Crazy hors d'oeuvres

There comes a point in every home cook's life when he or she verges on the brink of insanity. Reader, I reached that point this evening. I was just preparing to pipe devilled egg mayonnaise back into the quail eggs that I'd carefully hollowed out earlier and it struck me that this was ridiculous. I was desperately trying to over-achieve, following one of Rick Tramonto's recipes (albeit scaled down), and hitting crazy Martha Stewart follower territory. I put down the piping bag, filled the whites using a teaspoon (much simpler), and placed them carefully on the glass serving tiles -- the easiest way to make food look good. Sanity regained ... until I started on the courgette slices. Damn. Here's to simpler cooking in 2007.