I’ve had a tough week that came out of the blue and I seriously lost my food mojo. I felt teary, nauseated and exhausted. I couldn’t turn my mind to cooking but knew some solid nourishment would assist me mentally as well as physically.

I snacked on potato chips that I didn’t enjoy; I drank juice; I ate over-ripe fruit; I bought chocolate bars and snarfed them down mindlessly. I didn’t know what I wanted to eat and that is a rare thing for me.

I was determined that I should prepare a meal to feed us that took little effort or time but that I would want to eat once it was ready. I settled on shirred eggs with cheesy crispy toasts because cheesy crispy toasts make everything better. I knew that I had a jar of chopped tomatoes with white beans to hand and I always have eggs in the fridge. A legacy of my upbringing is that if you have eggs, you’ll always be able to make something to eat.

I cooked some sliced shallot and garlic in a little oil on a low heat until they were mostly translucent. I then dumped in the jar of tomato and beans. While this warmed up, I grabbed some pita bread from the freezer and a bag of grated cheese. A light spritz of oil on the pita bread then a rain of shredded cheese and these went into the oven to get all golden brown and crisp. Once the tomato mix was warm, I cracked four eggs into the pan and popped that into the oven below the pitas to cook through.

Superfluous to say, I was not in the mood to tizz up the dish. No chorizo or bacon, no herbs or chilli, no roasted capsicum or eggplant to add another dimension. The brief was ‘something achievable and nourishing with enough eye appeal to seduce me to actually consume it’. Mission accomplished. The one concession I will admit to was a little garnish of spring onion scattered over the top once it was all done. This addresses the last several words of the brief.

I ate, not heartily but I ate.