Farm to Table

It was before sunrise when Lucille looked down at the cast iron skillet on top of her range. “Sunny-side up,” she whispered.

     That is what her grandmother used to call fried eggs. She held the brown shelled egg in the palm of her right hand and thought, I’ve never tasted a fried egg as good as my grandmother made. She sighed. “And I’ve never been able to duplicate her technique,” she muttered.

    She placed the room temperature egg in the ramakin. She leaned against the counter and thought about the moment the egg slid out of the pan on onto her plate. The white had a crispy line around the edge, and the yolk was a bright yellow mound. She would prick it with her fork, and it would ooze out, hot. Then she would dip a piece of toast into it and the yolk would drip down and dry on her chin.” She smiled at the memory. “Her grandmother would wipe her chin and say, “You are just like your mother; you eat up to your elbows.”

      The final exam of the final course at the culinary institute was not a surprise to the few students left in her class. More than half had dropped out during the pastry course. Tradition had it that you could not be bestowed the title “Chef” until you proved you knew how to cook a perfect egg.

      Each person in her class knew that after months of preparing gourmet dishes with precision technique, their future in the culinary world all came down to one ingredient: the egg. What was not revealed was which preparations each novice would receive. Each would be given two out of five possibilities: boiled in the shell, baked, poached, fried, and omelet.

       She knew others had been practicing for days, cracking dozens of eggs, recording their wrist techniques in the cracking of those eggs. She knew they watched intricate YouTube videos and tried to replicate what they saw. Lucille however, had not cracked a single egg and had not looked beyond what her instructor had demonstrated for them in the culinary academy’s kitchen.

      It was not that Lucille felt particularly confident about the task she would be asked to perform in just a few hours—it was more the familiarity of the ingredient. Eggs had been a part of Lucille’s life, her entire life.

                                   *****

The color of a hen’s feet and beak turn from pale to dark yellow when the hen quits laying eggs. Lucille was nine when her father began allowing her to select the hens with the darkest yellow feet for the family’s Sunday meals.

With corn in her left hand, she would entice the hen to her. As the hen pecked the kernels from her left hand, Lucille would reach over the bird and underneath it, cradling its breast as she lifted it up to her waist. The trick was to move slowly and gently so that the hen wouldn’t be distracted from the corn. As she carried the hen to her father, Lucille’s four sisters and her mother always smiled their approval. 

Lucille’s father, Grant, didn’t smile much. Her mama said it was because he didn’t have a son. “A man needs a son to carry on,” her mama said, repeating his words.

Grant would take the hen by the feet with his left hand, hold it upside down, and shake it. Then, he would grab the hen’s head with his right hand, raise the bird to his mouth, and whistle into its ear.

  “Why does Papa shake and whistle, Mama?” the youngest, Mary Elizabeth asked.

  “To scare the chicken, child. Makes her bleed better,” Mama replied.

  After the whistle, Grant wrung the hen’s neck by holding it by the head and swinging it around above his head until the centrifugal force separated the head from the body. The headless chicken would land in the barnyard and immediately jump up and run in circles, its three-inch skinless, featherless red neck squirted blood in a free-form pattern as it danced around. Often, it would stumble hard against the fence, fall over, bound up, and run in circles again before finally collapsing.

  “Mama, how come it can run around so long when it don’t have a head?” Sally, two years older than Lucille wanted to know.

  “’Cause your papa knows how to scare it good.”

  “Why does he scare it?” Becky, the girl born between Sally and Lucille asked.

  “When it’s scared and excited, its heart beats faster, pumping the blood out of the meat.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lucille said.

 “You’d like it less iffen you had to eat bloody chicken,” Mama said.

 “Mama, how come we don’t ever wring a rooster’s neck? They don’t lay eggs,” Sally asked.

“The rooster’s job is to keep the hens happy. Happy hens lay eggs.”

“Mama, that hen, she seemed happy to me. She was fatter and quieter than the rest,” Lucille observed.

 “Lucille, she was fat because the feed wasn’t going to eggs. A hen that don’t lay ain’t good for nothing but the frying pan.”

 “How does a rooster keep the hens happy and laying?” Mary Elizabeth asked

 “Hush, child, you’ve asked enough questions for one day.” She turned to her eldest daughter, Sally it’s your turn to pluck—soon as Papa boils up the vat.  Once them feathers gone, bring me the liver and gizzard.” She turned and stomped back to the house, Mary Elizabeth trailing behind her.

Lucille didn’t mind the smell of manure, or rotting vegetables, but she detested the smell of plucking chicken, it made her gag. She was grateful the chore had not come to her—yet. 

When she turned ten, the chore of plucking the headless chicken for Sunday dinner became her responsibility. One she shared with Sally every other week.

  *****

     I’ve never been able to duplicate her technique. I can get the white right, but the center is always cold, Lucille mused.

     She went over to the refrigerator and pulled out the carton of eggs and a stick of corn oil margarine instead of butter. She took the egg out of the ramekin and tossed it into the compost bucket on the countertop. She opened the egg carton and studied the each one of the fresh eggs, then she made her selection. With an imperceptible move of her wrist, she cracked the egg on the side of the bowl and then with one hand let the white and yolk slip into it.

     She turned the front left burner of the gas range to low and counted the seconds until the small cast iron pan was the right temperature. Then she cut a piece of the margarine that had been warming in her hand into the pan. Once it was liquefied, she picked up the ramekin and carefully let the egg slip from the bowl into the pan. She held her breath and listened, “Good no hissing,” she said. She took a saucer from the cupboard next to the refrigerator and placed it as a lid upside down on the small skillet.

“Low and slow,” she said as she moved to the breadbox, moved the loaf of sourdough out of her way and extracted the soft loaf of white Wonder Bread. She placed two slices into the toaster; she checked the setting, and pushed down the handle.

      A familiar scent entered her nostrils, and she closed her eyes and took a comforting breath. The bread popped up, jolting her from her reverie. She turned the knob on the range to off and with a pair of potholders, lifted the saucer from the pan and turned it upright on the right front burner. She reached over, plucked one slice of bread from the toaster, and placed it on the still warm saucer.

       “The moment of truth,” she whispered.  She carefully lifted the skillet, let it hover for a moment over the toast, and then tilted it ever so slightly and watched the white egg and yellow yolk settle on top of the golden bread. She put the skillet back down on the range, set down the potholders, and took the now cool second piece of bread from the toaster.

       She placed the small plate of perfection on the kitchen table, pulled out a chair and sat down. She pricked her fork into the center and then dipped an edge of toast into the yolk. As she lifted the saturated piece to her mouth, the gold liquid dripped onto her chin.

        Lucille’s cell phone rang, and she answered it with the button on her steering wheel. “Lucy,” the voice on the other end announced. “Where have you been? We didn’t see you at the final exam. Are you okay?”

        “I’m great,” Lucille responded. “I got the technique just right.”

        “What?”

        “The egg, it came out perfect.”

        “But you weren’t there. Where are you?”

         “Headed to Lexington. The perfect sunny side up, she’ll be proud of me.”

       “What, who, Lucy, are you sure you’re okay.”

       “Never been better,” she said and felt the little crust of yolk that had dried on her chin.