I tried Lucerne’s “Best of the Egg” product. I’m not a big fan of eggs, either for taste or for safety. If I must eat them, I prefer them from organic, free range hens and thoroughly cooked. (I boil eggs for 20 minutes, here at 4300 feet elevation.) Thus my first experience with fat free eggs was a little disappointing: they taste like eggs and they didn’t cook completely dry. I didn’t want to brown parts in order to get the entire mass dry. But they’re pasteurized, right?
Yesterday my family asked me to fix Sunday breakfast. That means more elaborate than oatmeal, often involving eggs. The only eggs in the house were the remaining two packs from the Best of the Egg purchase. I decided on a Mexican omelet. After shaking the egg product (egg whites with seasonings, stabilizers, vitamins and minerals), I poured both packages into a medium-hot 7-inch cast iron skillet holding a scant two teaspoons of light-tasting olive oil and half a pat of butter.
To this I added salt and pepper, onion powder, finely snipped green onion, and shavings of the flowery part of a bud of broccoli. As the egg mixture cooked on the bottom, with a metal spatula I scraped it toward first one side, then another, allowing the liquid parts to flow around for their turn to be cooked solid. I did not “scramble” or break apart the egg, but pushed it together to cook as a mass.
While that cooked on medium heat, I shaved bits of pepper-jack cheese and sharp cheddar cheese (couldn’t find my grater). The plan was to get a cheesy indulgence with as little cheese as possible. When the egg was almost done, I sprinkled on the cheese shavings, covered with a glass lid and set it off the heat for a couple minutes, returning it to the heat to finish the melting.
I served what truly looked like an omelet on hot plates, and topped it with a stripe of salsa, and dollops of guacamole and fat free Greek yogurt. It was very well received.
Here’s the best part: each serving of about two eggs had only 60 egg calories, a Weight Watcher’s point value of 1 instead of the 5 two whole eggs would carry. The cheese, less than one-half ounce per serving, added about a point (around 50 calories). A generous 2 Tablespoons of guacamole could stack on 90 calories – another Weight Watcher’s point. Salsa and fat free Greek yogurt, which we use anyplace we would otherwise use sour cream (including in Stroganoff) add yum value and nutrition without adding points.
All tolled, each delicious omelet was five points and around 250 calories. That’s something I could do again. And it didn’t taste too much like eggs!