At Home in Nature

  (Agate, Colorado)
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Meditative Om-lete

Cooking an egg is one of the easiest things to do, but one of the hardest things to do perfectly; it requires attention and practice, and is a meditative experience. To prepare an omelet is the best practice, and, even if done poorly, still produces a great meal.

In cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat (often ham), or some combination of the above. To obtain a fluffy texture, whole eggs or sometimes egg whites only are beaten with a small amount of milk or cream, or even water, the idea being to have "bubbles" of water vapor trapped within the rapidly cooked egg. Some home cooks add baking powder to produce a fluffier omelette; however, this ingredient is sometimes viewed unfavorably by traditionalists. The bubbles are what make the omelette light and fluffy.
The omelette is commonly thought to have originated in the Ancient Near East. Beaten eggs were mixed with chopped herbs, fried until firm, then sliced into wedges. This dish is thought to have travelled to Western Europe via the Middle East and North Africa, with each country adapting the original recipe to produce Italian frittata, Spanish tortilla and the French omelette.
The fluffy omelette is a refined version of an ancient food. According to Alan Davidson,the French word omelette came into use during the mid-16th century, but the versions alumelle and alumete are employed by the Ménagier de Paris (II, 5) in 1393. Rabelais (Pantagruel, IV, 9) mentions an homelaicte d'oeufs, Olivier de Serres an amelette, François Pierre La Varenne's Le cuisinier françois (1651) has aumelette, and the modern omelette appears in Cuisine bourgoise (1784).

Let’s make an omelet!
Like all good meals, begin with clean hands and a clean kitchen.
Melt a tablespoon of butter or margarine in a non-stick pan. Add to that a teaspoon (1/3 oz) of milk per egg – if 6 eggs are used, add 2 oz of milk. Melt the butter into the milk and take off from the heat.
In a separate bowl, crack open your eggs. Until you’re very good at it, you want to do this in a separate bowl so that if v
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