Green Eggs and Ham

For those who like to blur the lines between fiction and reality, let it be known that while Dr. Seuss writes great nonsense verse, he is not the best source for culinary inspiration. Perhaps things would have turned out differently had my favourite book at the time been Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But I was only seven and couldn't get enough of Green Eggs and Ham. Add to the equation a father with a warped sense of humour and the results are worthy of a chapter in either a how-not-to-cook or how-not-to-parent book. Or both.

My mother was hospitalized briefly for some non-life-threatening condition, which left my father in charge of caring for -- and feeding -- his three young daughters. Although he was familiar with our breakfast routine, Mom went out of her way to leave him a variety of our favourite recipes for dinner options. I recall helping him make a cheese-filled beef patty called "Skinny Burgers" and some form of noodle-based casserole. After a few successes, my father grew confident, abandonned the pre-set menu, and created what he was certain would become our favourite dish.

His surefire masterpiece involved putting green food colouring in scrambled eggs. Genius is seldom recognized when it first presents radical ideas, and this innovative dish didn't draw the rave reviews he expected. Instead, he was left holding three hungry, sobbing children crying for their mother and a skillet full of kelly green eggs no one would touch. We aren't sure if the element of surprise proved to be the kiss of death for this meal, or if it was just an idea whose time hadn't come.

The moral of the story isn't that eggs should only be coloured on the outside and not the inside. On the contrary, I might whip up a batch of green eggs for Father's Day breakfast. But, if anything's to be learned from this cautionary tale it's that recipe development requires a solid knowledge of your audience. Otherwise, you could end up with egg on your face in one form or another.