Eggs

Tonight, we had a Beck family traditional breakfast dinner. It was wonderful...

I remember having this meal when I was a kid - I really don't know how it started though. I know that Dad loved it. He would get his plate with a whole patty of hamburger and a couple of fried eggs, then he would grab a bottle of Mrs. Butter Worth's syrup and pour that on all of it. After topping off his glass with milk (Sorry Matt), we all stopped our own preparations to pray.

I think my favorite part is the eggs - cooked in the same pan in which you just finished frying the burger. Maybe it's just a Beck thing (sort of like, "You really had to be there.") I don't know.

Mom cooks everything, well almost everything, the way I like it. I still don't care to eat beets all that much. Grandma Ruthi had the same effect on my appetite as well. Great Grandma Ruby too... ...Leave it to me to remember the food. 200 lbs. and holding... (mostly)

But that's what this post is about. Back to tonight. Wait, you need to know this first: My wife and I have "Kitchen Issues."

I don't know how much to divulge before I sleep with the chickens, but you have to know that kitchen issues go back to day... ...let's say day 3. I think that puts us home after the wedding. Immediately, after her arrival my new wife began setting up house. Pots, pans, utensils of all sorts were sorted, cleaned, organized and mostly MOVED! I, the former bachelor, was amused until I found myself lost in the kitchen in which I had become very comfortable!

Being the overly patient and loving sort, I believe I held my tongue for a looonnng time... ...at least 23 1/2 minutes. And that's when the [newlywed] fight started. Just kidding... We didn't have a fight until eight months later, when she cornered me in the kitchen and proceeded to use interrogation methods that they would later use in the manual on "rendering" of "enemy combatants." (Her's were less refined but highly effective…)

Anyway, in the seven years or so that we have been married my wife has re-organized the kitchen 19 times. That does not include the times that we moved, which would make it 20 times even. We have learned to respect and honor each other through the lessons learned in the kitchen - especially eggs.

We have an arrangement that goes something like this: "You get to cook it however you wish to cook it, and I will leave the kitchen and let you do that with as few rude comments as a normal human being with a valid-if-opposite-of-your-opinion can manage." In the interest of full disclosure, I am the primary offender on this one, which explains the way the law reads.

But I have a good reason for it... ...as a long-term bachelor, I had years of cooking under my belt. Of course, that cooking was left to Top Ramen, Steak, Broccolli, Asparagus and Eggs - oh yeah, and toast. So, when my wife decides to treat us to eggs, my big mouth and I are dutifully invited to leave the kitchen.

My egg frying, scrambling perfection has been refined to an art. Eggs are one of the more flexible of foods. Fried, they make breakfast on a plate or between two pieces of toast as a breakfast on the run. Scrambled up, they make a variety of omelet-like delicacies. Serve 'em with bacon in the morning and burger at dinner, or was it supper? Love 'em.

One thing though... ...DON'T BURN 'EM.

I'm serious. The whole house stinks for days and, I have to mention this for your own good, your clothes, your breath, your very pores stink too! I hate that! Er... ...I "strongly dislike" that. Sorry.

Anyway, I have tried to teach my wife the "right way" to cook eggs. She apparently has better things to do than stand over the stove top monitoring the pan temperatures as I do. So, muttering to myself, I have to excuse myself from the kitchen before another chapter gets added to the CIA Rendition Manual.

It takes time to cook eggs the "right way". You have to bring the pan to the correct temperature - just to the point where the butter, I mean the non-stick cooking spray, just starts to bubble lightly. Then, and only then can you gently introduce the eggs to the pan. At this temperature they will not skin up all brown-ly and the yolks will not burst from the sudden spike of heat.

BUT NOOOOO... ...my wife will cook the eggs somewhere between, "you might want the exhaust fan 'ON'" and "Open the windows before the smoke alarms all go off..." OK - it isn't THAT bad.

But I don't understand how she does them so perfectly. If I did them like that it would, well, stink. She does fried eggs in 3 seconds flat - for over easy. Gretta was giving her fits tonight so she missed flipping mine by about 1/2 of a second, so mine were in-between over-easy and over-medium. mmmmmm so good.

So, I guess it's time for me to admit that there is indeed, perhaps, maybe more than one "right way". Well, for eggs anyway.