Panini Press 2: Grilled Vegetables and Bumpy Brown-butter Omelette

It’s official: The panini press is my personal “rocket stove” for the prepper apocalypse. Someone’s going to have a generator. (There were a troubling number of website choices for that link to a rocket stove, so I went with one from “Backdoor Survival,” because why not.)

I actually brought a rocket stove on this trip, a loaner from a friendly prepper I met just before I left. If you aren’t familiar, the rocket stove is a small metal stove that creates a great deal of heat despite using only kindling size wood. They range from simple to pretty tricked out:

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  Bruntmor Camping Rocket Stove $118

Small sticks are inserted through the feed tube at the front, which is angled so the small, fast-burning sticks ideally slide down via gravity, though it’s my understanding they often need some help. As the fire develops, a strong flame (reminiscent of a rocket) shoots out of the chimney. The X supports a pan and creates the necessary space to allow the air to continue to flow under the pan.

But I digress, which seems to be one of the chief (and possibly only) luxuries of bloggery. But back to the panini press and the bumpy omelette of leftovers!

I bought the spinach and avocado; everything else is leftovers — butter packets from a meal I haven’t written about yet, baby eggplants from a Middle Eastern market, also blog forthcoming, and leftovers from my Basque cooking class.

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  Leftover butter and yard chives

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  It’s amazing how fast this grills.

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  The spinach had plenty of water on it, and steamed.

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  I added a bit of parmesan and chili flakes
  from takeout pizza packets.

Two extra-large eggs with chili flakes and sea salt packets from Wendy’s of all places. La-di-da Wendy’s.

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  Did I WANT this to be a brown-butter omelette?

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  Let’s just say not all choices are ones we make.

Like I wouldn’t have chosen to get my leftovers in styrofoam, but what I could do was re-use. Notice my cutting board. I also found a great use for the roasted jalapeno mayo from the Boise Fry Company, blog forthcoming.