Since I’m now a working woman, my daily routine as a Tokyo Housewife is no longer.  That is a gentle way of saying our apartment is a complete mess, I may have let my kanji study slide, and I now fail regularly at keeping food in the cabinets.  These days, more often than not I’m finding 7 pm roll around with nothing planned for dinner.  And then I realize I ate cereal for lunch and I’m starving and ready to gnaw off my hand.

So what’s a housewife to do?  I pester Dan.  Here is what one of our chat conversations looked like this week:

Me: would you like pancakes for dinner?  that is not a trick question
Dan: i’ll eat whatever you cook
Me: well, i can cook pancakes, mushrooms, a little bit of leftover rice, pasta with no sauce, eggs (again)
Me: oh, and there is avocado 🙂

Please forgive me for loving emoticons.  I could blame Japan, but really, those smiley faces have been in my repertoire for years.  (You should see the emoticons available on my cell phone — given the chance, I could compose my autobiography using only those things.)  So, with that list of random ingredients, I decided to throw everything (well, almost) into the pot, cross my fingers, and hope for something edible.  Dan mentioned he’d heard about eggs in pasta, and a quick Google search confirmed it exists.

I think the creamy-egg-in-pasta idea was suddenly less scary because in Japan, I’m not afraid of eating raw eggs.  My new chef friend told me that the date on the egg carton – usually a week after purchase — is for when you need to refrigerate the eggs, not throw them out.  They are that fresh.  So, I went for it.

This is our kitchen, maxed out for space yet again.  Thank goodness we only own two pots.  I sauteed some エリンギ eringi mushrooms (if you are curious what they look like whole, you can peek here) and cooked up the pasta.  When the pasta was done and drained, I threw in the cooked mushrooms, two eggs, the avocado, salt, and a splash of milk.  And some black pepper.  And… it was delicious.

OK, so maybe this is the least convincing photo ever, but you have to believe me.  I was amazed at how good this was, considering I took (almost) every last bit of food left in our apartment and threw it all together.  In the past this plan has not gone so well (translation: anchovies and tomatoes).  This time, triumph!

Anyone else out there willing to try the Raw Egg Pasta Sauce?