The Thing About Eggs

Why I hate fried eggs-Part 1

Previously recounted on this blog were the details of my forebears. I was the child of southern parents. The South in my parents was noticeable in the way they carried themselves, the way they addressed the world and in the way they ate. My folks believed in hearty meals. Fried chicken was big on the list of delicacies. Fried potatoes were big too. Fried tomatoes sliced thick and fully floured up were pretty darn good. But these were evening meals. In my house even breakfast was fried.

Where scrapple came from I really don’t want to know. Scrapple was a breakfast staple at our house. Scrapple is the part of the pig not good enough to be part of sausage or Spam. Compressed into a green/grey rectangle scrapple is served as a breakfast meat. In my house scrapple was sliced off the brick it was packaged as, and then dropped into a pan with hot sizzling grease. Cooked until a hard crispy crust formed around the edges, it would be set before you. Scrapple for people with experience with Greek food is Saganaki substituting gray meat pieces parts for the cheese, no flames (usually) and nobody screaming Opa! But I digress (and now I am really worried about my arteries).

On days when the” it came from beyond” dish scrapple wasn’t on the morning menu there were bacon and eggs. Bacon is bad for you. Still consider the smell of bacon. I have heard it said that the aroma of cooking bacon alone has stopped many a person from becoming a vegetarian. One singer put it this way, when I see a pig and I remember the smell and taste of bacon I could just rip the hind leg off that porker myself. As for me, I was okay with the bacon part of the morning equation.

(As a side note on the bacon thing Sam’s sells maple cured bacon in their normal bulk packaging. I cooked some of it up once. Five days after cooking that stuff my house still smelled like I should be living in Moose Jaw, Manitoba. The maple smell was so strong there were guys in toques asking in French if they could watch Hockey Night in Canada at my house because the Habs were on. It is darn good stuff but you had better like the small of maple smoke ‘cause it sticks with you, and your house and your clothes for days at a time.)

Anyway back to the main story, my mother would invariably cook the bacon first. Why you ask? Well, so she would have the grease to cook the eggs in. Now mind you I like eggs today. I have eaten eggs benedict, eggs lorraine and eggs princess; every one of them a treat. I make egg white omelets with fresh yellow tomatoes (so sweet) and mild goat cheese. In a pan wiped with just a little olive oil this omlet browns wonderfully and a sprig of basil tops it off. Hell, if I am in that Scotch Pub in London, Ontario I will even eat scotch eggs with my toque wearing friends as we watch the hockey game and scream Go Habs Go.

I did not, nor will I ever, like to eat eggs cooked in bacon grease over easy for a time period that was just way too long. Really these things my Mom made were like thick organic versions of those little rubber squares you use to open tomato sauce jars with. (I know most of you use a butter knife to break the vacuum -but I can’t think of anything else except maybe a replacement universal bath tub drain plug that would have the same texture and consistency as those damn eggs). A pair staring up at you they weren’t; they were chewy, they were greasy, they were gross. And every morning that I didn’t get scrapple I got those damn eggs. Hell, it is a wonder I am willing to eat food at all. Hell, even the dog wouldn’t eat ‘em, damn useless Scotty dog.

One day when I was in about seventh or eight grade I figured something out. An awareness crept over me that when Mom made sure the eggs were on my plate she would leave the room. Mom had to prepare to go off and teach school. Alone with those nasty things sitting there before me my mind was free to wander. Wander it did. Straight out to the bush that was right outside the kitchen window did my cogitating go. A bushy bush it was with lots of foliage.

Several days after hatching my plan I acted. Mom had left the room and I got up. Still wearing my pajamas I every so quietly made my way to the kitchen door. Looking about and making sure no one was watching I made my way down the concrete steps. I scurried. Five feet from the house, just across from the water spigot but not as far as the pussy willow or the maple tree was the plant that was my goal. With a quick lifting of the limber braches of that ornamental shrub I threw the plates of eggs down and out of sight. When the limbs were loosed from my hands no errant food could be seen. Understand there was no bacon left on the plate. I ate the bacon. I always ate the bacon. It was just the eggs that had to go.

Back in my seat with a clean plate I waited until Mom returned to the kitchen. She was clearly pleased I had eaten my eggs. Perhaps it was because she had thought I had latched onto fried eggs as my source of protein (my plate was completely empty wasn’t it-nothing remained) that the egg quotient on the breakfast food cycle went up. As the frequency of egg service increased so did the trips to the bush. The bacon was good and so was the toast, the eggs well they were still just greasy round thingys.

Forsythia has a lovely yellow flower at the start of spring. When they bud and blossom the world is golden, maybe even more golden than it becomes with the turning of those northern trees in fall. In summer these bushes are a striking shade of green with thick leaves that must just be cranking out the oxygen. Then sometime in fall their leaves drop suddenly and completely. It is almost like a memo goes out to the small boat like photosynthesizers to give up and drop right now. It was in the New Jersey fall that my fried pre-chickens came home to roost.

I think it was my father who first noticed the great pyramid of cooked chicken ova lying underneath the naked skeletal frame of the forsythia. But like all these conversations in my house that followed the discovery of my various transgressions, there had been a colloquy amongst the parents before the confrontation. Dad took the point. At dinner one night that my father simply pointed out the window and inquired of me, “Do you have any idea what those are?”

What do you say? If you say yes then the why question follows at once. Despite having had months to think this through I hadn’t thought I would have had to explain myself. Even the damn vermin hadn’t eaten the freakin eggs. In a situation such as this if you say no the flow chart just gets uglier. It begins with a declaration, “You should know better than to lie, boy.” Each decision point after that is more and more unpleasant.

I opted for silence. Silence was the household equivalent to a plea of nolo contedere. Silence meant either I didn’t remember or I was not fessing up. It also meant I would take the blame and the punishment. Silence was as long as the transgression was minor not going to increase the punishment. It would just make it take longer to get there. Silence induced the lecture. There were the musing on right and wrong, on sin, and there was the theorizing as to the whys of the transgression. This stuff had to be worked out. Things had to be said like “Do you know how hard you mother worked on those eggs,” and I kid you not, “There are starving children in India (or China)”. And of course there were my Mom’s eyes, questioning and hurt. I swear she practiced that shit. Agggh.

And you know I didn’t care about getting busted. I didn’t care there would be punishment. What I cared about was that I had hurt my mother’s feelings. Again and again during those years I hurt my mother’s feelings. I can hear those words ringing in my ears still (usually this line was launched into when the family was going somewhere Mom didn’t feel like going to, “Don’t worry about me. I will just stay here. Maybe I’ll just lie down and die” Agggh!!!!!!

Bill Cosby used to have a bit about how a shop teacher would shame the kid who threw the bullet or firecracker into the furnace ( I don’t remember which it was but a firecracker sounds safer). The teacher would talk about how doing such a thing meant the kid’s mother was a bad mother. Very quickly the culprit would identify himself because his mother was so important to him that he didn’t want anyone talking about his mother being bad. My feelings in this situation were kind of like that. The finding of the eggs meant I was in essence talking bad about my Mom’s cooking.

Trust me now I can do it with ease because a lot of the food Mom made sucked. Then, not so much. The guilt when you are discovered hiding the eggs sucks. The guilt of letting your Mom down sucks even more. But so do greasy eggs.

I still hate fried eggs.