My mother always said not to be good at making the egg salad if you don’t want to be the one making it for every reunion. Folks get it into their head that you’re Mrs. Egg Salad and you’ll be stuck forever boiling eggs and mashing mayonaise together with celery.
My mother was the family chicken fryer. I even have a wonderful video of her cutting up a chicken and frying it – all showing her from the neck down. My Aunt Wanda was a beautician (Beauty Operator) and would give my mom a perm when we’d visit. During the chicken cutting up and frying my mom’s hair was in various stages of perm-dom.
The last shot on the video is a beautiful medium shot of a platter of chicken which opened up into a long shot of mom holding the platter with her new perm. It cracks me up every time I see it.
My own private egg salad these days is the corset. I’ve been contacted by a few venues who’d like me to ‘create a corset for THEM!’ as well as a magazine and – of course – that’s what I’ll be doing on Knitty Gritty. Believe me, I’m not complaining – it’s a fun pattern and I love thinking up variations on a theme. But I also have to keep an eye on the fact that it IS a theme, and if I go around singing it too much I’ll become Johnny One Note.
So, I’m glad I’m good at the egg salad, but I have to be sure that they know what a mean chicken I can fry up, too!