Probably one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast is a plain bagel with lox. And the lox needs to have capers on top. Lots and lots of capers. Or it tastes like it's missing something. The problem with having lots and lots of capers on top of your lox on top of your plain bagel happens when you bite into it. The flat surface the capers were resting on experiences a mini-earthquake sending capers rolling down the loxscape and landing on the floor. The result is "lots and lots of capers" reduced to "a few scattered capers". Not as tasty for sure.
For years now I've tried to think of a way to keep the capers on the lox, and therefore on the bagel. Scotch tape? Pushpins? Glue? Not as tasty as the capers on their own. I've tried to push the capers down into the lox to keep them in place. I've tried taking gentler bites. But it always ended with capers on the floor instead of on my bagel where they can be gobbled up. I thought I'd surely be a rich man if I could invent a way to keep the capers in place. Or maybe not a rich man, because nobody cares enough to pay for something like a caper-on-lox adhesive. At least I'd be a happy man with a belly full of lots and lots of capers.
And because necessity is the mother of invention, I've finally discovered the trick to the caper caper. And it won't be sold in stores, because I'm so stoked to have found the answer that I'm giving it away for free. It's also free because there's nothing to pay for.
I pack a lunch every workday. One day last week we ran out of deli meats, but we had bagels and lox, so I decided to pack the ingredients for lunch at work. I sliced the bagel in half and put it in a tupperware container. I selected just the right amount of lox and put it in a tupperware container. I spooned out a hunk of cream cheese and put it in a tupperware container. I grabbed the skinny jar of capers and was about to put it into another tupperware container, but I remembered that I hate washing that pile of tupperware containers every night, so I thought I'd save one tupperware container and just put the capers in with the cream cheese.
Lunchtime rolled around, and I unpacked all the tupperware and began to assemble my lunch. When the bagel popped out of the toaster I put it on a plate and opened the tupperware container with the cream cheese and the capers. They were mixed to the point that it was no use trying to separate them, so I spread the cream cheese on the bagel with dots of capers here and there and everywhere. And I put the lox on top. Bingo! The capers were now held in place with cream cheese under a blanket of lox, so instead of capers rolling on the floor, they'd be in my belly where they belonged. Try it sometime. Bon appetit!
