World's Best Scrambled Eggs

One of the kids here, David, told Maz recently that he makes the best scrambled eggs in the world. Maz, ever the competitor, told him hers were better, and thus began the great 2008 Hong Kong Egg Off!

Monday morning. 11 am. The two competitors go head to head in our tiny apartment. 12-year-old David brought along his 13-year-old brother, Jesse, as a judge, and I was there as a judge also.

Maz was up first (we have a tiny kitchen, so they couldn’t both go at the same time). She whipped up her eggs, added butter and milk, and fluffed up the delicious breakfast as best as she could. However, her immediate disqualification occurred soon after, when she made the fatal mistake of putting her perfectly good eggs atop toast smeared with Vegemite!

(**For those fortunate enough not to be familiar with Vegemite, it is a cultural icon among Australians, and they will defend it tooth and nail despite the fact that most don’t even like it! Basically, it is a salty, bitter, sticky spread for things like bread, and is made of leftover yeast and various vegetable and spice additives. Nobody except Australians eats it, and even the Aussies only eat tiny bits at a time, with other spreads, like butter, over it on their toast.)

Jesse, born in Holland but raised in China, immediately turned away the eggs on Vegemite toast, but I decided to humor Maz, and ate some with the toast. She swears you have to eat it with the toast, because the Vegemite gives it a little saltier taste. I argued that you could just put salt on it and leave off the Vegemite, but she wasn’t having any of it. (She herself doesn’t even really like the wretched stuff!)

David was up next. He added milk, butter, and cheese, and also a little salt and pepper. Needless to say, he won and was unanimously declared the world champion. Thus ended the great 2008 Hong Kong Egg Off. No word yet of a rematch or any worthy contenders. But I will keep you posted.