“To Me It Was More Than Just A Fried Egg… To Me It Was Magic”
Our Southern Odyssey
I, (Vanessa), have always loved to cook and I give my paternal grandmother, Mama Bagwell credit for this. Her kitchen was always warm and inviting. You could smell the aroma of her cooking outside in the yard before you even made it to the front porch. The kitchen was in the back of the house and that is where she and everyone else would always be. One of my memories, that I hold close to my heart, is of her frying eggs.
I was around six years old and I remember on an early weekday morning before school when the air was crisp and a little chilly for a southern girl. My Daddy took me and my brother right up the road, like he did many mornings, to Mama Bagwell’s.
I loved to watch her cook and I think that she enjoyed me being there. She always made me feel special. I remember she had a large black as night cast iron skillet that she cooked the breakfast bacon in. She would always tell me to stand back when the grease would start popping, like little snap fireworks. 
The kitchen was always loud: my aunts, uncles and cousins would all be packed in the kitchen talking and kidding with one another. It’s as if no other room in the house existed, except for the kitchen. They would be packed around the dining room table, which was also in the kitchen. They would be sitting or just standing around. We were packed in the kitchen like sardines. But no one seemed to mind.
In this warm loving kitchen, my imagination and pure awe would run off and leave me behind… when Mama Bagwell finished cooking the bacon. She did the most fascinating thing. She would take that same hot as fire skillet, that she had cooked the bacon in, and set it off the electric eye and place it in the center of the stove, between all the other eyes – – but not on an eye. She would take one of the dining room chairs and let me stand in it, in the kitchen, beside the stove. Then she would start cracking the eggs and putting them in that skillet. They would just start cooking, no heat! Amazing! When I was little I just could not believe this, to me it was MAGIC! She knew I thought it was amazing and she would get a little tickled, when she would turn to look at me watching so intensely at those eggs cooking. I never cook eggs in the morning when I do not think of the love in my Mama Bagwell’s kitchen.
Happiness and love was what I felt at Mama Bagwell’s. And it’s because of that I believe whole heartily in the saying, “The kitchen is the heart of a home.” That is what I have tried to instill in my own home and I think it’s working, because my family and I always seem to find ourselves in the kitchen together, cooking and laughing.
If you would like to learn how to fry a basic over easy egg check out our recipe.
