"egg cups" news and stories

Recently, Scott and I have been trying to eat a bit more healthfully and shed a few of those winter pounds that crept on over the last few months. We've found that doing Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet helps us both get our eating habits in check and forces us to think a bit more carefully about the food we eat. While I'm looking forward to switching back to oatmeal and other whole grains for my morning meal once this very limited carb phase is over, I've also been enjoying making egg cups for our breakfasts.

These muffin-sized egg bakes (even when not following South Beach, I've made similar recipes in a larger baking dish for brunch potlucks and holiday morning buffets) are essentially portable omelettes that, once cooked, make breakfast prep a snap in the morning. Just grab one and reheat it for a morning meal that contains lots of protein and one healthy serving of vegetables.

The recipe I'm following this week is after the jump.

When I was a kid, I loved reading novels by Enid Blyton, E. Nesbit and Noel Streatfeild. They all wrote British young adult fiction set in the forties and fifties. I read these books for the stories, but more than that, I loved them for the descriptions of the food. I gobbled up the detailed listings of of cakes, boiled vegetables and egg cups with toast soldiers. This image of this soft boiled egg and homemade toast soldier make me think of all those stories and now all I want to do is settle down to a breakfast of eggs and toast, with a nice cup of tea.

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I've never really used an egg cup. To me it's almost as bizarre a kitchen accessory as the bygone ice cream fork. Apparently there are folks out there who feel differently about egg cups. Witness the military-themed egg cup I ran across the other night.

It's available online from Boys to Men, a site that sells everything from a brain-shaped mouse to a memory stick designed to look like a twig. My guess is that it's designed to tap into nostalgia for green army men. Personally I'd like to see a few of the minesweeper guys surrounding the egg.

I'm not sure how many people are going to pony up $21.99 for this unique piece of tableware, but it's certainly worth visiting Boys to Men if only to read the catalog copy. "They are working hard to protect the egg but one after another, the bread soldiers just keep coming. How will it end?" Oh, the humanity!

[via Boing Boing]

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Did You Know -

• That Pocillovist is the name for egg-cup collectors
• That the earliest recorded images of egg cups appear in a Turkish mosaic dating from 3AD and examples were found among the ruins of Pompeii from 79AD
• That there is a egg cup collectors club www.eggcupworld.co.uk
• Silver egg cups, made in the 19th century were often gilded inside. This was to prevent the sulphur from the egg staining the silver.
• The double egg cup became very popular in the 1930's. The smaller end would be used to serve a boiled egg in the usual way. The larger end was used to serve the egg chopped, mixed with salt and pepper and eaten with a spoon or fork.