Foamy Eggs: A 2nd Shift in the Life of a Waffle House Grill Op. (Part The Second)

Jeez! I didn't realize how long that title was until I had to type it again.

So, after cooking a pot of chili--incidentally the pots that we use are pretty big (probably hold more than a gallon) and are made of stainless steel and are called "grits pots" even though half of the stuff we cook in them is not grits-- it's time to cook start cooking grits. Put a "grits pot" full up to the three handle bolts with water from the bendy dishwashing hose with the funky spray nozzle. Turn up the heat to 11. I usually use the front burner (there are two burners asside from the grill faces which sort of count). Sometimes someone will show up and order eggs while I'm cooking grits though, so rather than reach around the big-assed grits pot to get to my eggs burning behind them, I'll just switch the boiling water to the back burner. The thing about grits is, you have to pay them a lot of attention. Not so much while you're boiling their water as when you first add the grits to the boiling grits pot of water. I usually stir them pretty continuously with a big whisk for the first minute or two of their re-hydrated, boiling existence. If the grits aren't moving around in the boiling water enough then they will do two things: 1. settle at the bottom of the pot and 2. stick together and form the biggest, nastiest white pusy (thanks Boyko) lumps you've ever seen. And nobody likes lumpy grits. The main problem with lumpy grits asside from their resemblence to cancer tissue or a conglomeration of white blood cells is the fact that the lumps are overcooked on the outside and not-at-all-cooked on the inside--kind of like the planet Mercury.

So, let's say I have to cook a Fiesta Omlette while my grits water is coming to a boil. For y'all interested parties out there, this is the paragraph which will unhinge the mystery door obscuring the secret of Waffle House's foamy eggs! Read on...! So, let's say I have to cook a Fiesta Omlette. First I think... dang I forgot what goes in a Fiesta omlette. The Magic Marking system calls for a salad dressing packet which give no clues whatsoever, so I consult a menu or a waitress. Turns out, the yummy fiesta omlette contains no less than five ingredients not including the foamy eggs:

chunked ham
2 slices of cheese
diced tomatoes
diced onions
jalapeños

one could say that the fiesta omlette is smothered, double-covered, chunked, diced, and peppered... yum! So, I through a bit of each of those ingredients (except the cheese which comes last) on the grill to cook... drop two slices of white toast in the toaster and head over to my egg station where I grab two eggs from the basket in the fridge (or on top of the hood depending on how busy we are and how conveniently located the eggs need to be) and break them into a grits bowl. I should mention here again that the "grits bowl," while often holding grits, holds many other things (including chili from time to time). The cool thing about cracking your eggs in a shallow-ish bowl is that if you happen to get a piece of shell in there, you can see it and spoon it out before it ends up getting cooked which is just nasty. The way I see it, getting egg shell in someone's food is one of the cardinal sins of waffle house grill operation. I'll have to come up with some other cardinal sins later... and maybe some ordinal sins too while I'm at it... or maybe I'll just order the cardinal sins once I come up with them. I know, I'm purposefullly keeping you foamy egg fanatics in suspense here... I swear the final veil will drop soon. Speaking of which, I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend the Tom Robbins book, Skinny Legs and All to my viewing audience and everyone else. Robbins is an amazing writer, and if you're at all interesting in the oft-complex relationship between the food service industry and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as I am) you will come to deeply appreciate this book. But as Levar Burton has said (to cue the Reading Rainbow theme song), "Don't take my word for it..." So, here's what makes the eggs so dang foamy, Boyko. You know those milkshake mixers that they have at Dairy Queen and Tastee Freeze and pretty much any ice cream place worth it's salt? The two omlette eggs go in that thing while I heat up three small ladle-fulls of Lo-Melt Vegetable Shortening in an omlette pan. When the time is right, the milkshaken eggs (these eggs are BEYOND scrambled, ladies and gentlemen, I mean there are all these teeny tiny air bubbles in the eggs) are poured with grace and ease into the hot Lo-Melt. The milkshaken eggs have by this time transcended the realm of the embryo--yolk and chalaza are more fully one than nature ever intended. The mixture is palest orange-yellow when it hits the omlette pan, it's sizzling destiny. From there the good stuff goes in: all the ham, onions, tomatoes, and peppers, like a Veggie-Tales skit gone horribly awry. I flip the mixture around a bit until it's a nice and done on both sides, and foamy as the deadly chops of a rabid schnauzer. Then I lay the two slices of cheese diagonal-wise, crossing the center of my omlette and fold it from the pan onto the big platter so it looks like a big breakfast smiley face drooling cheese. The toast is buttered (or, I should say, margerined), sliced into right triangles with a small margin of error depending on how hot the toast is, and arranged about the middle of the platter so as to seperate the drooling omlette from the grits which I spoon from the steel pot in the steam table between the big grill and the egg burners. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do the fiesta omlette thing. If that's the end of order I'll holler, "PICK UP!" or "FIESTA OMLETTE!" or "[waitress name]!"

That concludes this installment of "A 2nd Shift in the LIfe..." I hope y'all'll (goddamn I love a good double contraction!) join me next time where the waffles are fresh, the eggs are foamy and the waitresses often have most of their teeth. But don't take my word for it!