Cacklefruit all the ways

If you can cook eggs, you’ll never starve. Cackle fruit is as versatile as the day is long, not to mention cheap and cheerful. Here are my favorite ways to eat eggs.

Now Mama makes the best fried eggs — lacey and blindfolded. That’s where you have a crispy edge on the egg but the yolk is still runny but covered with a sort of film. Trust me, it sounds a little weird, but it is the living end. You have to have a lot of good, hot bacon grease in the skillet. Hot, but not too hot. Say, medium to medium high. Crack that egg right up in the middle of that grease and watch it start sizzling. Take a spatula and very, very carefully flick some of the hot grease on top of the egg. The idea is that the hot grease cooks the top of the egg without you having to flip it and risk breaking the yolk.

If you do break the yolk, don’t despair. Just let it keep cooking until the yolk is done. Maybe give it a little flip. Now you have a hard fried egg — perfect for a hard fried egg sandwich. When I got my first apartment, I lived on hard fried egg sandwiches. The best way is to take 2 pieces of good old white bread and put them on a plate. Put a Kraft Single on one of the pieces and some ketchup on the other. When your egg is cooked like you like it, take it out of the skillet and put it on top of the Kraft Single so that the hot egg makes the cheese a little melty. Now that I’ve gotten older and try to eat a more healthy diet, I get organic cheese singles and sourdough bread and ketchup with no high fructose corn syrup, but somehow, even though all these ingredients are “better,” it’s just not as good to me.

As an aside, if you need to cure a hangover, take two aspirin and eat a fried egg sandwich.

Moving on.

As much as I like fried eggs, Husband likes scrambled eggs. He likes his “wet” which is when the eggs are still just the tiniest bit undercooked. Crack however many eggs you want into a bowl and add a splash of milk or cream. I think this little touch makes scrambled eggs fluffier. Whisk those eggs until they are a little frothy. Put a pat of butter into your skillet, let it melt, and add the eggs. Stir them around with your spatula until they get as done as you want them. Basically heat ‘em up and eat ‘em up. You can also make sandwiches out of scrambled eggs.

Scrambled eggs leads me to omelettes, which is just fancy scrambled eggs with extra stuff added in. My favorite is crabmeat omelettes just like my Granny Mac made. Beat a few eggs and mix in some lump crabmeat and some sliced green onion. Melt some butter in a nonstick skillet and add the mixture to make small-ish patties. When the eggs have set on the bottom, carefully flip the whole thing over and brown on the other side. Serve with ketchup or cocktail sauce.

Boiling eggs is as easy as … well … boiling water. Put your eggs in a pot and cover with water. Bring them to a boil, turn them off, and let them sit exactly twelve minutes. If you cook them too long, you’ll get a grayish green ring around the yolk. You can still eat it, but it’s not as pretty. Drain the boiling water off, and fill the pot with ice and water. Let the eggs sit a few minutes, then peel. The shells should just slide right off. I like my boiled eggs with a good Himalayan pink salt, but plain old table salt does the trick too.

You can also take your boiled eggs and make deviled eggs. Peel each egg, cut it in half, and pop the yolks out into a dish. Put the whites in the indentations of your deviled egg plate. Every card-carrying Southerner should have a deviled egg plate. Smash the yolks up with a fork, then add a little salt, a little mayo, a little dry mustard, and a little sweet pickle relish. Mix all that up real good and fill the egg whites with the mixture. Top with a slice of pimento-stuffed olive and a shake of paprika.

Then there’s egg salad. Chop your boiled eggs up, mix with a little mayo, some dry mustard, and some sliced pimento-stuffed green olives. I like my egg salad in a sandwich, but you can also serve it on lettuce as a salad with crackers. If you’re having a lady party, make egg salad sandwiches, cut the crusts off with a serrated knife, then cut the remaining sandwich into little triangles.

There you have it! Eggs all the ways I like ‘em. How do you like your eggs?