Misread the whole post. Never mind.
Non-US Dopers: Please Share Any US Culture References You Didn't *Get* from Exported American TV/Mov
I’m wondering if they got the “well cooked - no runny” just fine and were now moving to mode in which those eggs would become well cooked.
But for next time “scrambled, well done” is probably the most effective way to get well cooked non-runny eggs over the majority of the US.
You have perfectly nice ordinary people who are named Fanny and Randy.
Kiwis, Brits, and Aussies cannot keep a straight face when introduced and have to walk away doubled with laughter. Our dream is to meet a couple called Fanny and Randy. 
Out of context references to specific brands of some or other foodstuff or ingredient can be tricky. I remember not knowing what Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs, Crisco, Miracle Whip, Graham crackers, biscuits, grits, etc really were (and by the time I had the opportunity to look them up, I’d forgotten, so they puzzled me again the next time too) American foods are imported here to the UK now (especially confectionery), so some brands are more familiar now.
I plead jet lag. Yes, I probably should’ve asked but considering the person didn’t understand my very clear explanation of how he likes his eggs, I’m not sure I would’ve got an answer I’d understand.
They just sound impossibly cheesy. They can’t be said in a British accent. Perhaps if I pretended to be American… but no, I still couldn’t do it. If I ever visit the US, I’ll be having scrambled eggs. Please don’t tell me you call those ‘dang peachies’ or something.
No that’s an omelet.
This, from the country that brought us bangers and mash and toad in the hole?
How do you do there squire, also I am not from Minehead lad but I in Peterborough, Lincolnshire was given birth to, but stay in Peterborough house all during war, owing to nasty running sores, and was not going to Nürnberg.
I am eating lots of chips and fish and hole in the toads and don’t you know old chap I was head of Gestapo for ten years. Five years! No, no, nein, I was not head of Gestapo at all…I make joke. Ach. (nervous giggle)
Nope. Scrambled. We do eggs fried, poached, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, or (not often seen) basted, too.
Over-easy/sunny side up/over-hard (alternately just “hard”) are just descriptors for how to prepare a fried egg.
I am a Kiwi. A bunch of us on the bones of our posteriors worked as waiters in Denver in 1981 and enjoyed ourselves immensely.
My first job was as a dishwasher (I was a qualified lawyer back home but no problem) then a busboy, and quite quickly a waiter on the morning shift. Good times. White Spot restaurant on Colfax.
Anyway I learned that eggs came as follows:
[ul]Sunny side up
Over easy
Medium Over Easy
Hard Over Easy
Basted
Boiled
Poached
Scrambled
Denver Omlett
Western Omlett
and there were a couple of other configurations which I cannot recall
[/ul]
Dang!! For a foreigner who didn’t even eat eggs, this was a revelation. And on top of that there were at least 4 types of bread to toast and six different dressings for salad.
Guys and ladies (pleading) should life be so complex?? Its breakfast not an haute cuisine evening meal. Wait staff in family restaurants are paid next to nothing - give them a break.
But anyway that is how American restaurants operate.
I have met plenty of Randys, but I’ve never encountered a Fanny.
Wait, let me rephrase that. What I mean is that I have never seen an American Fanny.
Damn it, no, what I mean is that I am not personally aware of a living American who goes by the name “Fanny”. Meanwhile, the name “Randy” remains fairly common. Phew!
We, the American People, apologize that your server was an idiot.
I usually ask for my eggs ‘hard scrambled’, which isn’t really a term. Usually they ask me what I mean and I say “I don’t like runny scrambled eggs”.
We still haven’t gotten an explanation of the whole ‘Purley’ thing.
Clark Stadium was constructed in Plano, Texas in 1977 with a capacity of about 14,000 people and it fills up during football season. In Allen, Texas they recently built a stadium with a capacity of 18,000 people at a cost of nearly $60,000,000. Both Plano and Allen are part of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metropolitan area. It’s not just small towns that are crazy about high school football it’s the big city too. It’s just easier to notice in small towns because there’s not much else to notice.
Oookay as a mere colonial of Her Majesty I shall essay an attempt:
Purley is a suburb in the south of London and regularly returns Conservative members to Parliament. Home and hearth are the core values.
Ergo the good citizens of Purley are not regarded as adventurous people: they think France is an utterly foreign country and they aren’t too sure about Scotland and Wales either. Thus the wife who comes from Purley is unlikely to have ventured more than 10 miles from home her whole life which makes the implication that she is a traveler absurd - and funny.
It is like suggesting a wife from Muscogee would be widely travelled.
I am declaring “podacked” to be the new official term (in our house anyway) for over hard, for the purposes of putting on an egg & cheese sandwich.
Only I think it’s spelled “podcacked”
My father, who ran a lunch counter before WW II that these are called “Adam
and Eve on a Raft” (two of them together.) Did you have fun names for things?
Fanny is an old British name, although I highly doubt that anyone in the UK is being named that nowadays, for obvious reasons. It appears to live on in some parts of the Commonwealth though; I recently met a young Malawian woman with the name. I wouldn’t associate it with the US at all.
I was thinking specifically of Texas when I wrote that. Its a chicken or egg kind of thing. High School football is a bigger deal in Texas than in any other state. There are a few hugh cities in Texas and a decent number of urban areas. But most of Texas is a bunch of nothing in between those cities. If there is something that Texas won’t run out of its nothing. Holy fuck that state is boring to drive across. High School football is huge in those areas of nothing. Its not surprising its big throughout the state. I think the obsession came from the small towns first and spread but I don’t know if there can be a solid answer about that.
It is a pretty unpopular name in the US. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone named Fanny. Its kind of an old-fashioned Southern name.
I think most of the humor with Brits is that here it is used as a term for the buttocks while they use it for an adjacent area. The term fanny pack takes on a whole new meaning.