Can’t Compete with Minimum-Wage Chefs

I have embarked on a fool’s errand. I tried to make my own Egg McMuffins. I have done this before. Guess I didn’t learn my lesson.

A long time ago, I bought myself a couple of synthetic clamshell-looking dishes. You put eggs in them and microwave them, and then you put the eggs in your fake McMuffins. You get nice round eggs. They work okay, but nuked eggs aren’t as good as fried eggs.

This week I picked up some English muffins, Canadian bacon, and cheese, and I gave it another try.

Here’s my conclusion: McDonald’s deserves more credit. These things are hard to make.

To create a McMuffin, you have to fry eggs and Canadian bacon at the same time, because they have to go on the muffins simultaneously. This means two separate pans. It does for me, anyway. I wanted three McMuffins. You also have to toast multiple muffins at the same time, and before you put the eggs and stuff on them, they have to be buttered. You have to take cheese slices out and warm them up, because if you put cold cheese on a McMuffin, it stays hard.

You also have to cut butter slices and soften them in the microwave, unless you want to mash cold butter into your muffins and ruin them.

Making round fried eggs isn’t hard. You put them in the skillet gently so they don’t spread out much, and you fold the edges in so they stay round.

I tried making McMuffins two days in a row. I am not happy with the results.

Yesterday’s batch was better than today’s. I didn’t burn anything, and everything came out more or less as it should have, but they weren’t as good as the real thing.

1. The muffins were hard on the outside. McDonald’s puts its muffins in wrappers, and the steam is confined in the paper. This, I am guessing, softens the outsides of the muffins. Because my muffins were hard, when I bit down on them, it took more pressure to bite through, so the contents of the muffins were squashed.

2. My Canadian bacon was small and tough. it was also a little dry. Somehow, McDonald’s manages to make its Canadian bacon cover nearly the same area as the egg, and when you bite through the bacon, it cuts cleanly, because it’s not tough. My Canadian bacon was considerably smaller than the eggs, and it was hard to sever. It tended to pull out of the muffins in one piece.

Today’s effort was worse. I blew a circuit breaker and interfered with the toaster cycle, and when I started it again, I got a muffin that was too dark. If McDonald’s did that to me, I would be pretty critical. It’s unusual. I also threw a buttered muffin on the kitchen floor. That was not intentional. I was handling hot food and moving as fast as I could, and it happened. I ended up with two full McMuffins and one topless McMuffin.

I fried the bacon just enough to get it hot, and I put the bacon and toasted muffins in the oven to keep them warm until the eggs were done. The bacon was still very small compared to McDonald’s. I suppose the brand at my grocery store is unusually small.

What’s the answer? It’s probably best to give up and use ham, and I need some way to take the hardness out of the muffins. Maybe I should toast them and put them in a small covered dish in the oven. And making three McMuffins is just too hard. The toaster can only cope with two muffins.

I should also quit using real cheese. Real cheddar doesn’t melt and get gooey the way McDonald’s fake cheese does.

It’s a real production, no matter how you do it. McDonald’s has an assembly line, a method, and multiple personnel, so they have a big edge.

Breakfast is a meal that requires time-management skills. Everything has to be presented nearly at once. If your toast gets cool, you can’t reheat it without ruining it, and toast gets cool fast. Eggs that aren’t cooked hard will be very hard indeed if you reheat them. Making breakfast food is very simple, but if you can’t get it to the table on time, it’s not going to be good.

I have a warming area above my range, with heat lamps. I’m going to have to learn how to use it.

Most meals aren’t as fussy. Consider a big Thanksgiving dinner. Mashed potatoes can be nuked to warm them up. So can yams. So can beans. Doesn’t hurt these foods at all. Consider steak and potatoes. A baked potato can sit for 15 minutes, waiting to be joined by the steak, after you take it out of the oven. Or you can leave in in the oven at 200 for an hour. That’s a lot of slack.

My hat is off to McDonald’s. I can make McMuffins much more cheaply, and unlike McDonald’s, I don’t serve stale decaf coffee or decaf which is really regular coffee (and stale), but I can’t make them better.

I may have to forget about decaf as well as my other coffee alternative, hot chocolate. A long time ago, God told me, “Caffeine destroys peace.” I am very sensitive to caffeine these days. I got that way after I started praying in tongues a lot. I can’t drink real coffee. Sometimes I can get away with drinking tea, if I take a Benadryl before bed. But last night I kept waking up, and all I drank yesterday was decaf.

I looked it up, and decaf has something like 20 milligrams of caffeine per cup. When I was in law school, I would have laughed at that. I started every day with a quart of coffee. Now things are different. Twenty milligrams may be too much. And chocolate has enough caffeine and theobromine in it to cause problems, too.

What am I supposed to drink at breakfast? No coffee, tea, decaf coffee, hot chocolate, or decaf tea. I don’t want sugary drinks, including fruit juice. I might have to look into chicory.

I like having something hot to drink in the morning. I’m old. It shocks my body back to life.

Today I tried a crazy idea: hot vanilla. It’s like hot chocolate, only you make it with vanilla. It’s pretty lame. Better than water, though.

Incidentally, Benadryl is not a great answer to my problem. It makes you feel funny after you wake up.

Here is what I suspect. Drugs open doorways in the spirit realm. It’s very obvious when you look at hard drugs like LSD and psilocybin. People taking things like that see demons, angels, and (they think) God himself. They have visions. There are religions in which the use of psychodelic drugs is a requirement.

Maybe you don’t need to see demons and angels to be affected adversely by a drug. Maybe boring drugs like nicotine and pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) are more dangerous than we think. One of the most popular cheap drugs is dextromethorphan, which is found in cough syrup. Take enough of it, and you will trip. There are people who trip on diarrhea pills.

Caffeine is a drug. If you don’t think it’s a drug, eat a tablespoon of instant coffee and then see if you change your mind. I suspect that God wants me to stay away from all mind-altering drugs. Sort of a Nazirite thing. Remember how he forbade Samson to cut his hair with a razor or to drink wine and strong drink? Those were special laws, just for Samson.

I don’t have any problems with alcohol. Not yet.

I think God is trying to shut my doors to the enemy. Maybe he’s giving other people the same message, but if he is, it’s not well known.

Chocolate! Can you believe it? I didn’t see that coming! I hope pizza isn’t next. I don’t care much about coffee, but chocolate is incredible.

I’m not sure about any of this, but I know what God told me about caffeine, and I know I’m having problems when I consume it.

I think it’s time to give up on McMuffins. It was a fun experiment, but I don’t want to throw food on the floor every morning.