By Week 423. Spring 2024. I am 41 years old and standing in my kitchen — the Bench house kitchen, the one that held cancer and divorce and cinnamon rolls — and the stove is on and something is cooking and the house smells like fresh herbs and possibility and this is my life. This is the life I built.
The clinic was busy this week — spring puppies and summer emergencies and the constant, comforting cycle of animals who need care and humans who love them enough to bring them in.
Mason is 13 and navigating middle school with the quiet competence that has always been his way — focused, kind, certain of who he is in a way that took me thirty years to achieve.
Lily is 11 and riding horses with the fearlessness of someone who has never considered the possibility of falling.
I made roast chicken with herbs this week. The food continues. The food always continues. It is the thread that connects every week to every other week, every year to every other year, every version of me to every other version — the woman on the kitchen floor, the woman at the chemo recliner, the woman at the grill, the woman at the outdoor table under the string lights. All of them, connected by the food they made with their hands. All of them, me.
The roast chicken was already in the oven when I started thinking about what else I could make — something that used the same generous spirit of herbs and warmth, something I could pull together quickly between the clinic and homework and the particular beautiful chaos of a Tuesday. Menemen is that dish for me: eggs and tomatoes and peppers coming together in one pan, fragrant and a little messy and completely unpretentious, the kind of thing you make because you’re hungry and you love the people you’re feeding and that is reason enough. It tastes like continuity. It tastes like this life I built.
Menemen (Turkish Egg Scramble)
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small yellow onion, finely diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 2 medium ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped (or one 14 oz can diced tomatoes, drained)
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or to taste)
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 4 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
- Crusty bread or warm pita, for serving
Instructions
- Soften the aromatics. Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until softened and translucent. Add the diced bell peppers and cook another 3–4 minutes until just tender.
- Build the sauce. Add the chopped tomatoes, cumin, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Season generously with salt and black pepper. Stir to combine and cook over medium heat for 5–6 minutes, until the tomatoes break down and the mixture thickens slightly into a loose sauce.
- Add the eggs. Crack the eggs directly into the pan over the tomato mixture. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, gently fold and stir the eggs into the sauce — slowly, so they cook in soft, pillowy curds rather than a dry scramble. Cook for 2–3 minutes, removing from heat while the eggs are still slightly underdone, as they will continue to set.
- Finish and serve. Scatter fresh parsley over the top and taste for seasoning. Serve immediately, straight from the pan, with plenty of crusty bread or warm pita to scoop everything up.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 310 | Protein: 16g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 14g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 340mg