Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup at The Poem Farm.
When my children were young, eggs made sunny side up and arranged on toast was considered an awesome weekend breakfast. I can’t remember now who in our family came up with this moniker, but we called eggs made this way “golden sunshine”. Three pairs of bright eyes would follow my every move as I cracked each egg as carefully as I could so as not to mess with the central point of this entire endeavor: those perfect, golden, delicious yolks. Each child had their own way approaching the finished product: Elizabeth cut her toast into perfect strips so as to dip each into the yolks, Ben went to work with his knife and fork immediately to create a plateful of yolky bites of toast, and Olivia carefully saved the yolk for the very end.
These days, my kiddos have more elaborate choices for weekend breakfasts when they come home to visit or take us out for brunch: shakshuka, omelettes stuffed with fancy fillings, creamy frittatas with unusual veggies. Their “golden sunshine” days are long ago in the past, but I remembered them so very fondly when I read this poem in Barbara Crooker’s Some Glad Morning:
Eating Fried Eggs at Gail’s by Barbara Crooker
Still warm, slipped from under the feathers
of Brownie, Silver, Little Red,
brought inside to be cracked and flipped
in the hiss of hot bacon fat, cooked fast
until the whites harden, grow lacy
around the edges, then slid onto a plate,
yolks intact, until we break them intentionally,
spearing them with our forks, spreading
sunshine all over our plates.
Going to Walden.z 
I love that spreading sunshine all over our plates. Eggs in many varied forms are popular for breakfast at our house.
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Delicious post! Love Barbara’s poem and hearing about how your kids ate their eggs. I’m a scrambled eggs girl myself and align with Frances the badger when it comes to runny eggs . . . 🙂
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Barbara Crooker just knows how to tell it, doesn’t she? I love your ‘golden sunshine’ & her ‘spreading sunshine all over the plates.”
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It’s like she wrote it just for you!
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The combination of Crooker and your memory makes me teary, Tara. Sometimes the simple memories are the most beautiful. So much love to you and yours. xx
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My daughters loved their eggs ‘golden sunshine’ style when they were younger. I would make a face out of their breakfast: the eggs for eyes, half of a banana for a nose, bacon mouth, and sliced strawberries for spiked hair. Thanks for sharing Crooker’s poem and allowing me to think back to breakfasts when my kids were young. Be well. 🙂
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What a beautiful combination of Crooker’s poem and your memories. Food memories are rich, aren’t they? Your post sent me spiraling down memory lane. I’m now teary-eyed and smiling after a nostalgia overload.
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What a treat to read about “golden sunshine eggs” at your house and then read the Crooker poem. I loved the image of the whites growing “lacy around the edges.” Those words conjured up the eggs of my childhood. Because I rarely cook an egg in bacon fat anymore, I’d forgotten about those lacy edges.
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