Grandma Trudy’s Scrambled Egg Sandwich
Grandma Trudy’s Scrambled Egg Sandwich
“Strawberries always taste sweeter when someone else cuts the tops off. But are the strawberries organic?”
I’ve been living with my grandma for the past few months while COVID blows over. She and her sister have half an acre on the outskirts of a side-of-the-highway town in western Washington, and my mom and I are staying in the barn house right next door. When I was younger, I looked forward to coming up from Portland to the land of border terriers, gardens aplenty, reclining chairs, and rotating woodworking projects. I remember helping frame the barn that I’m writing this in; the two giant trees behind the house; the worm bins; and a time before any of Shelly’s plastic bottle whirligigs stood guard on the property. Nothing stayed the same for long; and for the most part, you could rely on change.
Now, the dogs have passed away, the recliners have been replaced with a growing army of succulents and a food dehydrator, the worms (and the food scraps we fed them) attracted rats, the trees were cut down to prevent them from falling on the house, and Shelly retired and joined grandma in full-time crafting. But all of the changes have made those things that stayed the same, stand out. Grandma still scrolls - granted her Kokopelli cut-outs became sacred geometry and limberjacks -, the garden blooms bigger than ever, and the sound of shoes on gravel still perks the ears. I never expected that I’d be living here, but I’m glad I got a chance to.
One thing the two old ladies I live with will never falter on is food. Food is barely a thought in the mind before it’s a warm bowl on the table. And any time of year, the food is the same; the fridge is stocked with three big Tupperware of prepared rice, broccoli, and baby carrots. The Little Shed stores more cans of beets than most grocers. But one of my favorite and longest standing delights is grandma’s scrambled egg sandwich.
In cooking for others, trust is earned. When I cook the food I know, I know how I like it, and I know what to expect when I’m in the kitchen. Just thinking about someone attempting to make me a coffee with the right cream and sugar ratio the way I like it makes me squirm. But with foods outside of my abilities, a helping hand is a culinary magic trick and a gift. A scrambled egg sandwich is an unremarkable thing, but leaving the guess work in her hands is a sigh of relief. So I’ve found that one of the reasons I love my grandma’s scrambled egg sandwich so much is simply that I can trust her to do it right. But I believe there’s a second, more nuanced explanation for my love of Grandma’s cooking that has to do with her ingredients.
I think we all tell ourselves stories about the food we eat, as well as what we don’t. Bee Wilson presents a study of some seventy eight-year-olds with many who claim to despise beetroot, avocado, and lima beans despite never having tried them. Wilson proposes the expression “we know what we like and we like what we know.” Sometimes I think nothing of Grandma’s eggs, but other times I tell myself my own story from what I know. It starts with the new-age stories about health I’ve learned from and alongside my mother. My mom is a bit more to the T than I am and usually insists on fresh, local, organic, non-GMO, fair-trade, grass-fed, stems-on, bone-in, package-free, small batch, raw, whole grain, high fat, AA, and for Pete’s sake, unbleached. So when mom buys eggs, she buys eggs from happy chickens, and those eggs (organic and pasture-raised) seem to always be brown.
All the local grocery stores we hang around say the same thing: brown egg tells a story of a more natural source, they imbue richness and imply organic and free-range. I don’t care as much if any of that is true, but there is a contentment in my belief of it anyways. Once in middle school, she sent me to the corner store and I came back empty handed because all they had were white eggs in styrofoam cartons. To her, it may as well be sacrilege, that so much of the stuff they call food comes from inhumane and unsustainable sources.
But here’s the twist: Grandma doesn’t buy into all that mumbo jumbo and her food is still delicious. The eggs grandma usually has are white, and strangely, I don’t mind. In fact, I like them that way, and I think I know why. I think I love grandma’s eggs in spite of their color or their status as a certified whatchamacallit. It’s similar to the concept of the American vacation. We often spend so much of our time working jobs we don’t like, living in a place we don’t want to, and eating sub-par food to get by, stretching our dollar and counting calories, that when we let ourselves take a break, we pull out all the stops. At the least, Grandma’s house is a break from the nutritional rat race and a place to indulge. All in all, no matter their color, I love grandma’s sandwich because she makes it. I don’t have to think about the color of the eggs and I get a warm delicious meal with no effort on my part. There’s something to tradition, familiarity, and the comfort of someone else cooking for you that outperforms most other inclinations.
