Key West, Remembered

The Key Wester

THE KEY WESTER

I spend about six weeks a year in Key West playing in a cover band with my friends. Breakfast is a very important meal in the Conch Republic; I have found that it can make or break the entire day. The trick is to get just enough protein to supply the long, slow kind of heat-resistant energy that the day will undoubtedly require, but not so much that you feel pinned to the couch, compelled by nature to watch yet another episode of "Law and Order: SVU." Additionally, you need a little bit of carbohydrate to help massage the protein through your digestive system, to add that touch of pizazz without leaving your belly feeling bloated and tragic. After much trial and error, I feel I have arrived at the perfect Key West breakfast solution.

Imaginatively, I call this thing THE KEY WESTER. It’s calorie-to-protein ratio is about as good as you can get while still actually calling something breakfast, and it’s goddamn tasty, to boot. Try it our for yourself at home or on your next foray to the islands:

Ingredients

2 eggs
2 pieces of Udi’s gluten-free white bread (it’s like having bread without getting that super-full bloated feeling)
2 slices of cheddar cheese
2 slices of organic turkey (yeah, get organic and make sure it doesn’t have any bullshit ‘filler’ in it. Trust me, it’s worth it.)
2 tsp. olive or favorite nut oil
Bragg’s Organic Sprinkle seasoning

The Process

Pour 2 tsp. oil into medium sauté pan. Bring oil to medium-hot heat. Crack two eggs into pan, close together but not quite touching. With spatula, gather whites into shape roughly equivalent to square inchage of toast before whites solidify too much. Leave to sizzle for a moment.

Drop two pieces of bread into toaster set to medium. Toast.

Set a medium-sized plate, the one from which you shall dine, on the counter.

Remove cheddar slices from packaging, leave on plate. Remove slices of turkey from packaging, leave on plate. Return both packages to refrigerator. Take a moment to insure that you have either disposed of egg shells or given them to the dog. (Egg shells are great for animals’ calcium.)

Flip eggs in sauté pan, taking care to not splash any oil. That shirt cost $12.99, for god's sake. With the corner of the spatula, poke two small holes in each yolk. This allows the yolk to spread a bit within the confines of the rapidly-solidifying egg, saving you from future mouth pain. There is nothing worse than having hot lava-like liquid yolk spray the inside of your mouth as you bite into the Key Wester. Be sure that yolk is mushy-to-hard.

Place slices of cheddar over each egg. Melt for one minute.

Place pieces of toast (they should be done by now) on plate. Flip egg/cheese combinations onto toast (cheese side down). Scrunch slices of turkey on top of eggs. Sprinkle with Bragg’s seasoning.

Serve hot with a cup of unfiltered apple juice. Best consumed with knife and fork but hands are fine if you don’t mind a touch of mess.

Chickpeas

Stan and I have officially begun our new installation of the annual 'Summer Walk' series. We began the series last year upon landing back in Nashville amidst financial ruin and general heaviness of heart. As my body was still readjusting to the physical realities of not awakening with a quart of liquor still coursing through it, I would inexplicably rise at 6:30 every day, unsure of what to do with myself besides stare at the walls of my father's basement guest room. Daniel Tashian began inviting us to go on his 7:00 AM dog walks, rather ambitious affairs that really got the blood pumping. Suitably inspired, Stan and I soon initiated our own particular routine involving the creation of a portable cup of coffee for me and the installation of a plastic poop bag device on the business end of Stan's leash.

I quickly began to appreciate the mind-clearing effects of a good Summer morning constitutional, that wonderful amble through the steamy awakenings of nature, the universal coming-to, the infinite uniqueness of every single pile of animal excrement. Predictably, Stan was more than happy to establish a circuit of the surrounding streets and parks on which he could definitively make his presence known to the other canine inhabitants of the neighborhood. We were, in short, re-establishing a presence on the local scene. People were beginning to talk. More than once, at the coffee shop, passing the playground at Dragon Park, we heard the unmistakable whispers, the clandestine mentions of a 'comeback.'

A year later, we have graduated from the paternal basement, once again leading relatively 'adult' existences on the first and second floors of a house that we actually pay rent for. Surrounded by new and old friends on a regular basis, we have managed to resist the occasional temptations that would beckon us back to the darker corners of our history. This morning, proudly observing Stan raining down a great yellow disaster upon the neighbor's chrysanthemums, I was struck by the triumph of it all, the deafening trumpets of restitution. As the Dalai Lama once said, "We're back, motherfuckers. Watch out."