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Here, I share a few stories about scrambled eggs.
My parents were gone for the weekend, and somehow they managed to arrange for Laurel (my older cousin) to hang out at our home for the sake of the younger ones, particularly Bruce. I am guessing that I was 6 or 7. Laurel made various meals for us, but there is only one meal that I remember. When she made scrambled eggs for us in the morning, she added some milk to the mixed eggs and stirred it in. Then she cooked them like Mom always did, but they came out much more "wet" than Mom's. I concluded it was the milk. I complained about them not being done, and Laurel confirmed that they were dibe and this is how they were supposed to be. I didn't believe her, but I tried not to be too much more of a stinker (though I am not sure how successful I was).
I believe that my parents were gone for the weekend, though I don't recall many details now. Perhaps it was the same time period as in the first story (above). Maybe I was a real stinker then, and I said that I would make my own, but I don't really recall. I also don't think Keith or Ken were around at the time I decided to cook scrambled eggs for myself. I had seen my Mom do it before, so I thought I should be able to do it. I know that I added some margarine to the pan and then cracked 1-3 eggs into the heating pan. I then took the spatula, used it to break the yolks, and then I mixed it all together. I kept stirring the egg soup until it thickened. I wondered, at this point, about how I would know when they were done. I should have asked an older sibling, if there was one around, but I didn't (or they weren't around). So I just let them keep cooking and get brown. Then I tried them and realized that they were too done at this point. At times like this, one is sometimes appreciative that there is a dog in the family. So I gave the eggs away and started over, but I stopped before they got brown and things were perfect.
As my children grew older, at some point I took over making the Sunday breakfast for the family. (In fact, this evolved into eventually making about half of the lunches on Sundays as well.) If we had eggs, I usually did not just make scrambled eggs alone, but often would cook one sausage and dice it up and then cook the scrambled eggs with the sausage. If there were n of us at home for breakfast, I usually cooked (n+1) eggs in the scrambled egg pan. But then I also cooked pancakes at the same time, and we would have both. I made large pancakes (6-8 inches in diameter), as modeled by my father-in-law, Harold Hopkins.
I recently had friends from Pella with me at the cabin. I had made a batch of pancakes (with added whole wheat flour, wheat germ, ground flax seeds, and chia seeds) one morning, and I made scrambled eggs the next morning. I had asked them the night before how many eggs each wanted: 2 and 4, and then 2 for me. I then thought: I have never cooked scrambled eggs with 8 eggs before. I have two pans that could work, and I chose the larger. I stirred the eggs, added some milk (yes, Laurel was just fine on that point), and the pan had plenty of capacity so that they were easy to cook. It worked out just fine.
If you are not eggsactly overcome with egg stories, I have one more that I wrote elsewhere: How NOT to clean a cast iron pan.
Published 2026-07-31.
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