Waiting on an Egg

What I’ve learned from cooking and eating eggs

There’s a moment, when you’re cooking eggs the right way, where it feels like nothing is happening, where the pan sits in that fragile in-between, warm but not urgent, the butter calmly melting into itself without browning, the eggs just beginning to take shape at the edges, still soft and uncertain, still holding onto what they were before you cracked them open. It’s a moment that resists interference, that asks you to stay close but not hover, to pay attention without trying to control it, because the second you rush it, the second you crank up the heat or start chasing the finish instead of respecting the middle, you lose something you can’t quite get back. They tighten and dry out. They become riddled with bubbles, brown crusty edges and a half-chalky, fucked up yolk. Something that might still be edible (barely), still passable (not in my kitchen), but no longer memorable.

Good eggs require patience in a way that feels disproportionate to what they are. Low heat, gentle hands, enough butter to carry them but not drown them, and a willingness to stand there without needing to prove that you’re doing something.

I thought about that this weekend in Carmel while on an artist’s retreat, standing in a quaint kitchen with people who, in their own ways, have given themselves over to that same instinct, that same pull toward feeding others, toward creating something that lives in the space between effort and care, something that is focused on being present. The retreat itself already feels secondary, more like a container than the thing itself, because what stays with me are the smaller moments, the ones that don’t announce themselves while they’re happening but settle in your chest later, heavier than you expect, the kind of conversations that stretch just a little longer than they need to, the kind of silences that don’t ask to be filled.

Kelsey moved through it all with a conviction that steadied the room without ever trying to take it over, and watching her cook, watching her listen, watching her create space for people to step in without hesitation or self-consciousness, reminded me of something I’ve always believed but don’t always practice, which is that the best kind of hospitality doesn’t perform, it holds. It makes you feel like you’ve been accounted for before you even realized you needed to be.

We cooked, but more than that, we shared the act of cooking, hands moving in and out of the same space, someone starting something that someone else would finish, small adjustments made without discussion, a rhythm that didn’t belong to any one person but somehow held all of us inside it, and in that rhythm I felt something open in me that I didn’t realize had been closing.

My favorite place to cook breakfast, Dakota's family cabin off a dirt road in Flagstaff, Northern Arizona.

And as much as the weekend offered all of that, all of those perspectives and small recalibrations that I know will stay with me long after the drive home has faded, I kept finding myself pulled back to the same place, the same thought, the same realization that has followed me longer than I’ve been willing to admit.

It always comes back to breakfast.

Not because it’s simple, although it is, or because it’s nostalgic, although it carries that too, but because breakfast feels like the most honest version of love I’ve ever known, the kind that meets people before the day has shaped them into something harder, more guarded and performative. The kind of love that asks nothing of you other than to show up as you are, a little tired, a little undone, still halfway between who you were yesterday and who you’re supposed to be today.

My dad in the kitchen, early enough that the light hadn’t fully settled into the world yet, making what he always called ‘dippy eggs’, cooked just long enough that the whites held but the yolks stayed loose, finished with lemon pepper in a way that made it feel like a signature, like something only he could make taste that way, even though I’ve tried to recreate it more times than I can count and never quite land in the same place. Mornings camping, standing just close enough to the fire to feel the heat on your shins while he cooked bacon in a cast iron, running maple syrup into the pan until it caramelized into something that felt borderline reckless, making you wonder if it was worth cleaning the pan, if you were ruining something in the process, until that first bite answered the question before you could even finish asking it.

My mom’s quiche at Christmas, or honestly any time she made it, the kind of smell that fills a house in a way that makes it impossible to stay in bed, that pulls you into the kitchen, that still makes my mouth water even now, years later.

Everyone has their version of this, I think, their own small archive of meals that meant more than they were supposed to, but for me, they all seem to trace back to mornings, to eggs, to coffee, to something sweet or to something savory.

It followed me into college in other ways, cooking for my roommates before they woke up, trying to recreate something I didn’t fully understand yet but knew I wanted to hold onto, and then later, cooking for Dakota and her friends in that specific kind of morning light that only exists after a long night, calling it hangover hash like it was a joke, like it wasn’t actually something I cared deeply about, even though I did, even though I always have.

And somewhere along the way, without ever really deciding it outright, it became one of the clearest expressions of love I know how to offer.

Standing in that kitchen in Carmel, slowly draping herbs over eggs, letting them take their time, I felt that realization settle in more fully than it ever has before, not as some grand declaration but as something subtler and more honest.

I hope I get to do this forever.

Not in the way we talk about careers or success or anything that lives too far out in the distance, but in this exact way, a kitchen, a few people, enough time to do it right, the ability to stay present long enough to not ruin something simple by trying to make it something else.

Because waiting on an egg isn’t really about the egg, it’s about trusting that something is happening even when it doesn’t look like it, that the middle is where the work actually lives, that not everything needs to be rushed into a finished product to be meaningful, that sometimes the most important thing you can do is resist the urge to turn up the heat just because you’re uncomfortable in the waiting.

There are parts of my life right now that feel suspended in that same kind of in-between, warm but undefined, moving but without clear edges yet, and if I’m honest, every instinct in me still wants to push it forward, to force some kind of clarity, to make it resolve into something I can point to and say, there, that’s what this is.

But this weekend, somewhere between the conversations that felt too honest to be accidental and the meals that came together without anyone needing to claim them, I felt something shift, not dramatically, not in a way that announces itself, but enough to notice, a willingness to stay in it, to believe that the things I care about, the people, the work, the life I’m trying to build, might not need to be rushed into something complete to be real, that maybe they just need the same things the eggs do.

Low heat, good salty butter, some great music.

And someone who cares enough to keep waiting on an egg.

Cheers,

Nick