I hadn't thought about Gay for a while. For many, many years, actually.

It's not like I haven't been seeing her on my social media feeds. She's now settled in Australia; I often see her striking poses. Yes, I know I haven't been making an effort to reach out to my elementary school classmates - there's this niggling feeling that I never really shared anything in common with them decades on, so why bother with the discomfort? - so when I see her posts I just notice them for a split-second and move on.

That makes this a little weird. It's not like we're the closest of friends - who was I closest to in elementary, though? - but we did talk a fair bit, especially during lunch breaks, especially when she would have sardines with egg. I almost always asked her for some.

It's not like I wasn't fed well as a kid. It's not like my own mother is a bad cook. Far from it. But she never did sardines with egg, and Gay's mom did, and I always asked for a little bit when she had that. Almost three decades on it's cringeworthy behavior, but back then we're just classmates sharing food. Although I don't remember if I ever shared mine. I'm not saying I didn't. I just don't remember.

And it's a pretty simple recipe, too. It's just a can of sardines in a pan, lightly mashed to break up the pieces of fish. Then you add a couple of beaten eggs, and you're done. It's up to you if you want it to look like a whole omelette. You can, but Gay's mom always broke them up, so you had red-orange blobs of something you wouldn't immediately recognize at the start. And it's soft and pillowy and bursting with flavor. And it's just a can of sardines and a couple of eggs.

I hadn't thought about all that for many, many years. Only now that I'm living alone, and only because I realize that, well, I could cook that for dinner.

I have a couple of cans of sardines in the cupboard. I stocked up on them during the height of the oil price crisis earlier this year, when the possibility of everything becoming so expensive as to not be available was not remote. And yet even then, I made the mental note of trying Rose Bowl, a brand I didn't always encounter, but apparently is better than the brands I grew up with. But I can't tell the difference. Not in this application.

I added a couple of cloves of garlic and, instead of an onion, I added the white parts of a leek. (The green parts would be the topping at the end.) That's me watching cooking shows for decades and cooking for myself (for the most part) for the past six. Perfect with freshly-cooked rice, although mine were leftovers from the day before. But never mind. It was a really good meal. A familiar flavor, some childhood memories, and also, it's a damn quick thing to cook.

And yet I did forget about it. I loved it, but I never tried cooking it, choosing instead to learn to make those Filipino dishes that serve so many people. I still can't get my adobo right, but I do now have a go-to recipe of sorts for my puchero. I do good Chinese stir-frys and good Japanese curries (instant, of course) and the occasional Western-style braised chicken. I consider myself a good enough cook. But in the quest to get better, I forgot about the simple things. Not that I can't cook them, but I just never consider them. This one. A can of sardines and a couple of eggs. And garlic, and leeks, and a splash of soy sauce. And maybe I can do this as a steamed egg, like the Chinese do? That's for much, much later.