrooms were plain old sliced up Money’s White Button and they had not been exposed to the wonder of heat, butter, salt or pepper. Nay, they had been taken right from the fridge and barely acquainted with the egg before being enveloped and plated.

Like an arranged marriage, which sometimes work out okay but not always, I’m sure.

I looked at the omelette. I looked at SA. I looked back at the omelette. The mushrooms hadn’t become any more cooked in the interim. In other circumstances, I would have sent it back. But in this circumstance, a) I was going to start gnawing on my own hand in a minute, as breakfast Part I, consisting of a bowl of cold cereal, had been several hours earlier, b) it would probably take at least as long again to get a different breakfast, time we just didn’t have and c) I thought I might burst into tears if I tried to explain why this omelette was So. Very. Wrong. So I ate it. Grudgingly.

I tried to see both sides. It occured to me to wonder if maybe I was the errant one, if all these years I have been sauteeing mushrooms before eating them and people have been giving me sideways glances, thinking, “Yii, that girl is CRAZY, yo!” So I asked you, th’internet.

Thank you, all, for helping me to know that it’s not me, it’s them. That there is a right way and a wrong way. And to Truckdrivingchef, who offered the equivalant of “No. Shit no. I reckon you’d get your ass kicked [for doing] something like that,” as an answer.