Eggs, Bread, and Ketchup

My father said to me one day "Learn how to cook, so if the lady in your life decides not to, you'll be able to cook for yourself." As a child you don't take these words seriously, as a child you just sit back and watch your parents prepare meals that seem to appear out of thin air.

In our household, our mother did most of the cooking, but there were those days when our father would mesmerize us with his cooking skills. Some people may find it odd that a man does the cooking in the home. Some people are so traditional, that they believe that cooking is women's work. Some men think that any kind of food preparation for the household is beneath them. But that wasn't the case in our home. You learned how to prepare food on your own or you would sit there and stay hungry until you parents came home.

In our home, we were all taught to prepare a basic meal for ourselves when we became a certain age and could be trusted to watch the food being prepared on the stove and not burn the house down. A basic meal would consist of maybe two hotdogs boiled or fried, or maybe, eggs, sausage, or toast. But the most popular of those meals would be fried bologna sandwiches with scrambled or fried eggs. This, topped off with some Wonder bread, and a hint of ketchup, in our eyes, would be a feast, and would keep you full until one our parents came home and prepared a good wholesome meal.

There were times where we had to be even more inventive when these items were scarce mostly due to no one going to the supermarket because it was a couple days away from our parents receiving their paychecks. Things like pickled sausages, canned tuna, sardines in tomato sauce, became experiments and daring endeavors into the quest to stop your stomach from grumbling. Many of these experiments failed and became lessons in what not to make. Also, during these times, there would be a breakfast dinner. This meal would consist of eggs, sausage and grits. As children, it would confuse us, but it would also fill our stomachs.

But there was this one time that forever stands out for me as it pertains to household cuisine. My younger sister and I were seated in the kitchen, both wondering what food would be prepared for us to eat that evening. It was one of the times, you know, a couple of days away from payday, and there were a few items in the pantry.

We told our father that there wasn't enough food, and we asked him what he was going to cook. Our father just smiled grabbed a couple of slices of bread, some butter, and heated up the frying pan. He scrambled the eggs, and laid them over the bread, and then placed the bread on top of that. He repeated the process once more, added ketchup, and mixed it all altogether. When he had finished cooking it, he prepared two plates and served it to us with the same smile he had on before he started. To this day, I have never tasted anything as good as that meal was.

I doubt that any restaurant could duplicate what was done on that day. I have tried several times in my life to duplicate the meal that our father had prepared that day and have had no such luck or success. I believe that some days are just special days when certain ingredients in front of us become something more than what we were expecting them to be.

Call it coincidence, timing, magic, or a blessing from the Creator, but that meal that our father prepared that day could've held its own with the best recipes of a chef in any four-star restaurant.