On Friday night I invented a new recipe.

Well, it’s not exactly a new recipe. People have been baking eggs in tomatoey goo for centuries. And I’m hardly the first person to think, “I know! A bit of bacon will really make this”.

But no matter how common this recipe is, I still feel slightly accomplished for having put it together at the last minute. Not only did it save me money, but it meant I was able to get rid of the stuff in the fridge I’d hoped my housemates would have eaten while I was away during the week. The added bonus? I was able to turn a pathetic Friday night in into a blog post, therefore justifying my sad existence for literary purposes. I am no longer a loser; I am an artiste.

And with that, I give you my recipe for Friday Night Eggs.

Step one:spend one hour trying to work out what take-away to order, umming and ahhing over the expensive vegan options that would make you feel like a health goddess and the honkin’ fried chicken your heart wants.

Step two: Come within millimetres of ordering a vegetarian pizza (adding chicken and extra sauce) before deciding you need to reign in your spending and resolve to have eggs on toast like a responsible person.

Step three:put saucepan of water on stove, lowering in one egg, losing grip of another, cracking it and placing it gently back in the carton. Put another non-cracked egg into the water.

Step four: decide you’re worth more than boiled eggs on toast with butter (geez, someone has tickets on themselves!) and turn to the limited supply of food you have stored in the panty and the third of a shelf you’ve been allotted in the share house fridge.

Step five: Take one can of crushed tomatoes, which you once bought from the local corner store to make up the $10 necessary to pay for your milk via Eftpos. Smile, because your impulse “I’ll need that one day” buy paid off.

Step six:turn off that saucepan, baby, because you’re having baked eggs!

Step seven:open can, dip a fing, taste the tomato mush and decide there needs to be more flavour to your sad, solo Friday night dish.

Step eight:with a limp flick of the wrist, slop the crushed tomato into a circular cake tin, which you selected because it was the only viable option in the pantry. While the tomato is slush is going into the tin, lament over how many suitable novelty baking dishes you have stashed at your parents’ house. Think longingly about the baking dish with a duck as a lid and cruse, once again, that you live in a share house in Sydney and not a cute bachelorette pad in Queensland surrounded by all your humorous cookware.

Step nine:crack one egg into the mush, before realising you need to bulk up the mixture for there to be enough of a well to keep the egg in one clump.

Step ten:open the fridge, removing all remaining items you have on your shelf.

Step eleven:roughly slice and dice half an obscenely large onion while telling yourself the slapdash job is an example of the “homely” look.

Step twelve:slice two pieces of shortcut bacon into strips, not because you’re responsible about potion control when it comes to fatty meats, but because that’s all you have.

Step thirteen:consider the black pudding you bought when you’d just returned from Ireland, in need of sustenance, being too jet lagged to make proper decisions and homesick for the isle of your ancestors.

Step fourteen:sniff said meaty tube, noting that it seemed a little odd.

Step fifteen:decide that the blood-based sausage would make for an interesting quirk in the recipe, opting to add a few slices cut large enough to be easily picked off in the event of yuckiness.

Step sixteen:sprinkle in some oregano from a housemate’s shelf, justifying your use of it because you bought the house a bag of novelty Toblerones from the duty free shop.

Step seventeen:crack in the egg that was already cracked, therefore finding a us for the tainted egg. Be sure to congratulate yourself for your resourcefulness.

Step eighteen:grate on a good sprinkling of Perfect Italiano Romano Cheese, which you selected because it was what you had in the fridge, which made it to your shopping basket because it had the “great for risottos” on the label. Feel fancy because one of your housemates has a grater looks kind of like a spatula, and that’s the kind of thing Nigella would use.

Step nineteen:crack black pepper over the top, because you’re gourmet as heck.

Step twenty: place cake tine into the oven at a temperature you’re not entirely sure of, going for the fan forced-and-grill option to get a nice crust to the cheese.

Step twenty-one:grate some of that fance cheese with the fance grater over a slice of bread, setting aside to place in the oven at the last minute for dipping. Ensure you have enough bread left for an alternative dinner of toast and jam in case the dish turns out to be crap.

Step twenty-two:using the water from your abandoned boiled eggs mix, rinse out the tin of tomatoes, because you’re not a wild animal who puts dirty tins in the recycling bin.

Step twenty-three:put on some fluffy socks and wait. Wait to live. Wait to die. Wait for ran absolution, that would never come… or write up your actions before you forget them/to leave the paramedics a detailed description of what you’ve taken in case things go horrendously wrong

Step twenty-four:pull out the cake tin after like nine minutes, declare to no one that it “looks like vomit” and replace it on the middle shelf.

Step twenty-five:decide to watch one episode of Grand Designsor an English crime drama while tucking into your spontaneous meal.

Step twenty-six:After about 20 minutes, check on the eggy goo and decide it’s go time for the bread, placing it on the top shelf.

Step twenty-seven:prepare yourself.

Step twenty-eight:plonk the cake tine on a wooden chopping board, whack the bread on the side and start feeding your face while wondering when red-headed Collin from Love, Actually replaced the chap from Murder in Paradise, eating the goopy mess straight from the cake tin like the uncultured swine that you are.  

As an aside, I did eat all the pieces of black pudding from the tin, leaving only a bit of yolk uneaten as it felt like a bit too much. I’ll conclude by saying that the dish certainly filled the void in my stomach – I ate one-and-bit eggs, two bits of bacon, half a large onion, a whole tin of crushed tomatoes and a piece of bread. The void in my heart wasn’t entirely plugged, but it was a dish warm enough, cheap enough and semi-healthy enough to not make me hate myself, so that’s alright by me.

I’d give it a 6/10, but I don’t know if my 10 is the same as a cooking competition judge’s 10.

One word of warning – later that night I had what I can only describe as a black pudding nightmare. I swear I kept waking up and smelling black pudding, like some kind of meaty sleep paralysis attack. It’s this odd phenomena that prompts me to suggest that whichever poor, misguided soul who attempts this recipe uses a black pudding that’s less than weeks old.