Eggs: The Underappreciated Comfort Food

When you’re hungry--I mean like rumbling in your stomach hungry--and you want something fast, what is you go to quick fix meal? Sure there are tons of snacks out there, but none of them really, as the old idiom goes, ‘stick to your ribs’. Snacks don’t satisfy, like a solid, home cooked meal. Now, I’d wager when some need a quick hearty meal fix, many people turn to eggs. I know when I’m wanted something ‘real’ to eat, but don’t want to waste time, I quickly whip out an egg sandwich--I love it with some good meat and cheese. 

When I think about the beauty of a simple egg, I can’t help but marvel at it’s versatility. Its affordability. It’s sociability. So many things you can make with it. So many meals it goes with. Plus, I have lots of fond memories of eating egg centered breakfast meals with friends and family. As a youth, my parents would drag us to a gob of trail rides. The rides were fun enough--except when I got thrown off--but afterward we often gathered at someone's house (or if we were camping, at the location) and cooked up omelettes. While we all ate omelettes, all us kid folk got together and played. 

Then, I remember those Saturday mornings… The ones when I could get myself out of bed. My parents would take us out to a small town diner for breakfast. Each of us kids had our own special breakfast meal. I was always an over-easy kind of guy. I learned from my mother the right way to eat over-easy eggs. You dip some toast in the yolk, and once the yolk has been all soaked up, you smash the egg and scoop the rest up with toast. Still to this day, I eat my over-easy eggs this way. 

When I was stationed in Germany, a group of friends and I would often hang out at this quaint little coffee shop tucked into the side of cobblestone square dominated by a 16th century church. The place had limited food, but one of our favorite things to order was their soft-boiled eggs. I almost feel a bit pretentious for saying this, but I love soft boiled eggs. I wished they were a bigger deal in America… From time-to-time I make them, but it’s not easy and hard to get it just right. I don’t make them very often. It’s too much work for, for too little food.

Then, I, as many other young men do, came back home to South Dakota. I moved to Sioux Falls. While there, I wandered into a Christian coffee shop called the Firehouse, and met a bunch of friends (and eventually my wife). I had a lot of fun at that place. After it closed for the night, all us friends would often go to Denny’s, order some sort of breakfast meal, and cause a ruckus until we got tired. 

I think there is just something uniquely satisfying about eggs. They are and underappreciated comfort food. Apart from the above mentioned egg favorites, I have dabble with a few other egg cooking techniques. Within the recent few year, I’ve discovered the joy of the sunny-side-up egg. Cooking them on in a cast-iron pan, with gobs of butter, is even more heavenly than an over-easy egg. To keep the top from getting slimy, I’ve learned to top it with a lid for a spell, just until the top gets that hint of a white film. 

And one last egg joy I’ve discovered adds a bit of an oriental flair. The last four years, we’ve had an exchange student from southeast Asia at our house. That area adds gobs of eggs to all kinds of food. One particular dish--simple, cheap, and hearty--I like to add eggs to is ramen noodles. I start by boiling as little water as possible to the pan. Once the noodles have softened, I crack a few eggs of the top, cover with a lid, and wait for the eggs to cook sunny-side up. The soft yolk adds an awesome texture to the dish. I even love eating this dish with a pair of chopsticks.

As that commercial of old use to sing... "The incredible, edible egg..."