Over Hard

Spent Saturday morning frying eggs at a soup kitchen in the East Village.

Woke up pretty early Saturday morning to head down to the East Village and fry eggs for several hours at a soup kitchen.

Didn't go out Friday night so that I could wake up early Saturday morning and head down to the East Village where I would be frying eggs for several hours at a church-based soup kitchen.

Why would you do that, Malice?

Because I'm such a nice guy.

No, seriously. Why'd you do it?

Hey, I can't figure it out, either. A friend asked me to come with and I agreed, and if I agree to do something... I do it.

Besides—I think I kind of like cooking for a lot of people. I don't really cook for myself that regularly. I like cooking food that other people will eat.

This wasn't exactly a TOP CHEF challenge. You had to cook the eggs all the way through so they weren't runny. No custom orders at the soup kitchen. I was one of 5 egg-cookers flipping eggs on these electric griddles, perched on folding tables.

You really get to know that griddle over a few hours. How it slants on the table so the raw eggs tend to run a certain way when you crack them. The cold spots on the griddle that you need to account for. I developed a whole system with my griddle, cramming as many eggs as I could onto the space, shuffling them around with my spatula to better exploit all the hot spots and get the batches done quickly. It was like a puzzle game. The hours flew by as I got into the zone and the demand for cooked eggs began to exceed the supply. I didn't even get to see the flow of people coming through because I was so focused on those goddamned eggs. I thought we might have a surplus of fried eggs until the server people started crying, "WE NEED MORE EGGS!" and I glanced back to see emptied trays waiting to be refilled.

Anyway, that's something I did.