Daddy Breakfast: Egyptian One-Eyes

Egyptian One-Eyes (photo by Scott D. Feldstein)

I recently posted on facebook that R and I had made Egyptian One-Eyes for breakfast. Some people asked what they were or how to make them, so I thought I'd share here.

Egyptian One-Eyes have been a weekend breakfast tradition in my family as long as I can remember. They're usually made on Daddy breakfast day because they are simple yet fun. In researching this post, I found that they are called, among many other names*, "egg in the basket," which is more politically correct but a lot less fun. Without further ado, the recipe for Egyptian One-Eyes:

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 1 slice of bread
• butter
• salt
• pepper

Directions

1. Cut a round hole through the center of the bread. (I usually use the lid from a spice container).
2. Butter both sides of the bread and both sides of the "hole."
3. Put the buttered bread and hole in a buttered frying pan on medium heat.
4. Crack the egg into the hole in the bread.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Turn the bread-egg combination over when the egg white in the hole has turned from clear to white. (Don't forget to turn over the hole too!)
7. When egg is cooked, remove the One-Eye and hole from the frying pan.
8. Serve and enjoy!

(Low cholesterol version: Leave out the egg, butter, salt, and pepper. Just cut a hole in a piece of bread and eat it. Toasting is optional.)

Other names for the Egyptian One-Eye are  "egg in a basket," "egg in a blanket," "egg in a window," "egg in a frame," "egg in a bed," "toad in the hole," "Rocky Mountain toast," square egg," Popeye" or a "one-eyed Egyptian sandwich," "spit in the eye," "Tiger's eye,"camel's eye," "midnight sun," "peekaboo eggs,"and "one-eyed jacks." These names and more are in the Wikipedia article, "Fried Egg."

Playing Competitive Games Cooperatively

The big news around here is that R graduated from kindergarten. Once our photos are a bit more organized, I'll post about that. For now though, I want to share a nice article from The Homeschool Classroom that I read about making board games more cooperative. The author uses Candyland, Sorry, Guess Who, and Scrabble as examples and suggests four ways of modifying the rules.

1. Each player helps all the tokens make their way around the board.
2. Pick a token to be the "bad guy" and everyone takes turn playing for the "bad guy" trying to make him come in last place. Cooperating this way takes deeper strategic thinking than playing the normal way.
3. Play against the clock instead of one another.
4. Play for fun--don't keep score.

Of course competition can be good fun and it is important to learn to win and lose graciously. However, life is more about cooperating for mutual good than just beating everyone else. Read the article for more explanation and ideas about how to make fun and cooperative "house rules" for games.

Countries and US States Visited

I stumbled upon a site where you check off boxes of places you've visited and end up with highlighted maps. These are mine.





I've been in twelve countries but only nine US states (not including airport transit). My shortest foreign trip was about an hour and a half to China with a dufflebag of Bibles. My longest was, of course, Japan (most of my adult life and still counting). I wonder when I'll get significantly east of the Rockies or across the equator.

If you want to try, go to the page of countries or states. Post a link to your map in the comments or just let me know where you've been.

Who are these kids?

Watching this made me feel really old. Bono still has a big mouth but he's sure come a long way to become the statesman for Africa that he is today. Edge has wisely concentrated on his guitar-playing and not worried so much about his interviewing skills.

The clip is from the Tom Snider show in June 1981. U2 was on their first American tour.

Parking Lot Game

Here's an online game I just stumbled across. The higher levels will make your brain hurt. Make sure you have several minutes to kill before starting.

link

Or if you want to play without looking at a screen, you can get the atoms not bits version at amazon.

[Edited to add the link to amazon]

Fun Food

We made a couple different kinds of bread in the preschool last week and I found out that tortillas are really easy to make. Mexican food is something I miss in Japan so I took my newfound tortilla-making skills and made fresh tacos for the family last night. They were muy rico!

Tomomi had to fix the dough for me after I made it way too sticky by using a mix of metric and "normal" measuring devices.


And here is a picture of the chocolate gorilla I got for Valentine's Day from a student last month. Everyone gets chocolate gorillas, right?

I didn't think to take a picture until I had eaten the foot.

Japanese Scarecrows

In Kyoto for the holidays, I went for a run in the country and came across these scarecrows. The farmers in the area seem to have a competition or exhibition going. Take a look.

Farmer Lady Scarecrow

Samurai Scarecrow

Kimono Scarecrow

----- Scarecrow

Octopus Scarecrow

There were many others, including a Big Bad Wolf and a snake. If you want to see more, I uploaded some photos here.

Beach Day

We went to the beach with some friends today. T and R had been looking forward to it for days. ("Tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow, we're going to the beach, right Dad?") We planned a 5AM departure to beat traffic and the kids had no problem waking up at 4:something. T was running, jumping and blabbering so much that I had to tell him just to sit in a chair and not get up unless he really had to (I had to finish my first cup of coffee before dealing with that much energy at that time of day).

It was a beautiful day at Kujukuri beach in Chiba prefecture.

Catching some rays

Sand castle? Cake?

For T, a day without baseball is now unthinkable. (That's our friend David playing catcher.)

She left it all out there on the beach.

Running Again

I should be out for a run right now but instead I've been stuck in the house, glued to the TV screen, watching people's umbrellas get blown inside out, tiles fly off of roofs, and storm surge crash over breakwaters. We're in a big typhoon, hurricane for you western hemispherians. Since I can't run, I figured I'd write about running.

I started in sixth grade. My first race was the 10km Turkey Trot in Kona, Hawaii. I finished it in 57:18 at age 11 (weird how I can remember silly things like that but not to pick up bread and milk at the store). I ran off and on and got serious about it in '95-'96 when I ran a couple of marathons in Hawaii (Kona - 3:43:?? and Maui - 3:32:32). After that I didn't really run again until June . . . this June. Yes, that's an eleven-year-gap.

There is a huge park in one direction from my apartment and a river with a trail all along it in the other direction. They are both beautiful places to run. I've been at it pretty regularly for the past few months except for eleven days in the middle of August. That's better than eleven years anyway and plus I have tons of excuses--I had a fever for about a week, guests from back home, our newborn was awake at all hours, and Tokyo had the hottest August on record, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I post this to say that I'm nuts about running again. I have more energy and feel more relaxed throughout the day, sleep better and eat better. I'm sure good things are happening to my heart and lungs too. I found a niftyonline running site with an excellent log and a community of good folks. You can see automatically updated snippets of my running log at the bottom of the sidebar on this page (feel free to bug me if you notice a long gap between runs).

The site is runningahead.com. If there are any Tokyo runners reading this, especially in the Itabashi/Nerima area, let's get in touch.

Girly Tomboy

R wanted to get all dressed up for our family afternoon at the park but then when we started playing baseball, she was right into that too, even with the dress and faux pearl necklace.

Geography Quiz 2: Statetris

For those who liked the other geography quiz I linked to a while back, here's one that is similar to tetris. Drop the states in their proper place using the arrow buttons on your keyboard. There are maps of Europe and Africa into which you drop the countries, and maps of the US, the UK, France and The Netherlands into which you drop states (or counties or whatever those European countries subdivide into). My times for filling in the US map was 4:06.7 on the easy setting which earned me a "Very Good" and 7:43.5, also on easy for Europe, for which I was told, "I've seen people do worse." That didn't give me enough confidence to try the even more difficult maps.

Anyway, give it a shot and post your scores in the comments. Here's the link again: Statetris.

Mystery Quiz

When we moved into our new apartment in March we noticed these signs all around the third floor landing in our stairwell.


They are the symbol of a Shinto shrine. I couldn't get them all into the picture, but they are every couple feet all around the bottom of the wall. I didn't know what to make of them but knowing that Japanese can be superstitious, Tomomi and I gathered that something bad must have happened on that landing.

Imagine our surprise when a few days ago the fourth floor landing (our floor!) looked like this:


I had to ask the apartment manager what it was all about. His answer was something I never would have suspected. Guess what he said. (Put your guess in the comments and in a few days I'll add the answer to this post.)

[Added 8/4] Thanks James, Tomomi and Brian for the guesses. Here's what the apartment manager told me. Some of the tenants in our building have dogs and occasionally let them pee in the stairwell (maybe when they are lazy or the weather is too bad for a walk?). The Shinto symbols are a prayer or a charm of protection from dog pee. They say it works. Hmmm . . . is it the prayer being answered or are the dog owners just less likely to let their dogs pee on a religious symbol than on a blank wall?

Colorful Kids

T the Hulk

Yellow R

Medieval Tech Support

For anyone who's ever helped parents and grandparents with computer issues (sorry Mom and Dad):

Woodpecker Skull

The other day my son dove into the couch at high speed. Unfortunately for him, someone had moved a cushion and he smashed his forehead into the wooden frame with a loud whack. He immediately burst into tears and said, "I --sh (sob) - wa- a woo--(sob)---er (sob, sob, sob)" After getting him to repeat himself a few times through his sobs,we made out that he was saying, "I wish I was a woodpecker because they have thick craniums!"

Good old Ranger Rick magazine. A few months ago there was a feature which said a woodpecker can bang its heads into trees all day without getting a headache because the front part of its cranium is extra thick.

Yes, this is the second blog entry about one of my kids bumping his head and saying something about a cranium.

photo credit

How Random is iTunes?

This morning I had a 140-song play list going on random and heard these three songs in a row:

"Until the End of the World" - U2
"It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" - REM
"I Feel Fine" - The Beatles

How weird is that?

American Education

I'm nervous about home-schooling, but could I do any worse than this? (Warning: There's a word or two of bad language).

The Size of Our World

Humbling, isn't it.
(Click the title of this post.)

Harvard Med, here she comes!

R (age 4) bumped her head on the edge of a door this evening. Turning to my wife she said, "That didn't hurt, Mom, because I have a cranium."

Guess what the science theme was at preschool last week!

What?

My son has said some crazy mixed-up stuff lately.

"Why didn't anybody like Murdoch?"

"Murdoch?"
"Yeah, Murdoch the red-nosed reindeer."

"Dad, there are more chimpanzees outside this morning."
(Looking out) "I don't see any chimpanzees."
"In the pot right there."
"Oh, you mean pansies!"
"Yeah--chimpanzees."

(After reading a Bible story about John baptizing Jesus) "Dad, he was Jesus' cousin, right?"
"Wow, you remembered that?"
"Yeah, and his Mom is Emily Elizabeth."
(Emily Elizabeth is the girl in the "Clifford" stories.)

[Chimp photo credit: ash by owenbooth]