So my wife brought home some “organic” eggs from the local farmer’s market. I had my doubts…
My first concern was the somewhat suspicious handwritten admonition to “Rinse Thoroughly In Warm Water Before Use”. My second concern was more of a wry observation: they cost twice as much as regular eggs, but were so small that they held half as much food. Since we had other eggs in the fridge, I decided to ignore them for a bit, and stacked the other eggs on top of them…
Today, I needed eggs to service the clamoring demands of my two young children for hard-boiled eggs, and these suspicious eggs were all we had left, so I had no choice but to use them. While preparing to “rinse” them, I discovered the reason for the admonition in that most of them had streaks of chicken poop on them. In the end, I didn’t rinse them, I washed them with detergent!
Then, I tossed them into my egg-steamer, set to a shorter time than recommended for hard-boiled eggs to account for their diminutive size. After a quick ice bath, I had produced apparently fine, if tiny, hard boiled eggs. So I fed them to my kids! Then, after devouring eight eggs between them, they demanded more…
I repeated the process with the remaining three eggs (one having spun wobbly on the counter, which gave me concerns it might be bad). Because there was an odd number, there was no way to fairly (according to my 5-year-old) divide them, so Daddy had to eat one. So, kids happily munching away, Daddy took a bite. This was a mistake…
As it turns out from my subsequent internet research, I had won the lottery with a fertilized egg. What I knew at the time was that the dark red spot I discovered in what was left of the yolk had what looked like veins in it, and the flavour in my mouth was so utterly repugnant that I will not describe it, in case my readers might want to enjoy a meal ever again…
I won’t describe the next two minutes either, as I refuse to ever think of them again, but in case you were wondering, mozzarella will not wipe the flavor of a hard-boiled fertilized egg from your mouth. Neither will coca-cola, or smoked gouda. No, if you want to remove this particular brand of horror from your mouth, it seems dill pickles is your go-to solution. I wish I had no reason to know this…
In future, I will be instituting a “No tiny, incredibly expensive, vomitously nauseating eggs” policy with respect to my food peparation procedures. YMMV…