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My father has a quality I’ve always admired, that being that he seems to know something about everything. He has an intelligent answer for nearly every question you might have for him, and knows how to work his resources to find any answer he doesn’t already have. One example of this is that he is an excellent short order cook. He had worked as one many many years ago, picked up some valuable skills, and never forgot them. He could have four pans going on the stove at once, eggs here, hash browns there, bacon, sausages, what-have-you. Each item requires its own special care, and has different temperatures, starting times and finishing times. Yet he could keep each one under control, and time them all to be ready at the exact same moment, so he could grab some of each, put them on a pre-warmed plate, and send them out to be consumed by his family.

Today I shall impart to you a lesson I learned from him concerning the cooking of eggs. When you are cooking eggs, perhaps an omelet or scrambled eggs, you are eventually going to find yourself in the position of needing to get some cheese to melt onto the cooked eggs. But, the eggs are cooking fast, and you don’t have time to let the cheese melt by itself, because the eggs would be burned by the time the cheese was done melting. A solution is to examine your stove. Nearly every stove burner tilts one direction or another, meaning there is a ‘high side’ of the pan, and a ‘low side’. Take a large lid, like the kind you’d put on a big huge pot, preferably about the size of your pan. Then move the eggs up to the high side, and place a small piece of ice on the low side. It will instantly start to melt and form hot steam. Put the lid over the pan, and wait a moment. The ice melting will release a steady stream of hot steam into the confined area, which will almost instantly melt your cheese. The ice doesn’t melt too fast, so you don’t get a bunch of water all over the bottom of the pan. If you managed to get the ice into the low side of the pan, you’ll have even less water to deal with. When you pull the lid off, be careful not to drip too much water onto the eggs, put the lid to the side, and pull out your perfectly done eggs, with cheese melted perfectly on top. People will admire your kung-fu.

Which leads me to a related topic… Frequently you hear of people describing non-martial arts activities as ‘kung-fu’. Hip-hop artists, chefs, etc. all being described as having kung-fu. At first it sounds like just a silly thing, people goofing around and comparing their activity to martial arts. But in fact, the literal translation of kung-fu is “Skill with effort” meaning any skill that has been learned with great effort can be accurately described as kung-fu. I recommend using that in your day to day speech. If someone criticizes you, pull out the real definition of kung-fu, and prove their criticism is without merit. They will admire your kung-fu.

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