Excellent Lunch at Home: Put an Egg on Top

Since I became vegetarian, I've stumbled upon a little-known secret of cooking: nearly everything is better with a fried egg on top. Even non-vegetarian foods are better with an egg. Consider: potatoes, rice (bi bim bap), hamburgers (this is big in Australia), sauteed greens of all kinds, salads, roasted veggies. If you allow the egg to be cooked by any appropriate method, instead of just fried, the list expands further to include stir-fries, desserts (hello custard), tacos, and even more. I am a great advocate of putting eggs on top of other things.

In honor of eggs, and because I went on a business trip in the first half of this week and I've got the day off, I'm posting a lunch with an egg on top today. I made garlic-lemon quinoa with spinach and a fried egg.

The quinoa was languishing in my pantry, since F. nearly always defaults to basmati rice. The spinach had been bought last weekend in anticipation of making a lot of salad, but then I wasn't here to eat any salads. It needed to be used up. As far as eggs and garlic... if I didn't have eggs and garlic in my kitchen it would be because I didn't have a kitchen.

1. Throw some quinoa in the rice cooker.  Remember salt.
2. Sautee some spinach in butter or olive oil with chopped garlic.  
3. Mix the spinach and cooked quinoa together, spoon some into a bowl, and squeeze a slice of lemon on top.
4. Fry an egg in the spinach-garlic pan and put that on top of the whole thing.