Storytime with Beth: An Omelette That's Not An Omelette

This is an exceptionally pointless Storytime with Beth.  It is also a Storytime with Beth Confession, of a sort.  

Here it is:  

I think eggs are gross.  

     Nasty.  

           Unpalatable.  

                   Ewwww.  

For my entire life this has been an unwavering, deeply held sentiment.   I just think eggs are yucky and I always have.  

This isn't a vegan thing either, as might be expected of me, and is unrelated to my moral objections.  I'm talking taste, smell, aesthetics.  Back in my fully omnivorous days I felt the exact same way.  No thank you.  No eggs for me.  Gross.

Before I went vegan I'd eat them if they were safely disguised inside bread, cookies, and the like, but never as the taste focal point.  I think they smell bad.  I think they look sickly.  I think they have an unsettling spongy-soft-weird texture when scrambled or in omelettes.  I honestly can't recall ever eating a fried egg.  They always looked so slimy and gross to me, in addition to the accompanying foul smell.  I don't believe I have ever eaten a hardboiled egg--or its cousin the deviled egg--either.  One sniff and I was OUT.  Hard pass.

I realize this is unusual, hence my feeling "confessional" about it.  Most non-vegan people love eggs and even elevate them to an almost super-food status, many vegetarians especially.  I swear that, at least seasonally, eggs are the main component of my friend Hannah's diet.  She is quite the pickled egg pusher, actually, wanting everyone to try them and love them like she does.  She keeps her own hens and I love hanging with them.  Birds are so fascinating.  Bossy ol' Brenda is a chicken after my own heart.  I love chickens.  But, I digress. 

While we're on the subject though, I have never eaten a pickled egg either, for that matter.

Given that I established my eggy-embargo at an extremely young age it logically follows that I have never in my entire life cooked an egg.  Not one.  Matt taught me nearly everything I know about cooking...and that was all after I went plant-based.  I culled eggs from my diet long before I started cooking for myself so it never came up.

I was thinking about this the other day because Matt has been making one of our favorite weekender breakfasts a lot lately--a meal we erroneously refer to as The Omelette That's Not An Omelette.

That was the naming convention used in the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe that originally inspired this dish almost a decade ago.  Really though, it only vaguely looks omelettey.  It certainly doesn't taste like an omelette (thank heavens).  It is a mix of varied fillings (peppers, onion, potatoes, etc.) held together by a yellow-colored protein (a turmeric colored tofu/milk combo)...but that's about where the similarity ends.   Yet, we persist in calling this fabshmabulous breakfast dish an omelette.

I realize that language is constantly evolving and I'm okay with that.  Words change.  We change.  This is a good thing.  

Never the less, this is a fairly common "problem" with vegan foods if you ask me.  As a group, we are pretty liberal with the repurposing of words.  Milk, cheese, steak, butter, fillet, wings, etc.  And I get it.  I really do.  I mean, "cultured cashew spread" is neither as succinct nor as contextually-orienting as "cashew cheese." Same for "frozen coconut dessert" versus "coconut ice cream."  Or "fried wheat gluten with spicy BBQ sauce" versus "seitan buffalo wings."  

But...it can be confusing and, more critically, can set up false dining expectations.  If one expects vegan mac to be the same as Kraft mac (or grandma's mac) it is only gonna end in disappointment.  It might be a darn yummy casserole, but will not taste like mac-n-cheese, ya know?  

Of course, this linguistic borrowing isn't exclusive to vegans; we're just taking it to a new level.  In my childhood home we called it "whipped cream," when it was totally Cool Whip.  And those things are quite different.  Same for mayo and Miracle Whip.  Or even the fact that there is no milk in the cream filling inside an Oreo.

The linguist in me balks at all this language borrowing, but attempts to foster new vegan-specific terms have fallen flat or failed to catch on.  Nooch being the notable exception.  So, it is an omelette at our place if for no other reason than brevity.  

Maybe we should start calling it a "Bake" instead.  "Tofu Potato Bake," maybe, or just "Golden Potato Bake," since I know tofu is a scary word for a lot of people.  You know, the way egg is a scary word for me.  Haha!  

All photos show a range of variations on the Omelette That's Not an Omelette, including one with a roasted red pepper sauce.