Scrambled Eggs and Oatmeal

November 16, 1999

SCRAMBLED EGGS AND OATMEAL

Even 'though I grew up in the days when father knew best and my father told me that my mission in life was to make some man happy, I drew a line here and there. One was that I refused to wash pans after my husband cooked scrambled eggs or oatmeal. He grew up in the days when his family held on to what must have been the last big black coal cook stove in our comfortable suburb. He believed that the only edible oatmeal was cooked all night on the back of the stove with the fire banked. If you run out of glue, this will do for a substitute. We tried making oatmeal in a heavy Club Aluminum pan. A few times he gave the pan a half hearted wash, then gave up oatmeal. It didn't taste right anyway. Years and years later I offered him microwaved oatmeal. He decided that 1 minute oats, cooked on high for 4 ½ minutes, made a suitable substitute for the real thing. From then on, he cooked his own oatmeal, and washed the bowl. Even in the microwave, oatmeal exposed to air for 5 minutes becomes very attached to its container.

As to scrambled eggs, he liked to melt a little butter in the cold pan, beat up a bowl full of milk or cream and 2 eggs for every eater, plus a few to grow on, until the eggs were fluffy and light, pour the mixture into the still cool pan and continue stirring slowly. He liked to serve them still moist. When he had served his masterpiece the pan was coated with baked on milk. After I banned this performance, we banned scrambled eggs. Again, years passed until my mother happened to explain that one heats the pan first, then adds the butter or whatever lubrication, and when the butter is hot, then one adds the eggs.

After I watched a short order cook make delicious scrambled eggs on the grill without beating them in a bowl first, and without milk, I took to breaking the eggs directly into the hot skillet, and now the eggs drop onto the plate leaving nothing at all behind except a pan ready to use again, with maybe a swipe of a paper towel. We no longer have to agree on how moist to serve them, because he's eating microwave oatmeal, while I'm eating perfect scrambled eggs. I wash the oatmeal bowl nowadays, immediately after removing the oatmeal, while the egg pan heats up.

I have often wondered why my father spent all that money on college if he believed what he said about my mission. My mother took the practical view that life is uncertain and that I might need to be able to support myself. She said education was the only thing they could give me that I couldn't lose.
While our friends got dollars for A's, at our house A's were not paid for, not demanded, just expected. Mother said anybody can learn to cook and keep house when they need to, go do your homework, go practice your piano lesson, go read a book. It may have taken me years to learn to scramble an egg, but I've never been bored.