Fried Eggs

How I learned to make the world’s easiest egg—and why it still feels hard.

I’ve never really been a fan of eggs,
I tried, mostly because
it annoyed everyone.

I’d force down the scrambled eggs my mother made before school by squishing them between the crusts of toast I didn’t finish, dipping it in ketchup (I know what it sounds like, I didn’t like it either, but I didn’t have a choice nor was there Tabasco on the table). I tried French omelettes and huevos rancheros, but there was always something about the texture I couldn’t get over. And working for a food magazine in the mid-2010’s, heaven forbid I couldn’t handle a 6-7 minute jammy egg with all that ooze that seemed to make everyone orgasm except me. I tried it all the same, hoping the whole “your tastebuds change every seven years” thing was true when it felt like everyone was not-so-subtly telling me with a side eye that I was childish for grimacing at a poached egg.

Stepdad Collages, 2025

But then once upon a brunch-ish hour, my already-soon-to-be ex-husband suggested I try a fried egg over-hard. I shrugged with a smile and the same limp resignation usually reserved for action movies I had no interest in, or going on another backpacking trip. He got to work in the kitchen—a skill of his that neither I nor anyone else can or ever could deny— while I presumably rewatched episodes of Law & Order: SVU waiting to choke down the only egg that ever came out of that kitchen “wrong,” even if everyone else would’ve said it was flawless.

I loved it. God damn, did I love it. Bathed in salt and pepper and Marie Sharp’s hot sauce, I devoured it. I asked if he would make me another, hell, I might have even asked for two, to which he happily obliged.

The next day, I wanted another fried egg.
I asked him to teach me how to make one.
In so many words, he told me
I wouldn’t be able to.
That he’d make it for me instead.

I said sure. He’d always been the chef in our relationship, while I couldn’t tell you the difference between a saucepan and a small pot (still not entirely convinced there is one). I ate the eggs wholeheartedly, then gushed to my foodie friends over text about how I’d finally found an egg I enjoyed, and how I was so lucky that he made me fried eggs, over hard.

I could hear the LOL’s screaming from the screen. Not because he made them for me, which everyone adored him for as they adored him for every other single meal he’d cooked the twelve years we were together, but because apparently this is the easiest egg to make. Not just the easiest, but, “That’s the egg you get when you fuck up cooking an egg.” Or the real jab, “He really thinks you can’t fry an egg?”

I sat for a minute, feeling my heart sink while my indignation pulsed.

I wasn’t an idiot. I watched cooking shows, I worked for a food magazine, I had a palate. But I didn’t grow up in a household that nurtured cooking skills; that would have required patience my father never had or a lack of perfection my mother couldn’t surrender. I remembered my father telling me as a kid I’d never find a husband because I didn’t know how to cook, somehow forgetting that no one ever taught me. And I remember resentfully telling him it didn’t matter, that I’d marry a man who would cook for me. And I did. And while that had filled me with love for years, in that moment it filled me with coldness. Suddenly something I had cherished was now a reminder of everything I was told I couldn’t ever do, or more so, what no one believed I could.

The next day
my ex-husband left on a ski trip.
I woke up and watched
a YouTube on how to fry an egg.
And I did feel like an idiot.

I spent that whole weekend frying eggs, sending him photos of every one, out of bitterness that probably had less to do with the eggs than all the other reasons we were breaking up. But with each egg, less fucked up than the last, doused in salt and pepper and hot sauce, I came to a small sense of self-reliance. And a heavy sadness: sad for how dependent I’d become. Sad that I never cooked for him, even during his longest days, because I was too insecure in the shadow of his culinary skills. Sad that it took a fucking egg for me to realize any of it.

---

Today, I went to fry an egg,
as confident as ever.
It was too late before I realized
I don’t even have a spatula.

I made do—just like I always have. But standing there, fork in hand, it hit me how long I let myself rely on someone else for things I could’ve learned, done, claimed for myself. And how even now, in all the growth and distance and so-called independence, there are still places where I have defaulted to being cared for instead of caring for myself.

I’m working on it.
With or without a spatula.
With or without eggs.

---

If you enjoyed this post but aren’t ready to commit to a paid subscription, consider buying me a sparkling water. 💦