After my dentist ordered "only soft food or liquid dinner tonight," I awoke the following morning with the weirdest craving...

...for BAKED BEANS! (Oh Julia Child, where were you when I needed you?)

While the last supper of ice cream and beer from my previous evening as a tooth's new filling "set up" had been a treat, my unusual appetite the next morning left me scrambling. Fortunately, I had the wherewithal -- a can of beans -- to cater the craving. Here's why.

Our species, H. sapiens sapiens, is a member of the Homo genus. There were about 12 other members, or 'siblings' of Homo that we know of. We're the last left standing. All our other family members are deceased, or extinct.

As a family, our genus hasn't been around all that long. About two million years. Sounds like a long time, but it isn't. Cockroaches have been here well over 400 million years. Compared to our own H. sapiens' 200,000 years, well, it makes us look pretty damn puny. And when you consider it takes Earth as member of our solar system 225 million years to make one orbit around our galaxy, the Milky Way, you can see, as a species, we have "no where nears been around the block yet." Whereas roaches have, perhaps at least twice. And as Seals and Croft so intuitively noted nearly 40 years ago, "We may never pass this way again."

So how in the hell does this have anything to do with my craving for baked beans last Tuesday morning? Well, I'm not sure. But being as how this is the very first time in our history H. sapiens sapiens has stood on this very spot in the Milky Way, I know nothing of the "Why" for anything. Who knows how the effects of this particular spot in the cosmic plane may affect us? Or maybe my strange craving was just some chemical deficiency being transmitted from my cells to my brain, then gut, that something in beans was something I was lacking. Something I needed because of my strange dinner the night before.

Whatever the reason, the fact our species is the last surviving representative of our genus and we are likely, from all available evidence, manifesting our destiny to join our extinct siblings, sooner rather than later, via our very violent and careless behaviors toward our own species and its generous host Earth, I decided to do all I could to contribute a small part to promoting our genus' longevity as much as possible. That is, I would have baked beans for breakfast if that's what my biology was inexplicably demanding!

I make my own breakfasts because I love eggs and enjoy doing many different things with 'em. So here is Tuesday morning's breakfast I whipped up in the kitchen for the very first time. With beans, of course.

First I laid the foundation. It consisted of a warmed flour tortilla on top of which I laid in some very hot pico de gallo - the heavier the hotter (better). Heaping on enough pico will count as a day's serving of vegetables. Next added, a smattering of diced onions and some cheddar cheese. Please note, with apologies, cooking and assembling with one hand while photographing it with the other in low light and no flash added a nice blurry flavor to pictures if not the final product's actual taste.

This I topped with one EVO fried egg. I don't usually break the yoke, but did to make it spread out and nicely cover the first layer. At this point, I was really excited I would soon be satisfying my hunger for solid food with baked beans, of course.

Ah, finally (!), I topped the egg with another flour tortilla and slathered it with spoonfuls of beans (sans pork please!), added a little more cheese, red taco sauce and sliced olives. Final addition was a couple of slightly overdone (for crispness) vegetarian bacon strips. Yummy, bean craving sated! And the new filling worked great!

Okay, I'm pretty sure that didn't help the survivability of our species any or that I even extended its lifespan on the planet but I can tell you, for the few brief moments while consuming this, I really didn't a rat's ass if we blow ourselves to smithereens.